Two Sweet Breakfast Treats

And yes, I have to dig out my digital camera, which is currently lurking somewhere at the bottom of my purse. I am just not good at the photo aspect of blogging.

Anyway, a couple of recently tried recipes that I wanted to make a note of.

Cranberry Lemon Muffins
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp lemon extract (opt)
2 eggs
1/2 c buttermilk
2 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla
2 c cranberries, thawed if frozen, chopped in half
Demera sugar for topping, opt.

1. Preheat oven to 350. 
2. In a bowl, cream butter and sugar. 
3. Add egss, buttermilk, 2 tbsp lemon juice mixed with lemon extract (if using). Batter will curdle. 
4. Add 2 c flour through lemon zest. 
5. Carefully stir in cranberries. 
6. Divide batter among muffin tins. Sprinkle top with Demera sugar. 
7. Bake 20-25 minutes.

I think this is probably good recipe, but I messed up by making them in jumbo muffin tins. I am used to quickbread-type muffins, and these are extremely delicate, cake-style -- most of them did not survive depanning. Next time I will use normal tins and liners, just in case, and there will be a next time, because these are quite good, worthy of any breakfast bread basket.

Lemon-Poppy Seed Scones

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3 tablespoons poppy seeds
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/3 cup (or more) whole milk

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Position rack in top third of oven. 
2. Mix flour, 1 cup sugar, poppy seeds, baking powder, lemon peel, and salt in processor. 
3. Add butter and cut in, using on/off turns, until mixture resembles coarse meal. 
4. Whisk egg and lemon juice in medium bowl to blend. Add to flour mixture. Using on/off turns, process until moist clumps form. 
5. Add 1/3 cup milk. Using on/off turns, process just until dough comes together, adding more milk if dough seems dry. 
6. Using floured hands, gather dough into ball. Flatten into 8-inch round. Cut round into 8 wedges. 
7. Transfer scones to large baking sheet; brush with milk. Sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.
8. Bake until scones are golden brown and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. 
9. Transfer to rack and cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

This is an old one I clipped out of a Bon Appetit about a thousand years ago and had only made once for some reason. I didn't add enough milk at first, and then I ended up overworking them a bit. I definitely need practice on my scone-making, but they're excellent. More of an afternoon tea thing than breakfast maybe, because they are relatively sweet.

Stuff My Mom Makes II

I quite like cooking breakfast, but I hardly ever get to do it. No one else in my family seems to be big on the meal, except for special occasions. Sometimes they don't eat it at all, a fact that never fails to boggle my mind, since I not only absolutely require something solid for breakfast but a sustaining snack around 10. On Sundays, lately, I've been making pancakes, which is always nice. One thing that I would like to make more of some day is quiche. I will not, however, make it when my mother is visiting, because I feel that would be rude: broccoli quiche is the one real food tradition we have going on our visits to her house.

Here it is.

Zucchini or Broccoli Quiche Pie

3 c grated zucchini or broccoli

1/2 c oil

1/2 c Parmesan

4 eggs

1/2 onion, chopped

1/2 c sharp cheddar, grated

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp salt, pepper, and garlic powder

1 c Bisquick

Mix all ingredients. Place in a large pie pan or casserole dish. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes.

We unfailingly eat the entire thing. Thanks, Mom!

Whole Wheat Orange Juice Muffins

Lately it seems like baking anything other than bread is something I do for company. This is not good for my mental health, or for my baking skills. This morning, after another up-and-down night with the Little Guy Who Does Not Sleep, Not Even When He's Tucked All Cozy Between Mommy and Daddy, I got up around 5:30, checked my email, did my usual web rounds, and did my usual musings to the effect of, Everyone else is still in bed. I could do something useful.... Except this time, instead of heading off to another pointless web site, I actually did it! I got up from my chair and made muffins.

OK, I realize this does not exactly qualify as heroics, but it's the little things, right? In this case, the very little things, since in a moment of wild abandon I hauled out my mini-muffin pans. I have no idea why I have these, and I have only previously used them to make party appetizers. But today I wanted to make muffins, and the idea of a bounty of miniature ones pleased me, so here we are.

This is my standard muffin recipe, since it uses things I always have around. Plus of course it's tasty, appallingly easy, and you can tell yourself it's okay to eat a lot of them because there's whole wheat flour. Yum. I am doubly pleased with myself, because I have been meaning to do this for weeks--why suffer through stale grocery store bagels or overpriced donut shop fare, when it only take five minutes to whip up a batch of these suckers?

Whole Wheat Orange Juice Muffins

Also, I have been rereading bits of Much Depends on Dinner, which D got out recently and left where I could pick it up (I get a lot of my reading material from things he's left lying around). It's a fascinating book, full of weird trivia (like the fact that there are caverns under Detroit where salt has been mined out... I've never wanted to visit Detroit before!). It's not entirely free of preachiness, the besetting sin of food writing, but it does at least endeavor to take a balanced approach, and has just a ton of fascinating historical tidbits. A fun read, even if it does make me long for summer's fresh corn more than is good for me in January.

French Toast

I think (hope?) I am learning, as so many other cooks before me have, that getting the simple things right really is important. It doesn't get any simpler than French toast, so small changes in approach make the difference between insipid and inspired.

We had a D&D game scheduled for Saturday, and since I actually had a loaf of challah bread in the freezer I knew French toast would be on the menu. I had a recipe for an overnight version filed away, but instead of hunting for it I found one that I thought was similar enough online: Overnight French Toast. Friday night, after the kids were in bed, I pulled it out and thought Hm, this doesn't look quite like the one I thought I had. Oh, well, I'll just sort of munge this together with what I remember from the other one.... So I put the bread in a 9x13 pan, overlapped because there was no other way to fit it, and put it in the fridge overnight, and baked it in the morning (for much longer than this recipe says to, and I didn't flip them because they would have fallen apart...).

And the result was fine, nothing to complain about really. Maybe a touch underdone, but that's not exactly a tragedy.

Except it could have been much better, and I was bothered by my own laziness. I don't make French toast very often, since I very seldom have suitable bread for it around (might sound odd, but I mostly make sandwich bread these days, and very rarely make challah, which does work best). Which means that I blew a chance to make it really well.

Next time I will try to remember this, and use one of the two recipes that do turn out really, really, really well. One of those being Ina Garten's--also to be found in Barefoot Contessa Family Style, and the other being Cooking Light's French Toast Souffle.

Note to self: Accept no half-brained late-night muddling. Do it right.