Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

These aren't the most photogenic baked goods in the universe, but they are easy to make and quite tasty. I started with a recipe from recipezaar.com, a cooking website that I like because it has multiple ways to search and there are often comments from people who have tried the recipe (besides the original poster).

Some of the comments on this recipe noted that the muffins were not particularly lemony. I added more lemon juice along with some lemon zest and was quite pleased with the result.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons poppy seeds

1 large egg

1 cup milk

1/3 cup cooking oil

6 tablespoons lemon juice

Zest of one lemon

1 tablespoon sugar for the topping

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and poppy seeds; set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg, milk, and cooking oil. Then add the lemon juice and lemon zest. Mix liquids into the dry ingredients. Pour the batter into muffin tins that have either been well greased and floured or that are lined with muffin papers. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins generously with sugar; do not mix in the sugar, as it is what forms the crunchy top.

Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Breakfast Burritos

This is a family favorite breakfast that is also remarkably easy to prepare. We quite often make it on weekend mornings; it's also frequently requested for birthday breakfasts. I wasn't a breakfast burrito fan until I married Bob. He has told me about his breakfast burrito odyssey that started when McDonald's first introduced their product twenty years or so ago. For the record, ours are improved enough over the golden arches variety that Bob can't really stomach fast food burritos anymore (except for the Carl's Jr. offering, which is very good).

We make these with Tortilla Land uncooked flour tortillas, so they need to be prepared before you roll up the finished product. We usually prepare all of the ingredients and then lay them out buffet-style on the island in our kitchen. Everyone makes their own, although the little ones usually need a little help with burrito rolling. The burrito featured in this photo actually ended up being more of an oversized taco because I stuffed it too full to roll it.

One of the great things about this recipe is that you can scale it larger or smaller very easily. It's not at all unusual for Bob to make himself a burrito for breakfast with leftover sausage, bacon, or ham.

Breakfast Burritos
Serves about 8 people
8 cooked tortillas (if you are using pre-cooked tortillas, you might want to warm them in the microwave for a few seconds)
1/4 to 1/2 pound of bulk breakfast sausage (a little goes a long way)
8 eggs (or one egg per person, if you're changing the number of servings)
1-2 cups frozen hash browns, fried until golden brown (this is another ingredient that is easily modified; we've used leftover breakfast potatoes or left the potatoes out all together. It makes a good filler, but the burritos work just fine without them).
1-2 roma tomatoes, diced in about 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 medium-sized yellow onion, diced small
1 cup grated cheddar or jack cheese (we usually prefer a mix)
Salsa to taste (use the salsa of your choice; we've used everything from Pace to fresh pico de gallo).

Brown and drain the sausage. Combine the eggs in a large bowl; break the yolks, but don't whisk the eggs together; you don't want them fully scrambled. Cook the eggs in a large skillet, breaking them into small pieces as you stir them.

Place the ingredients in the order listed. Laying a tortilla flat on a large plate, add filling ingredients until you have about 1/3 cup. Add a teaspoon or so of salsa at the end; this binds the other ingredients together and keeps the burrito from falling apart. Roll the tortilla, folding the ends in and continuting to roll after about the second length-wise fold. Enjoy!

Mimi's Buttermilk Spice Muffins

One of my earliest posts last year was about finding the recipe for Mimi's corn chowder on the Mimi's website. We were also happy to discover the recipe for their buttermilk spice muffins. I have to confess that I've never actually made this recipe. However, Bob has perfected it. This week he found some oversized muffin tins at a very good price, so now they're ready to be shown off in public.

I should note that they work perfectly well in standard-size tins, but they aren't quite as pretty (and don't make you think you're actually at Mimi's quite as much).

Mimi's Buttermilk Spice Muffins

Muffin Batter

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine

3 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk

Nut Topping

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup walnuts, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Grease baking tins with butter or margarine.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and the butter together with an electric mixer. When they are thoroughly mixed, add eggs and beat one more minute.

Sift the flour into a separate bowl, together with the baking soda, nutmeg and the cinnamon. Add the flour and the buttermilk. Mix at low speed until smooth. To avoid lumps in the batter, add the wet and dry ingredients alternately, in small amounts.

Make the nut topping by combining all ingredients together in a small bowl.

Fill each muffin cup 3/4 full of batter. Add a full, rounded tablespoon of nut topping on top of each muffin cup of batter. Bake immediately or the topping will sink to the bottom of the muffin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Recipe yields 12 standard-size muffins or six jumbo muffins. If using the jumbo muffin pans, reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees and increase the baking time by 5-10  minutes.

Quiche

Most of our family loves quiche. Anna hates it, but that is another story. David drew the breakfast category in our cook off and has always wanted to learn to make quiche. This was the perfect opportunity.

Most of what I know about making quiche I learned from my Betty Crocker Entertaining cook book and my next-door neighbor, Cory. BC has a great basic recipe; Cory enlightened us to understand that you can customize quiche to your heart's desire. For example, David loves chives, so we put some chives in the mix. I love finely diced green peppers with eggs, so we added some of those, too. And since we had both Swiss and cheddar cheeses, we made the quiche a cheese festival and added generous amounts of both. We had some diced ham and thought about either adding it to the bacon or replacing the bacon with it, but the bacon won out in the end.

I'll include the recipe's super simple crust recipe, which you don't have to roll and transfer. We simply used a Great Values brand pre-made crust from WalMart, which was truly delicious.

Basic Betty Crocker Quiche

Pat-in-the-Pan pastry (below)
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 small onion, finely diced
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese (4 ounces)
4 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Move the oven rack to its lowest position. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Make the Pat-in-the-Pan pastry (see recipe below).

Sprinkle bacon, cheese and onion in pastry-lined pie or quiche pan. Beat the eggs slightly in a large bowl with a wire whisk or hand beater. Beat in the whipping cream, salt, pepper and cayenne. Carefully pour the egg filling into the pie pan. Place in oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake about 25 minutes longer or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Place the pan on a wire cooling rack. Let stand ten minutes before cutting.

Pat-in-the-Pan Pastry
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cold water

Mix the flour, oil and salt with a fork in a medium bowl until all flour is moistened. Sprnkle with cold water, one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork until all the water is absorbed. Shape the pastry into a ball, using your hands. Press the pastry in the bottom and up the sides of the pan.