Quick Bread Breakfast Muffins #MuffinMonday

The easiest, most adaptable, recipe you'll ever need, these quick bread breakfast muffins are a great base for all of your favorite add-ins. Bake up a batch for your family today!

Confession time:  I am a muffin snob.  Have been since 2005 when I discovered this lovely recipe and cut it out of the Flavor section of the Houston Chronicle.  There is no reason whatsoever for a person to ever use a box muffin mix when they have this baby in their baking arsenal.  It is easy and quick (See the title? It does not lie.) and works as well with fruit and nuts as it does with cinnamon sugar or chocolate chips. 

The best part is that you can mix the wet ingredients together and put them in the refrigerator the night before you want to bake these.  And mix the dry ingredients together and leave them at the ready in a cling film covered bowl right there on the kitchen counter.   If you are feeling like an overachiever, you can even get the muffin tin buttered and ready.   When you get up in the morning, preheat your oven and mix your wet and dry, then add your fruit and you have muffin batter ready for the oven in next to no time.  This recipe is also very easily doubled for slumber party crowds for those of you who, like me, willingly accept groups of more than five or six guests and occasionally as many as 10 or 12.   

Sadly, my slumber party hosting days seem to be over so I am making these to take to my elderly father-in-law who hasn’t been well lately and, so, hasn’t been eating very much.  Nothing like fresh baked goods to entice a person to eat, I do believe.  We need to get some more meat on his bones!  I am hoping some of these will do the trick.

Quick Bread Breakfast Muffins

A great basic muffin recipe that is easily adaptable to whatever additions you'd like to make.  Blueberries, raspberries, dried cranberries, chopped strawberries, grated apples, chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, cinnamon sugar, etc.  (Grated apples AND cinnamon sugar?  Divine.  Dried cranberries and white chocolate?  Ditto.)  As you can see, the potential is huge.

Ingredients

2 cups or 250g all purpose flour

¾ cup or 150g sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup or 240ml milk

½ cup or 115g unsalted butter or ½ cup or 120ml canola oil

(I’ve made this many times and either butter or oil makes a delicious muffin.)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 large eggs

1 generous cup or about 175g fresh blueberries

Alternative additions in place of the blueberries: raspberries, dried cranberries, chopped strawberries, grated apples, chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, cinnamon sugar, etc.  

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Generously grease cups and top of 12-cup muffin tin.  Or use the Reynolds Foil Baking Cups, as I sometimes do.  The muffins they make aren’t as prettily shaped as the ones made in a hard muffin tin, but there is little clean up and that is worth more than the aesthetics of the perfect muffin to me.  (So you see, I am the most noble type of snob.  It’s what you are made of that matters to me.  Not how you look.  This also applies to people.)  I give the whole baking tray, including the baking cups, a light spray of Pam. 

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. 

First cup of flour.

The baking powder goes in. 

Then the salt.

It's sifting but that's hard to show in a photo. 

Second cup of flour and the sugar.

In another bowl, melt your butter slowly in the microwave.  Then whisk together milk, melted butter, vanilla and eggs. 

Almost forgot the vanilla!

Add all the milk mixture to flour mixture. 

Gently fold just until dry ingredients are moistened.   

Then fold in your blueberries or your alternate ingredients.

Divide your batter relatively evenly between the 12 muffin cups.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden.

Remove from oven and let cool 10-15 minutes before removing muffins from tin.  (If you are using a conventional muffin tin.  The Reynolds foil thingies cool much more quickly.)

This recipe can also be baked as a coffee cake, if you don’t have a muffin tin.  Extend baking time by five to 10 minutes or, once again, until golden.  

Enjoy!

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Cheesy Cauliflower Pancakes

These cheesy cauliflower pancakes are crispy on the outside but cheesy and tender on the inside. A cauliflower recipe to woo the haters over to the lover side. 

I love cauliflower! I was going to say, who doesn’t, but I guess there are a few of you out there. What’s the matter with you? (Please send responses to foodlustpeoplelove(at) gmail(dot)com or leave me a comment. :) The best part of cauliflower is that it is mild, as vegetables go, so it goes well with just about anything. My favorite way to eat it is how my mother taught me way back when: cooked then slathered in mayonnaise. Yes! The mayo melts drippingly into the hot cauliflower adding just the right amount of oil and salt. Just TRY it. 

Another of my cauliflower favorites as a child was cauliflower with cheese sauce. If you can’t get your child to eat a vegetable, batter and deep-fry it or cover it in cheese. Or, be still, my struggling heart, both. Works like a charm. When I was little, my mother didn’t steam vegetables, she boiled the heck out of them, as did my grandmother before her. We didn’t know vegetables could be crisp and crunchy when cooked. Just didn’t happen. But when the cook-till-still-crunchy method came on the food scene, we jumped on it with the rest of the intelligent world. And never looked back.

Cheesy Cauliflower Pancakes

This recipe is healthier version of fried cauliflower with cheese because 1. There is no massively caloric cheese sauce and 2. It is pan-fried with just a little oil. But it is still cheesy and crispy and, trust me, delicious. Even your children will eat this.

Ingredients
1 head cauliflower
2 large eggs
3 1/4 oz or 90g grated cheddar cheese
1 oz or 30g grated Parmesan
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream (And yes, deep sigh, you could use milk instead. If you must.)
Sea salt
Olive oil

Method
Cut the hard core of our your cauliflower then separate it into florets.

Steam, covered, until fork tender.

Remove the cauliflower and the steamer and dump the water out of the pot.

Return the cauliflower, a little at a time, to the pot or a metal mixing bowl and mash thoroughly with a potato masher. The cauliflower will mash better if it is still hot.

 

Stir in your two cheeses, eggs, breadcrumbs, cayenne and a good sprinkle of sea salt.

 

I was very generous with the cayenne because we like spicy. Temper this to fit your own family.

Add in the cream. You don't want the mixture too wet but it should look like it would hang together. Mix thoroughly and make a test patty after 2 tablespoons and then add more if it is still too dry.

Turn your oven on as low as it will go and put a baking tray in it. This will be to keep the first patties warm as you pan-fry the rest.

Form the cauliflower mixture into small patties and pan-fry the first side in a non-stick skillet or griddle with a light drizzle of olive oil. Cover the pan for a few minutes when the patties are on that first side, so that the egg in the mixture cooks through.

 

When side one is golden, flip carefully to the other side and cook until golden with crunchy edges. You can add another drizzle of oil, if need be, but the melting cheese often adds enough oil to the patty to help it crisp up.

 

Put the first batch of cauliflower pancakes into your baking pan in the oven to keep warm and keep making patties and frying until all are done.

Enjoy!

 

Chicken Fried Pork Cutlets

I hope you each have at least one friend that can make you laugh.  I am blessed to have a few.  One in particular has a dark sense of humor that can find something funny in the direst of circumstances and, for this, I love her.  As you know, I live in Egypt.  Recently she sent me the link to a news article about the kidnapping of two American tourists in the Sinai Peninsula.  Was she trying to warn me to stay safe?  Make sure I avoid the Bedouin tribes and a dangerous region?  Hardly.  Her email read in its entirety:  “Remember if we come to visit, do not pay ransom till I am a size 6.”  I almost spit my coffee out through my nose.

This post is for my dear friend, Gillian, because she keeps me laughing and keeps me honest and there is no better partner in crime.  This dish combines the two things she loves most: pork and fried food.  She says that I could deep-fry a piece of wood and she would eat it because frying makes everything taste better.   I cannot disagree.

Ingredients

6 thin boneless pork loin chops

Sea salt

Black pepper

Cayenne

1 cup or 125g plain flour (Plus 3-4 tablespoons more, if you are making gravy)

2 eggs

Canola or other light oil (for frying)

For gravy: Stock cube

Method

Using a meat tenderizer mallet, gentle but gradually pound the cutlet flat, turning it over and over until it is very thin and spread out.  (Thinking of someone who has offended you recently, optional, but satisfying.)

Season well on both sides with salt and your two peppers and set aside.

Whisk two eggs in a shallow bowl or deep plate.

In another shallow bowl or deep plate, season your cup of flour with additional salt and the two peppers.  Stir well. 

Meanwhile heat about 2 in or 5cm of oil in a shallow saucepan.  Locate your splatter guard/screen to cover the pan after you put the cutlets in.   Ideally you want an oil temperature of about 365F or 185C before you are ready to put the cutlets in.  If you don’t have a candy thermometer, just cut a couple of cubes of bread and put them in periodically.  When the bread starts to toast nicely within a couple of minutes, your oil is probably hot enough.  (You might want to consider buying a thermometer though, simply because they are inexpensive and are also essential to candy making which is essential to human happiness.)

Dip the cutlets into the egg on both sides and allow the excess to drip back into the bowl.

Dredge the cutlets in the seasoned flour and then gently lower them into the oil.  

Fry for just a few minutes on each side, until they are golden and crispy.  Put your splatter guard on so you don't get popped with hot oil.  You may need to cook just two or three at a time so that they brown more quickly.  Too many pieces at a time lowers your oil temperature so browning cannot happen as it should.

Remove and drain on some paper towels.

If you would like to make gravy (and who wouldn’t?) put three or four tablespoons of the oil you used for frying into a clean skillet, over a low heat, with one stock cube.  I have pork stock cubes but you can use chicken instead quite nicely.

Add in a couple of tablespoons of plain flour.

Combine the flour and oil, making a small roux and mash the stock cube into the mix.

Add about a cup or 250ml of cold water and whisk until completely combined.  Cook over a low heat until the gravy thickens and no longer tastes floury.

Serve the gravy over your chicken fried pork cutlets, ideally along with mashed potatoes and the vegetable of your choice.

Enjoy!

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