Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts, tens list posts about food or recipes or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Designs.
Today I want to talk about my favourite warm late evening snacks. I don’t eat a lot of sweets or snacks during the day, it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner and then dessert. But during the evening I am often craving something sweet, so I’ve come up with a list of my favourite evening snacks. I decided to focus on warm evening snacks only for this post.
What makes for a good Late Evening Snack
For me a good late evening snacks must be easy to prepare, I don’t mind waiting half an hour while it’s in the oven, but I want not to do too much effort myself. When it’s late evening I usually don’t feel like standing in the kitchen for half an hour or more to make, so a good evening snack only requires 5-20 minutes of preparation that I have to do myself. Then I like evening snacks that I can eat in one go myself or will be cooled down before I go to sleep. Things like pie or cookies often take a lot of time to bake and can take longer to cool down, so those don’t work.
Top Five Warm Late Evening Snacks
- Store bought snacks. I don’t splurge on storebought snacks too often as making something myself is often cheaper, but usually I buy something storebought each week as well. My favourite store bought warm snacks are: Loempia’s (big burrito sized egg rolls, see picture below), vegetarian sausage breads, pre-sliced french bread with herb butter or pancakes/ poffertjes (very small round pancakes, see picture below). The handy thing about these is that you only need to pop them in the oven or microwave, wait and eat.
- Crumble. I love crumble, my favorite crumbles are apple crumble or peach crumble. For both I use my crumble recipe. Only for the peach version I use a jar of preserved peaches, which I cut into tiny pieces. It only takes a few minutes to heat up the oven, prepare the crumble and fruit and put it in a bowl. I usually make enough to eat from it two evenings. If it hasn’t cooled down enough to cover when I go to sleep, I just put it back in the oven, which is by then cooled down. Crumble is warm, sweet and yummy, it contains fruit and doughy goodness. It’s perfect.
- Mug Cake. Nowadays I don’t make these as often, but mug cakes are perfect as late night snacks. You only make enough cake for one portion, microwave it, eat it, done! The tricky part is finding a good mug cake recipe and you do need to have a microwave. The only good mug cake recipe I found so far is my cinnamon mug cake recipe.
- Puff Pastry Snacks. Puff pastry snacks are easy to prepare, take some time to bake and are yummy. There are also a of options for these. My favourite ones are puff pastry with cheese, puff pastry with apple or cinnamon sugar puff pastry twisters. Which reminds me I still need to do a recipe post for the other two.
- Kaiserschmarrn. I can’t make pancakes, so if I haven’t bought store bought pancakes and want something pancakey I go for Kaiserschmarrn. It doesn’t take long to prepare, is warm and enough for one person. I love Kaiserscharrn!
As far as late night warm snacks go, the closest I get to that would be popcorn. Pop tarts are good if we have them too. Sometimes bought specialty bread toasted works too. Like blueberry or cinnamon bread. That’s all I can think of. Now it’s middle of the night and I have made myself hungry!
Oh bread of any kind is a great late night snack as well. I just rarely have any special bread at home. I have had pop tart a few times, they are tasty and easy to prepare, so that would work well as late night snack.
I umm, I’ve never been normal in my late night eating habits, haha. Or any of my eating habits for that matter. Like, I’ve been known to just steam a bag of vegetables in the middle of the night or bake a pan of brownies. It was worse when I was in college though, especially since I used to also eat fast food and there were numerous 24 hours places near campus. I even have these random photos from this one night in my dorm when I was just eating a bowl of canned corn that I made in the microwave and my roommate was making a whole sandwich and it was like 2 in the morning lol.
But now I don’t randomly eat in the middle of the night very often and like you I don’t really feel like doing a bunch of work that late. I usually tend to eat my dinner somewhat late in order to get full and then stop eating, or, if I do get hungry again, I usually eat some popcorn or granola bar type thing. I’ve never made a mug cake myself, but I used to buy these things at the store that I think were kind of the same? You just added water to the mix and put them in the microwave. It is as really quick, simple, yummy snack π
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I’ve never been quite normal with my eating habits either and I believe that if you want something even if it’s a weird time you still should eat it. And if you won’t go to bed till 5 am then still eating something at 2am is totally reasonable. I just don’t usually bake things like cookies or brownies when it’s late as then I am worried it won’t cool down enough before I want to go to sleep, so I go for the things I can eat in one go usually.
Yes here they sell some of those mug cake bags at the store too, you only have to add something and put it in the microwave. I haven’t tried them myself, buy I know my sister did and she said they were really good. Probably even less effort than making it yourself.
Less effort, but more expensive since you’re paying for the convenience. You could probably just mix up a few batches ahead of time and keep them in sealed baggies or something so that whenever you want one, you just pour it in a mug and add whatever liquid you need.
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Indeed you do pay for the convenience, sadly that’s true for a lot of products and making everything from scratch often saves money.
I also considered that if it was possible to make batches ahead. That would make it a bit easier probably.
I like baked apples, baked pears with cinnamon and sugar.
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Yum that sounds good!
These are interesting, I like the sound of the Loempia’s. I like egg rolls and don’t need much excuse to eat them! For me a typical late night snack is usually chips and salsa or something like that. Occasionally popcorn or even a bowl of blueberries (love em cold or frozen). I never used to snack at night but I do sometimes now, if I’m up late blogging or something lol.
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Loempia’s are delicious! I am not a big chips eater, but I do eat some chips now and then. I like blueberries, although I usually put them in some baking like muffins. I also would love to try blueberry crumble once, but blueberries are pretty expensive here.
I usually prefer to home bake my goodies—-since its better for you and taste better too and I love spending time in the kitchen. I love crumble though…its so good. I am a fan of mini cheesecakes with raspberries or blueberries on top.
Same here, but when it’s late when I come up with the idea it’s often too late to make something. Crumble and Kaiserscharrn are the exception as they are easy to prepare and I can usually eat it at once or put the leftover crumble in the oven. So I prefer to have some easy to make alternatives and things like egg roles are a lot of effort to make and pretty affordable when you buy them.
Hot cocoa and Jacobs biscuits. Cherry tomatoes are one my favs, too π
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I don’t think we have Jacobs biscuits here, will have to google that. Cherry tomatoes are good too, although I prefer tomatoes warm/ bakes for some reason.
Now you have me hungry. π
I plan to try your mug cake idea one of these days.
We’ve just been out camping so my night time snack dejour was S’mores. Yum!
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Oh s’mores is a good snack as well. I haven’t had them often, but they are yummy. The mug cake is easy to make and yummy π
I don’t try puff pastry often enough. It’s been years since I’ve baked with it. I like warm cookies if I can manage it at night. Noms. The mug cakes are nice in a pinch π
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I quite like puff pastry and have some fillings/ ways to prepare it that I like. I often don’t want to make cookies once it’s too late, but sometimes right after dinner I make them so I can eat them later that evening and they still cool down enough to get boxed up before I go to sleep. And the mug cakes are so handy!
The first thing that came to mind was warm chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven. YUM!
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Definitely works as a good late night snack, yum! Although I am always afraid they won’t cool down before I want to go to sleep.