Category Archives: Breakfast

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

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Today was baking day.  Bread, cookies, granola, muffins, maybe a cake.  I had the best of intentions.  Butter softening on the counter.  Oats and nuts down from the shelves.  Sugar, honey.  All the ingredients.  And then, as it sometimes does, the day got away from me.  So that was fun too.

But I did make these muffins.  They use 100% whole wheat flour but somehow aren’t heavy.  They’re moist and a little sweet, and you can make them sweeter with a pecan streusel topping.  We always go that route when we have them as a breakfast treat.  Or you can make the muffins plain, as I do when I make them for my kids’ lunchboxes, usually in a mini muffin tin.  Kids dig little things.  And it’s cute to watch the baby enthusiastically eat a whole–if tiny–muffin.

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins require three bowls if you’re making the streusel topping, which I highly recommend.  Make the topping first: mash together or pulse in a food processor 1/2 c brown sugar, 2 tsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 3 Tb. butter, and 2/3 c. chopped pecans.  Pop the topping into the freezer while you’re preparing the batter (and if you have leftover topping, you can keep it in the freezer for next time).   Mix wet ingredients in one bowl: 2 beaten eggs, 1 1/3 c. buttermilk, 1/3 c. canola oil, 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla.  Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl: 2 1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/2 c. (or up to 3/4 c.) brown sugar.  Using a rubber spatula, fold wet and dry ingredients together with 1 c. peeled and finely diced apple.  Don’t stir too much, just until it’s all combined.  Scoop into buttered or lined muffin tins, filling nearly to the top, then pat streusel on top if you are using it.  Bake at 375 in the upper 1/3 of the oven for about 10 mins for mini muffins or 20-25 mins for the larger size.

This recipe is from my all-time favorite cookbook, Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  My copy is falling apart, pages are abandoning the binding, it’s oil-stained and thickened by pages that have soaked up sauces, dressings, soup splatters, and my notes in the margins.  What do your favorite cookbooks look like?  And what are they?

Huevos Rancheros

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A leisurely breakfast is a fine thing on a weekend morning.  A pot of coffee, everyone in pajamas, a few moments to putter around in the kitchen.  These are the simple pleasures.  This breakfast is one of my favorites.

In my book, the essential elements of Huevos Rancheros are tortillas, beans, eggs, cheese, and sauce.  There are many variations, but I don’t think you can go wrong.  This is not a demanding recipe.  Use what you have.  Improvise.  Someday I will make Huevos Motulenos for you, an amazing concoction featuring a fried banana.

But back to Huevos Rancheros: first warm up a pot of beans.  If you have beans left over from making Chilaquiles, or maybe even some leftover chili, you are in business (how clever of you to have made extra for the freezer!).  Or maybe you have some of those Black Beans with Cilantro and Lime in the fridge.  If not, season your beans now: saute an onion and some garlic, tip in the beans and a little salt and water, maybe with some cumin and oregano or chipotle puree, let it all simmer while you get the rest of your toppings organized, and then mash it all coarsely with some handfuls of cilantro and a big squeeze of lime.  Meanwhile, heat tortillas on a griddle (or get traditional and fry them) and fry your eggs.  Layer a warm tortilla with beans, eggs, a scattering of cheese, salsa or chile sauce, cilantro, and avocado.  You could add a dollop of sour cream.  And do you still have some of that cilantro pesto in the freezer?  Lucky you.  Enjoy your breakfast.

Smoky Cauliflower Frittata

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I love my garden and I love my CSA, both of which I treasure for the fresh, delicious, seasonal food they bring into my kitchen.  But I have to admit to a guilty pleasure: the off season.  When I get to select each and every vegetable myself just because I feel like eating it this week.  When I don’t have a bumper crop of arugula or zucchini demanding that I make pesto or relish.  When I don’t have to resist buying some enticing vegetable because my CSA box is groaning under the weight of other harvest bounty.  (I know, some people have real problems, right?)

So anyway, this week, I just up and bought two heads of cauliflower.  I did!  And after you make this frittata for the first time with the reasonable single head of cauliflower you will no doubt purchase at first, I am pretty sure that you will hurry back to the store for two more heads of cauliflower as well.  Just in case you have to make the frittata twice more in rapid succession.  Which might be my plan.

The smokiness here comes from a combination of smoked cheese and smoked paprika, another could-be-overkill-but-isn’t epiphany from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty.  I wouldn’t normally say that smoked cheese is my thing, but this frittata is something.  Something good.  J says it tastes meaty.  He means that as a compliment.

This Smoky Cauliflower Frittata would be excellent at any meal, and it is flavorful enough that you could cube it up to serve as a bite-sized party snack (or, you know, a straight-from-the-fridge snack).  In salted water, parboil a small cauliflower, including the stem, cut into medium pieces.  Drain well, then saute in an ovenproof pan with 2 Tbsp. olive oil until the edges of the florets begin to turn golden brown.  Meanwhile, heat oven to 375 and grate and toss together 5 oz. smoked cheese (I used Beechers) and 2 oz. aged cheddar.  In a large bowl, thoroughly combine 6 eggs, 1/4 c. greek yogurt (the original recipe called for creme fraiche), 2 Tbsp. dijon and 2 tsp. sweet smoked paprika, then stir in 3 Tbsp. finely chopped chives and 3/4 of the grated cheese (reserve the remaining cheese for later).  Season well with salt and pepper.  When the cauliflower florets look nice and toasty, pour the egg mixture over the cauliflower and use a fork to distribute the cauliflower and cheese evenly around the pan. Cook about 5 minutes over medium heat.  Scatter remaining cheese on top, move to oven, and cook 10-12 minutes more until the frittata is nearly set.  I like to finish by turning the oven up to a broil for a couple of minutes at the end (leaving the pan on the middle rack) to slightly brown the top.  Let rest a few moments, then serve hot.  (Most frittatas are also great cold or at room temperature, but I preferred this one hot.)  I served it with a plain green salad dressed with this lemony vinaigrette.

A Healthy Indulgence: Whole Grain Banana Cardamom Muffins (with optional chocolate, of course)

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I’ve been keeping a close eye on the banana situation recently.  We like bananas in our family, I usually keep the fruit bowl stocked with them, but, you know, sometimes there is disequalibrium between supply and demand.  And for those times there is banana bread.

After the first brown spots appeared on the bananas on my counter, I began to get hopeful.  I flipped through a few of my cookbooks, contemplating my banana bread options.  I saw a recipe for a banana cardamom cake and got excited.  Days went by.  The bananas were definitely going to be mine to bake with.  Really, it was time.  Seriously.

Then today this recipe popped up on my screen, and I was ready.  (Isn’t that a nice blog?  Go ahead, go click through to her website, check out that recipe, and vote for her for a Bloggie for Best Canadian Blog.  I’ll wait.)  You back?  So you saw why I didn’t just make that recipe: the coconut.  I know I’m in the minority here, but coconut isn’t my favorite.  What IS my favorite, you ask?  Chocolate, of course.  So I knew it was time for a recipe mashup.  One other consideration was that I wanted to make these healthy enough for my kids’ school lunches, which meant that starting with a stick of butter was out.

I went halfsies on this recipe and made some some of the muffins with cocoa and chocolate chips and the rest without.  You’ll like them either way.  Banana Cardamom Muffins start with 2-3 mashed bananas, of course, preferably sorry browning specimens that have been rejected by your family.  Mix the mashed bananas with 3/4 c. buttermilk, 1/2 c. brown sugar, an egg, and 2 Tb. melted butter.  Stir 1 c. oats into the wet ingredients.  In a separate bowl, combine 1 1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour, 1 tsp. ground cardamom, and 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda.  (If you are making the chocolate version, now add 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder and a handful of chocolate chips to the dry ingredients and 1 tsp. vanilla to the wet ingredients.)  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry just to combine and scoop the batter into lined muffin tins.  Bake at 350 for 20-23 minutes, checking every minute after 20 minutes to avoid overbaking.

Celebrate Spring with a Canning Jar Coddled Egg

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I admit that, at first, I found Seattle a bit too grey. It took me a few years to stop minding the weather and learn to love soup. But that was more than a decade ago, before I realized that it doesn’t rain that much, and when the sun shines it’s incomparably gorgeous. And now I just think of Seattle as having five months of springtime. Starting today.

So happy springtime! Right on schedule, my hens laid their first two eggs of 2012, and when I poked around in the garden I found soft green herbs unfurling from hibernation. The first chives, tender parsley, tart sorrel, green onion shoots, mint. Lunch.

When I read this the other day, I couldn’t believe that it had never occurred to me to coddle an egg in a canning jar. (Is that weird? Really, I couldn’t believe it.) So, as I said, lunch.

To make a Coddled Egg in a Canning Jar, butter a wide mouth half pint canning jar. Crack in two eggs and season with a pinch of salt. I drizzled in a spoonful of cream because I had some in the fridge, then piled in the handful of chopped fresh herbs. You wouldn’t go wrong adding cheese instead of the cream (or, go crazy, use both), but I didn’t. Put the lid on the jar and place it in a pot. Fill the pot with water to just below the jar lid. Remove the jar from the water, bring the water to a simmer, put the jar back in, and simmer 12-15 minutes, depending on how well-cooked you want your yolks. (Think ahead of time about how you will lift the jar from the simmering water. I used a jar lifter, which I own for canning, but I’ve heard of people using tongs with the ends wrapped in rubber bands for traction. If you plan to use this method, you should probably try it first in cold water to make sure it seems safe.)

I love the idea of serving these for brunch with a toppings bar–label the lids with a Sharpie and let everyone assemble their own. With a few pots on the stove you could cook a lot of these at once. Serve with buttered toast.

 

Breakfast for Dinner, Grownup Edition: Eggs and Kale on Sweet Potato Pancakes

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Weekends sometimes demand fancy, special-occasion, I-cooked-all-afternoon-because-it’s-Saturday fare.  And sometimes just the opposite.  This recipe is dedicated to a Sunday spent doing better things, like collecting sticks outside with the kids for hours,  or reading by yourself all afternoon to the exclusion of any other activity whatsoever.

If you saved some batter from making sweet potato pancakes for the kids this morning, you’re ahead of the game for a simple dinner tonight.  If not, go ahead and whip some up now, it won’t take long.  While you’re doing that, put a washed and torn bunch of kale in a pot with an inch of water and a teaspoon of salt to simmer until tender, about 5 minutes.  Start warming your griddle now for the pancakes.  Drain the kale well, toss it into a hot pan with a touch of olive oil and sautee it for a few minutes.  I recommend a splash of fish sauce at this point, but you could just salt it to taste instead.  Then smoosh the kale over to the side of the pan, where it will work on getting some crispy edges while your eggs are cooking (don’t forget to turn the greens occasionally with a tongs).  Lower the heat in the pan, add some oil or butter to the now-empty part, and crack in your eggs. Let the eggs cook to your liking while your pancakes bake, then pile everything at once onto a plate: sweet potato pancakes, then kale topped with a soft egg.  Serve with, no joke, maple syrup and your favorite hot sauce.

This Weekend, Make Sweet Potato Pancakes for Someone You Love

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It’s never the wrong time to make sweet potato pancakes for someone you love.  So make them this weekend.  Or you could file these pancakes away for Valentines Day.  Or, better yet, make them the next three weekends in a row to perfect your technique, THEN make them for Valentines Day.  If you’re cutesy like that, you can shape your pancakes into a heart using a cookie cutter or pancake mold, or you can use a squeeze bottle of batter to bake a heart-outline shape.  If you’re not cutesy like that, these are still great pancakes to make for the ones you love because they’re healthy for the ol’ ticker, full of beta carotene and whole grain goodness.  And they have “sweet” in the name.

Anyway, my kids found MY heart-shaped pancake mold (where did THAT come from?) in a bag of Valentine-making supplies a few days ago.  They have been requesting heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast every morning since.  But anyone who knows me knows that I don’t roll that way.  Instead, like this writer, I stay up way too late and come morning it’s all I can do to roll out of bed in time to (drink a pot of coffee and) get the kids out the door.  So the idea of pancakes on a weekday, unless J makes them during his cheery morning revelries with the children, is a no-go.

Enter Breakfast For Dinner.  I told you how we mostly just ate scrambled eggs for a while there, so pancakes for dinner shouldn’t be such a big deal, but the kiddos were gleeful.  That’s always nice.

To make these Sweet Potato Pancakes, first peel, dice, steam and then mash or puree one large sweet potato.  That sounds like a big deal, but it’s not.  Just get it started while you mix the rest of your ingredients.  In a large bowl, mix 1 c. all-purpose flour, 1 c. whole wheat flour (pastry if you have it), 4 tsp. baking powder, 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon and a big pinch of salt.  In a separate bowl, whisk 2 eggs with 2 c. milk, 4 tsp. canola oil, 2 Tbsp. brown sugar and 1 tsp. of vanilla.  Whisk in that sweet potato puree, then mix into your dry ingredients until blended.  Bake on a buttered griddle for a buttery crispy crust.

Serve with your favorite pancake fixings.  Mine–with these pancakes, at least–are vanilla yogurt, toasted pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup.  Yours?

p.s.  Did you know you can replace the butter/oil in lots of baked goods with sweet potato puree?

p.p.s. Save some pancake batter in the fridge.  You might want to make these again for dinner.

Everyone’s Doing It: Sweet, Salty, Savory Olive Oil Granola

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I have been reading Melissa Clark recipes as my bedtime stories this past month, and I was intrigued by a recipe she described for a granola made with olive oil.  Sweetness from brown sugar, earthy undertones from the olive oil, you understand why I bookmarked the page.  But you know that thing that happens sometimes, where you never heard of something and then once you learn about it you see it EVERYWHERE?  Turns out, suddenly there are variations on this recipe for olive oil granola all over the interwebs.

And tonight I learned why.  Because it’s good.  So good I could hardly stop stealing pinches off the tray–and that was before it was baked.  You might want to make it this weekend–if you can wait that long.

Of all the nearly-identical recipes, I started with this one, which was pretty much pared down to the essentials already, but I simplified it one step further by eliminating the coconut, which is not my thing.  If it’s yours, add a cup of coconut flakes to the recipe below.  Like most granola recipes, you can vary the nuts and seeds and/or add fruit to suit your taste.

Preheat your oven to 300 while you get a big bowl and mix 3 1/2 c. oats with 1 c. each of raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds and 1 1/2 c. whole pecans.  Pour over 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. olive oil, 3/4 c. maple syrup and 1 tsp. kosher salt and mix well.  Divide between two sheet pans and bake until nice and toasty, about 30 mins., switching the pans and stirring well every 10 minutes.  Let cool completely before storing in an airtight jar.

Eat by the handful from said jar.  Or, if you want to get fancy, you could put your handful of granola in a little bowl first.

 

 

 

p.s. As you may have guessed, this granola is not exactly health food.  If you’re looking for an everyday recipe with a lower proportion of sweetener and fat, you might like this Almond and Dried Cherry Granola recipe.

Light as Air: Yeast-Raised Whole Wheat Pancakes

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We usually make our pancakes with at least some whole grain flour, and we like the hearty texture of whole grains.  But in these yeast-raised pancakes the whole wheat flour is barely detectable; they bake up airy and light.  Which is delightful for those of you trying to “sneak” more whole grains into your family’s food–and also for those of us who aren’t sneaking them at all.

These Yeast-Raised Pancakes have a well-developed flavor and are fun to make because you start them the night before by mixing 2 1/4 tsp. yeast (1 pkg.) and 1 tsp. sugar with 1/4 c. of warm water and mixing well.  In a separate bowl, combine 2 c. warm milk with 1/2 tsp. salt, then stir in the yeast mixture when it is nice and foamy.  Whisk in 1 1/4 c. whole grain flour and 1 1/4 c. all purpose flour.  Cover overnight (you can leave the bowl on the counter if the room is cool, or refrigerate if the room is warm).  Then in the morning all you have to do is roll out of bed, add 2 Tbsp. sugar, 5 Tbsp. canola oil (or melted butter), 2 beaten eggs, and 1/2 tsp. baking soda.    Cook them up with a few eggs for a great weekend–or snow day!–breakfast.

This recipe, like many of my favorites, is from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Cherry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies = “Breakfast Cookies”

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The baby is sick, so no one is sleeping–and no one is cooking.

But J made breakfast cookies, which will surely be breakfast tomorrow.

Yes, we call these Breakfast Cookies.  They are our house’s specialty cookie.  The name started as a joke, but–let’s be honest–is there a time of day when a cookie doesn’t sound delicious?  Why NOT for breakfast?  Anyway, they can be varied with different dried fruits and nuts, and we always bake some without chocolate for the child in our family who doesn’t like chocolate (I know, it’s crazy, but we have one).  I like raisins and walnuts, myself.   The kids like dried cranberries.  We were out of both of those dried fruits, but luckily Cherry Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies aren’t half bad.

To make a huge mountain of them (for a small mountain, halve the recipe), mix together 1 c. brown sugar, 1 c. granulated sugar, 1/4 c. canola oil and 1/4 c. applesauce, then mix in 2 eggs, 2 tsp. vanilla, and 2 Tbsp. milk.  In a separate bowl, combine 2 c. flour (you can use part whole wheat), 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. baking powder, and 1 tsp. salt.  Mix these dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.  Adding them a cup at a time, work 4 c. oats into the dough.  Mix in 1 c. chocolate chips, 1 c. dried fruit and 1 c. chopped nuts (or whatever chocolate/dried fruit/nut combo sounds good to you).  Bake at 350 until the tops of the cookies are almost completely dry (how long to cook them depends on the size; we usually cook 2-Tbsp. mounds of dough for about 10 minutes).  The cookies will be soft but you can leave them on the cookie sheet to cool for a crispy bottom.