Category Archives: breakfast

Oatmeal peach muffins

baking, breakfast Leave a comment

I cooked down and pureed a bunch of peaches, thinking I would sneak it into yogurt for The Kiddo. Unfortunately he’s onto me and watched the yogurt preparation with an eagle eye. Plan B: something sneakier.

So I found this recipe here (there are TONS of peach recipes! Check them out!) and gave it a go, with a little modification.

You will need:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 cup pureed peaches
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup milk

Easy assembly:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F
  2. Mix together flours, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon
  3. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add peaches, vanilla, egg, oil and milk
  4. Mix together till just combined — do not overmix
  5. Scoop batter into greased or lined muffin cups and bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean

Oatmeal peach muffins

baking, breakfast Leave a comment

I cooked down and pureed a bunch of peaches, thinking I would sneak it into yogurt for The Kiddo. Unfortunately he’s onto me and watched the yogurt preparation with an eagle eye. Plan B: something sneakier.

So I found this recipe here (there are TONS of peach recipes! Check them out!) and gave it a go, with a little modification.

You will need:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 1-1/2 cups oatmeal
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 cup pureed peaches
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup milk

Easy assembly:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F
  2. Mix together flours, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon
  3. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add peaches, vanilla, egg, oil and milk
  4. Mix together till just combined — do not overmix
  5. Scoop batter into greased or lined muffin cups and bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean

Whey biscuits

baking, breakfast, kids 5 Comments

After all that yogurt straining, I ended up with quite a bit of whey. Time to make biscuits!

I used:

  • 2 cups King Arthur AP flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp baking powder
  • 1/4 cup powdered milk (for extra protein and creaminess)
  • 1/2 tsp instant yeast
  • 2 Tbsp shortening
  • 2 Tbsp cold butter
  • 1 cup whey

I do these in the food processor — they’re ridiculously fast that way. Toss in the flour, salt, baking powder, powdered milk and yeast and pulse a couple times. Cut in the shortening and butter and pulse about 8 times. Pour in the whey and let it sit a minute to soak in, then pulse till mostly blended — maybe 5-8 times?

Now pat out the dough on a floured surface and cut with a floured cutter. My cast iron was otherwise occupied, so I baked these on parchment paper on a cookie sheet:

Bake at 400 degrees F for about ten minutes. See them poofing up?

Get ’em while they’re hot!

The finished product:

The Kiddo loves these with Sunbutter on them for lunch; I love ’em with butter and honey. Fluffy tasty goodness!

Toddler yogurt/yogurt cheese: in the thick of it

baking, breakfast, kids 5 Comments

As discussed, The Kiddo loves him some yogurt. The problem is that it’s so creamy and fabulous the he sometimes has issues keeping it on the spoon all by himself; all by yourself is very important when you’re two.

Enter the cheesecloth! By straining out some of the whey from the yogurt you make it thicker, therefore easier for a little one to manage with a spoon.

I lined my gravy pitcher with cheesecloth, then spooned the yogurt onto the cheesecloth, which is over the strainer. I folded the cheesecloth over the yogurt to keep it covered, and put it in the fridge overnight.

If you want to hurry the process along (hungry toddler?), you can add a little weight to the equation:

For this setup I lined a mesh strainer with cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. I spooned in the yogurt and folded the cheesecloth over it, then put a clean soup mug on top of that. In the soup mug went an unopened can (of Arthur O’s, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have any specific magical yogurt powers). The weight of the can compresses the yogurt and speeds up the whole straining/thickening process.

The longer you let the yogurt sit in either set-up, the more whey will drain out, and the thicker the yogurt will be. Regardless, you’ll end up with this:

Yummy thick yogurt on the left, whey on the right.  If you let this strain a long time (24 hours or so) you end up with yogurt cheese! You can use this for all kinds of things as a replacement for mayo or sour cream in nearly any recipe.

Whey is chock-full of protein and minerals, so it doesn’t need to go to waste. I use it instead of water for making bread, pancakes, etc., and gently stir it back into a bowl of yogurt if I want to thin it out a bit for me. Heck, you can even make whey biscuits! Whey keeps in the fridge for six months, so there’s no rush; it also freezes just fine. I freeze it by the 1/4 cup in a muffin pan, then pop the whey-sicles into a freezer bag after they’re set up for easy measuring in the future.

Breakfast Casserole

breakfast 5 Comments

As with most of my recipes, this one is cobbled together from a few different recipes. It is not, however, cobbled together from old Stuckey’s buildings (20 imaginary points to the first person who gets that).

Further, also as with most of my recipes, The Yankee loved it and The Kiddo ran screaming. I try not to take that personally.

You will need:

  1. 2 cups flour
  2. Salt
  3. 1 Tbsp. baking powder
  4. Sprinkle of instant yeast (optional)
  5. 4 Tbsp. butter
  6. 2 Tbsp shortening
  7. Milk (about 2 cups, divided)
  8. 1 pound breakfast sausage
  9. 1 cup cheese
  10. 6 eggs

The basics:

Brown up a pound of breakfast sausage, preferably in a cast iron because I love them:

While that’s draining on paper towels, make up a basic biscuit dough. I use:

  • 2 cups AP flour (King Arthur only, because I am a flour snob)
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 Tbsp. baking powder
  • sprinkling of instant yeast (optional; I just like the yeasty flavor and extra rising power)
  • 4 Tbsp of cold butter
  • 2 Tbsp shortening
  • enough milk to make it sticky dough — 3/4 to 1 cup
  1. Pat that into a well-greased 9×13″ dish (you see my trusty Pyrex here):
  3. Sprinkle on the browned sausage.
  5. Sprinkle over that about 1 cup of cheese, whatever you have on hand; I had cheddar and jack
  7. Now whisk together 6 eggs and 1 cup of milk with some salt and pepper, and pour that over the whole thing:
  9. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until the eggs are set in the middle:
  11. I let mine sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, then serve:

As a bonus, this can be made the night before and refrigerated overnight; the next morning you just pop it in the oven! If you do this, be sure to put the cold pan in a cold oven, then turn the oven on and let them warm up together so as not to shock the pan.

Variations:

  • Use Texas toast instead of homemade biscuit dough
  • Use canned biscuits instead of biscuit dough
  • Add veggies, potatoes or extra spices to the egg mixture

Enjoy!