A healthy breakfast considered...

Quick and easy breakfast solutions. I have searched for them, have you? Toast on the run, done. Cereal when you arrive at work. Fruit smoothy with some muesli thrown in. Pancakes on weekends. Bacon and eggs. Bagels, etc, etc.

Muffins though, are just an excuse to eat cake first thing. And sometimes I feel guilty about this. Surely I should maintain and promote healthy eating. Surely I should make wise, considered choices about what I eat. I should look after myself now for the longer term. Maybe these muffins count towards this... maybe.

Made with breakfast cereal, these muffins could be considered healthy. Bran and sultanas, super healthy. With fresh fruit also! I try to convince myself... I originally considered making these when I found a recipe posted by Joy the Baker for a similar creation. She made up the batter at the beginning of the week and then cooked fresh muffins each morning. Would it work with this recipe? Perhaps the fresh pear would render it undesirable. Oh well, simply make up a dozen, refrigerate and heat each morning in the microwave to enjoy with coffee.

Sultana Bran & Pear Muffins

Makes 12

Around 1 3/4 c sultana bran, or similar cereal

1 1/2 c flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 c packed brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp all spice

1 pear, cored and diced finely

3/4 c milk

1 tsp white vinegar

75 g butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

Pre-heat oven to 180* C. Line a muffin tray with papers.

Combine dry ingredients with the diced pear in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the milk and vinegar. Leave to sit for around 5 minutes. This will sour the milk and make it thicken. For some reason, muffins often call for buttermilk or this soured milk. The theory is that the end product is light due to this process. Add the butter and eggs, stir to combine.

Mix the wet ingredients gently into the dry ingredients until just combine. Scoop into the muffin tray.

Cook in the oven for around 15 minutes, until golden, risen and cooked. Enjoy either warm for breakfast or as they are.

Adapted from the Coles brand Sultana Bran equivalent cereal box.

Breakie on the run...

We are often running late in our house, particularly in the mornings. The alarm goes off and the snooze button is pressed half a dozen times. Some one gets motivated the get up then the other person rolls over and squashes any plans for getting out of bed. So we run late. We've tried the alarm on the other side of the room. We've tried putting catchy music on to dance to upon wakening. We've tried having the smells of coffee wafting from the kitchen to entice us in. The promise of bought breakfast even. Doesn't work. We sleep in. We run late.

In my latest efforts I've focused on compensating for being late. Why resist what cannot change? So I bring my toothbrush to work. My make up is done on the road. Toast slides off plates in the car when driving around corners. Or we go hungry until lunch.

So when I found a recipe for home-made breakfast bars it simply had to be made. Nutrition, on the go, sustaining tummies so they won't rumble during a morning meeting yet again. Sounds like a winner. Baked on the weekend in preparation for yet again hitting snooze.

Breakfast Bars

Makes 16 decent sized slices

1 tin sweetened condensed milk

35 g pepitas

75 g sunflower seeds

75 g walnuts, roughly chopped

125 g apricots, diced

125 g sultanas

50 g dessicated coconut

250 g oats

2 tbs cinnamon sugar

Pre-heat oven to 130* C. Line a lamington tin with paper, or any other shallow dish with a large surface area.

Gently heat the milk over a low heat in a large saucepan. Combine the remaining ingredients (except cinnamon sugar) and gently stir them into the hot milk until all is combine. There should be no dry bits anywhere.

Spread into the prepare tin, pushing into the corners. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over before baking in the oven for around 50 minutes.

Once cooked and delicious, remove from oven and slice into 16 pieces. Then leave to cool before storing in an air-tight container. Delicious with a cup of hot coffee for people on the go.

Adapted from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

If only I had time for that cup of tea too.

A bush holiday breakfast...

We had a simply lovely, delayed Labour Day long weekend away. Yep, went to the country on Monday night, came home mid-Wednesday. It meant we missed the traffic, and the house belonging to friends was available for a retreat. How lovely to do lots of holiday things - sleeping in, a snuggley doona to burrow under, sitting by the fire reading and knitting, playing our new board game until the cows come home, seeing rabbits bound around the yard, dreaming of having my own holiday house in the country one day...

And baking.

With yeast.

On holidays.

Surely this is too much work, you are thinking. Normally I would agree to. But I wasn't the one doing the baking. I was the one doing the eating. Yum. That's right. The fella baked. Firstly, he made a walnut-speckled round of bread. Great with blue cheese. Then while I was napping, he whipped up a batch of biscuits - with more of those walnuts, along with chunks of white and milk chocolate (I'm planning on giving this recipe a test as it was a bit of a winner). Then he made pizza dough.

By this stage we were both exhausted and fell asleep (that's me going to sleep again after a long nap). So no pizza was had. Which left us with options for breakfast. In our house, holidays normally mean bacon and eggs but with left over pizza dough what were we to do?

Breakfast calzone anyone?

Breakfast Calzones

Serves 4 generously

Pizza dough

2 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp sugar

4 tbs warm water

2 c plain flour

1 egg

2 1/2 tbs milk

1 tsp salt

Calzone

4 tbs tomato paste

1 tomato

4 rashes short bacon

4 eggs

8 balls bambini boconccini

To make the dough, combine yeast, sugar and water in a bowl. Whisk to combine and set aside for a little while to get the yeast kick started. The mixture should froth and form a funky looking top. Sift the flour into a bowl or onto the bench (if you are feeling al naturale), make a well in the centre. Add the remaining dough ingredients, along with the yeasty mix. Slowly bring in the sides until combine. Turn out and kneed for a good 10 minutes (or simply undertake this entire process in your mixer for very little effort and reduced time).

Oil a bowl, place the dough in it and turn to grease the dough. Cover and leave to prove in a warm place for an hour, until large and risen and fluffy. Pound down, gently kneed and leave to prove again for a further thirty minutes or so. If you are doing this the night before, place into the fridge to prove overnight.

Pre-heat the oven to 180* C. Line two baking trays with paper.

Divide dough into quarters. Roll out gently to form ovals. Place the ovals onto the trays. Cover half of each oval with a tablespoon of tomato paste. Dice tomato and combine with diced bacon. Sprinkle this mix over the tomato paste on each of the ovals, trying to make a wall around the edges. Crack an egg into the centre of each calzone - hence the need for the bacon and tomato wall. Break up the boconccini and scatter over the top, season with a good grind of pepper. Fold the ingredient-free half over the filled half, pressing the edges to seal. If you have a leak of egg, brush this over the top of the sealed calzones.

Bake in the oven for around fifteen minutes, until golden and cooked through. Leave to cool on trays for around five minutes, before enjoying with some Tabasco or relish.

Dough recipe from Marie Claire Kitchen.

Saturday morning muffins...

Up Side Down Muffins, originally uploaded by the_bashful_owl.

When I wake up on Saturdays, all I want to do is stay in bed, hug my fella and have breakfast magically appear on a tray for me. In reality, I wake up too early as my body has adjusted to working from 8 a.m., my fella is snoring away and no one had put the coffee on to boil. Drats!

But this Saturday was close to perfection. A late start after a late night so somewhat of a sleep in, video hits raging on telly, two pots of bialetti coffee brewing away and a few ripe bananas screaming out to be transformed. No pancakes this day though, as I was after a more labour-less approach to my morning. Rather, a minimal mix of a few bowls, a sprinkling of chocolate chips, twenty-five minutes later, and hot fresh muffins were there for the taking.

My somewhat slimmed down hips should have been protesting. Muffins for breakfast is really just eating cake. Particularly if they contain chocolate. But these have very little sugar, and lots of fruit in them. Or so I told myself...

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
Makes 7 giant ones.

2 c. self-raising flour
½ c. sugar
½ c. small chocolate chips
2 ripe bananas, or so
1 c. milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
20 g butter, softened
Spray oil, or similar for greasing your muffin pans

Pre-heat your oven to 180 ◦C. Grease a 6-hole Texan muffin tray with a spray of oil.

Sift the flour into a large bowl. Add sugar and chocolate chips. Stir to combine.

In a separate bowl, mash your peeled bananas. Pour in the milk, the beaten egg and some butter. Whisk it all together. It won’t be smooth, but try to get the butter broken up a bit.

Combine the wet ingredients into the dry ones. Give it a really light mix, just making sure you don’t have big streaks of flour throughout your mixture. Spoon mix into the muffin trays, until they are around ¾ full.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, until risen and golden. Cool in the tray for 5 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. Unfortunately I find that this makes just a little too much to only make 6 muffins. You will need to rinse out the pan, re-grease and bake the final muffin. If you only use 1 banana it will make 6 muffins, but then they are less banana-full in flavour. Tough decisions...

Serve warm. With coffee. Hot butter spread over is optional, but a necessity if you are my fella. These don’t keep for too long, so make them if a crowd is coming over. Or keep them in some Tupperware and microwave for 15 seconds before eating a day later.

Adapted from the Table to Table, Trinity Church Cookbook.

Make me banana pancakes...

Do you debate it in your house? Crepes or pancakes I mean. Which is better? Who prefers what? What will be made? Growing up, my dad preferred the thick, fluffy pancake. Preferably smothered in butter, maple syrup and cream. And perhaps with ice-cream. Rather like the McDonald's hotcakes in fact. I would vote for paper thin crepes, topped with lemon and sugar. They would be rolled into a log and eaten in slices. My sister Rach was a gun at making choc-chip pikelets. Melty chocolate, smothered in dripping butter, napkins mandatory!

More recently, I have been converted to the thick and fluffy side. But with banana if you don't mind. Mmmmmm! Blame it on Jack Johnson if you will:

But baby, you hardly even notice

When I try to show you this

Song it's meant to keep you

From doing what you're supposed to

Like waking up too early

Maybe we could sleep in

I'll make you banana pancakes

Pretend like it's the weekend now...

Sure, I do only make pancakes on the weekend, so there's no pretending about that. But pancakes in our house signals a lazy morning. Waking up late, substituting breakfast for brunch. Brewing an endless pot of coffee in the Bialetti. Raiding the fridge for half-eaten jars of jam... My pick is for banana pancakes, if you please!

This recipe is from one of my most trusted cookbooks, Feast. A few alterations have been made to Nigella Lawson's original instructions. For example, she is light on the sugar. While bananas are sweet, I think a little more is needed. And how she gets 20 pancakes out of it, I'll never know. Read, make, enjoy...

Banana Pancakes
Makes 7

I ripe banana, or two if they are lying around
180 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarb soda
1 egg
300 ml milk
Splash of vinegar (or use 300 ml buttermilk and no vinegar if you have it handy)
2 tbs sugar
Butter, for cooking

In the bowl of your food processor, combine all of the ingredients except the butter. Blitz until smooth. Transfer into a jug and let it stand for a while. This can be done in the fridge for 30 minutes, and you will get a thick, frothy mixture. If you don’t have a food processor, mash the banana and add it to the liquid ingredients. Combine the dry ingredients after sifting them. Make a well in the middle of these ingredients and stir in the liquids.

Heat a frying pan or your trusty pancake cooker if you have one (ours was a gift that came from Aldi) to a medium heat. Grease the surface of your frying pan with butter on the back of a spoon. You really don’t want your pancakes to be swimming in butter, so this is a measured way of getting grease in without overdoing it. Pour in a good amount of batter, swirl pan around gently to dispurse the mixture and make your pancakes bigger. Cook until lots of bubbles appear and the underside is browning nicely. Flip and cook. Remove to a foil-lined plate. Keep the pancake warm under the foil while you repeat the process with the remaining batter.

Enjoy your pancakes with whatever toppings you prefer. Sliced banana and honey... butter and fig jam... maple syrup and ice-cream... lemon and sugar.