breakfast

With five minutes to go before the school bus is due, your well-meaning attempts at breakfast can quickly deteriorate from a homemade nutrition-fest to packaged-weird-sweet-pastry-thing-in-the-toaster (where it morphs into toasted-weird-sweet-pastry-thing, which you gobble down while running out the door, only to crash a couple of hours later in math class when your body is craving some real nutrients).

But with just a teeny bit of baking wizardry on the weekend, after school or in the evening, you (and your family) can enjoy a luscious, nutritious, yummy muffin in the morning in the same time it takes for the toaster to work its magic on that pouchy “pastry.” The key to success here is to make a bunch of muffins at once, then to toss them in the freezer and use later as needed – for breakfast, with lunch or for a delicious (and, as it happens, nutritious) snack.

Family-Friendly Pumpkin Muffins

A Cookin’ Teens Original

© Rising Moon Media, 2008

Ingredients

Dry:

3 3/4 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup mixture of small, dried fruits such as mixed raisins, dried blueberries, dried cranberries, etc.
1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Wet:

1 can plain pumpkin (29 ounces)
1 cup of unsweetened applesauce
6 eggs

To Prepare:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spritz three 12-cup muffin tins with cooking spray, or grease each cup with a teeny bit of butter.

In a large bowl, combine the first eight dry ingredients (flour through salt) and mix well with a fork. In a second bowl, combine the wet ingredients and mix well with a fork. Add the wet ingredients to the bowl with the dry ones, then add the chocolate chips, dried fruit and nuts. Combine thoroughly and spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in a muffin comes out clean. (Try to avoid stabbing the chocolate chips with a toothpick or it might be hard to determine whether or not the muffins are cooked.)

When the muffins are done, remove them from the tins and let them cool on a rack or a plate. Once cool, wrap the muffins singly or in pairs in plastic wrap, then toss the wrapped muffins into a couple of freezer bags and put the bags in the freezer. When you plan to eat the muffins, either take them out the night before and let them thaw on a plate, or, if you don’t plan that far ahead, take them out of the freezer when you need them, remove the plastic wrap, and heat them in the microwave for a minute or two – or about the time it takes for the pouchy pocket to pop up out of the toaster and morph into a pastry.

Tags: quick, easy, snack, breakfast, recipe

Nothin' creepy 'bout these crepes.

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Tags: videos, quick, techniques, breakfast

A Cookin' Teens Original

© Rising Moon Media, 2009

This week, in kitchens throughout America, teenagers on vacation from school are performing that ages-old post-holiday ritual: rummaging through containers of leftovers in the fridge in search of something interesting to eat. Oftentimes, though, the search is abandoned in futility. What to do with a handful of chopped olives or a fistful of ham or a sandwich bag of shredded cheese? Plenty, as it turns out.

One yummy and extremely easy option is a frittata. The word "frittata" comes from the Italian and literally means "fried." But the concept has been Americanized to more or less mean an open omelet. And in this recipe, a CT original, that omelet is baked, making the whole procedure simple, yet filled with possibilities.

Best of all, a frittata is great for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or whatever the meal is called when you're eating breakfast at noon, cuz you just got up.

Ingredients

10 eggs
1 1/2 cups of milk
two slices of whole wheat bread (white will do in a pinch), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 cup of shredded cheese (any kind you have on hand will do, although we love a combination of mozzarella and something smoked, like gouda or cheddar)
a big palmful of cooked meat, such as ham or chicken or roast beef, cut into small cubes
black pepper, to taste

Optional

Use all or none of these ingredients, or make up your own combination from the veggies in your fridge
1 red or green pepper, chopped
4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup olives, pitted and chopped
1 large handful of raw spinach, arugula, or chard, chopped

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400.
In a very large bowl, whisk together the eggs and the milk. Add in all the other ingredients and combine.

Spray a large (13x9 or so) casserole dish with cooking spray. Cover with foil and bake for half an hour, then remove the foil and bake for half an hour more, or until the frittata is golden around the edges and firm in the middle.

Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, breakfast, recipe

You get home from school, famished as usual, and scrounge around for something to eat. But the cupboards are bare, save for a few pantry staples, and the few bananas in the bowl have definitely seen better days. Not to worry, for you probably have the makings of a killer banana bread. Banana bread is a “quick bread,” in other words, no rising or kneading time is needed. What makes this banana bread rise is baking soda, which you probably have around somewhere. It takes only a couple of minutes to mix up the whole bread, then you just toss it in the oven to bake. OK, you do have to find something to do for an hour while it’s baking. But we think the sweet/moist/yummy/crunchy/wholesome and satisfying product is worth the effort. If a bread isn't your thing, this recipe makes a perfect dozen banana muffins. That takes a bit less time to bake, about 40 minutes or so.

Banana Bread
A Cookin' Teens Original
© Rising Moon Media, 2009

Ingredients
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups white flour
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup PLAIN yogurt (not vanilla) or 1/3 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup brown sugar (or white, if you don’t have brown)
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt

Optional (but definitely worth it, if you have the items in the fridge)
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 handful chopped walnuts or pecans

To Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a loaf pan (or muffin tin) with cooking spray, or grease it with butter.
In a large bowl, thoroughly combine the butter and the sugar. Into the butter and sugar combination, add the beaten eggs, sour cream, vanilla and mashed bananas and mix well. Toss in the chocolate chips and nuts, if using, and stir. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt, and then add it to the bowl with the wet banana mixture. Combine the ingredients, but don’t over mix.

Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan. Bake for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the bread comes out clean.

Enjoy!

To get a whole bunch of great and easy quick bread recipes in one book, click on the link below for Beatrice Ojakangas' book "Quick Breads.

Tags: easy, snack, breakfast, recipe, vegetarian

Looking for something to cook for mom that not only satisfies her breakfast urge, it puts a fun and funky spin on a morning standard? Check out these pancakes, which combine apples, corn meal and maple syrup. Serve with a hunk of cheddar and some toasted pecans on the side and you got yourself the beginnings of a brunch. Happy Mother's Day! Read the whole recipe in the Athens Banner-Herald.

Tags: quick, easy, recipe, vegetarian, breakfast