Power Breakfast Muffins!

I've raved about these muffins to QUITE a few people now, and so the recipe is finally up for all to enjoy! These muffins have really been a lifesaver for our mornings! I love them because they're FULL of protein, fiber, and other great stuff. I bake a few batches every Sunday and then hand them out for breakfast over the course of the week. They're ridiculously convenient on busy mornings (which we have a lot of around here nowadays!) and perfectly portion-sized. My kids never get tired of them since I switch around what I add into the batter to make them different every time! Can you tell I love these muffins?? 😁

Now in the interest of being healthy, I will say that these are not sweet, "dessert" muffins. They are healthy (but still yummy!) POWER muffins, here to give you a nourishing kick start into your day! Obviously this recipe is made to be tinkered with, so if kids have a difficult time adjusting to these, you can make them a little sweeter to begin with, and then make them less and less sweet with each batch and they won't even notice. Whatever works for you and your family! These are here to power YOU!

---Power Breakfast Muffins---

Ingredients:
-3/4 c. flour
-3/4 c. old fashioned oats
-1/4 c. flaxseed
-1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp. cinnamon
-1/2 tsp. nutmeg
-6 eggs
-1/4 c. melted butter
-2 Tbsp honey
-optional: an "add-in" such as fruit or nuts (see ideas below!)

Directions:
Mix the flour, oats, flaxseed, baking powder, and spices (spices may be adjusted based on what your add-in is). Beat the eggs and then add them and the butter, honey, and add-in to the dry mix and stir until well blended. Put batter into 12 muffin cups and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Add-in ideas! You can have lots of fun with these! Let me know if you come up with a new one that your family likes! Just put however much you want into the batter and adjust muffin sizes, spices used, and bake time accordingly. Here's some of our favorites:

• apple: add diced apple chunks and a little applesauce
• banana-nut: add an overripe banana or two and your favorite chopped nut
• "carrot cake": add some grated carrot and a chunk of cream cheese
• berry: stuff in your favorite berries! Frozen works as well as fresh!
• pear-ginger: add some freshly chopped pear and some ginger
• raisins: my kids appreciate just a simple raisin muffin occasionally
• pumpkin: add canned pumpkin and some ginger and cloves
• peach: fresh, frozen, or canned all work great! Chop them up and put them in!
• lemon-poppyseed: add some lemon zest and juice and a generous helping of poppyseeds
• pineapple: get some canned, shredded pineapple in its juice and you can just dump it all in
• coconut: you can put some in alone or combine with the pineapple idea!
• "gingerbread": use molasses instead of honey and add some ginger and cloves
• savory: if your kids enjoy the flavor of eggs (mine do NOT), you can omit the spices and honey and add some ham chunks or bacon bits, maybe some cheese too? TBH I haven't actually tried this, so if you do let me know how it goes 😆
• chocolate: These are special treats for things like the week of Christmas or the first day of school! I add some cocoa powder, a little vanilla, and some mini chocolate chips
• corn: I tried omitting the spices and adding cornmeal and some frozen corn, but it tasted too eggy so it wasn't a big hit here. Maybe someone can improve on that idea?
• orange: I'm going to try adding some orange zest and juice and some mandarin slices. Hope it works out!

Spicy Jerk Chicken

If you make this the way my husband did, "spicy" here means "so crazy hot like kick-you-in-the-face cause-third-degree-burns-on-your-tongue" type of spicy, but it just tastes SOOOO GOOD you just can't help but continue to subject your poor mouth to delicious torture. Oh man, it was so good. So good that the recipe was requested, which is why it is popping up here! We strongly recommend having some type of lassi to drink while you eat this (we had strawberry lassis that Tim made with strawberries brought to us by the wonderful Ratliffs) as it helps to cut the afterburn in your mouth and makes living after eating that much more bearable. I also mixed up a double batch of festival bread and it made a great side to go along with the chicken!

---Spicy Jerk Chicken---

Ingredients:
-1 onion, finely chopped
-1/2 cup scallions, finely chopped
-2 tsp fresh thyme (or substituting dried is fine)
-1 tsp salt
-2 tsp sugar
-1 tsp allspice
-1/2 tsp nutmeg
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp black pepper
-3 Tbsp soy sauce
-1 Tbsp oil
-1 Tbsp vinegar
-2 Scotch bonnet peppers, finely ground

Directions:

Puree all ingredients together. Marinate about 2 pounds of chicken in it overnight, then grill, fry, or bake chicken.

No Bake Cookies

This post is in honor of Chelsea, who requested the recipe for these scrumptious treats. I hope that y'all are finally successful in making these, Chelsea!! When making these, I generally use only half the amount of sugar called for. They're a little healthier and taste a little fudgier that way, and if you like them sweeter you can put a dusting of powdered sugar on top.

---No Bake Cookies---

Ingredients:
-1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
-1/2 cup evaporated milk
-2 cups sugar
-1/2 cup cocoa
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/4 cup peanut butter
-3 cups quick oats

Directions:
Combine the butter, milk, sugar, and cocoa in a pot and bring to a rolling boil. Continue boiling for one minute without stirring. Remove from heat and add in the vanilla, peanut butter, and oats. Quickly drop rounded spoonfuls onto wax paper, or pat them out into a pan to make bar cookies and cut when cool.

Easy "Strawberry Pie Dumplings"

Bored and hungry one day with frozen strawberries to experiment with... Ta da! A easy, yummy (somewhat healthy?) new treat! I think they taste like strawberry pie, hence the name. I've actually gone gluten-free lately (ever since I found out I'm sensitive) so you can make it with gluten-free flour as well, just add more oil and water until the dough is workable.

---"Strawberry Pie Dumplings"---

Ingredients:
-A batch of pie crust dough
-Some frozen strawberries
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1 Tbsp sugar

Directions:
Mix the cinnamon and sugar to make cinnamon sugar. Wrap each frozen strawberry (or two, if they're small) in a thin layer of pie crust dough. Sprinkle the top with just a little cinnamon sugar. Place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. Makes about 24 per batch of pie crust if you use large strawberries.

Delicious Recipes You Should've Asked For

This post is in honor of Landon, who complained that I didn't have any new recipes up. The reason that there haven't is that nobody's asked for any of my recipes lately! So here are a list of links to recipes that we've tried and very much enjoyed, and perhaps you will too:


---How to Make Your Own Ice Cream In 5 Minutes---
Review: Quick, delicious, and takes a minimal amount of ingredients readily found in your own house. Tires out your arms, but its totally worth it.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2I7A8y/parentables.howstuffworks.com/chow/make-your-own-ice-cream-five-minutes.html/


---Copycat Girl Scout Cookie Recipes---
Review: We've made the Samoas recipe several times (recipe number 2). VERY time consuming!! They take forevvvver to make (less ingredients if you buy premade caramel, but then you have to unwrap alllll the little caramels). But SO WORTH IT!! Plus they make a billion. And they taste so good. For those of you with not as much time, there's a "no bake Samoas" recipe on the list we haven't tried but need to! And for those of you who don't like Samoas (what's wrong with you??), there are many more types of the cookies on the list.
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/girl-scout-cookies-year-round-9-copycat-recipes-youll-love-2438912.html


---Copycat Pizza Hut Pizza Sauce---
Review: Simple and incredibly delightful pizza sauce. We tend to add twice as much garlic powder, plus some fresh garlic as well, but its fine as written.
http://www.grouprecipes.com/9822/pizza-hut-pizza-sauce---copy-cat.html


---Homemade Gyoza (Potsticker) Wrappers---
Review: Long time, worth it. I have a tasty recipe for the filling, should anybody ask for it.
http://www.lafujimama.com/2009/08/time-to-wrap-things-up-homemade-gyoza/


---Crock Pot Carnitas---
Review: We made these a rather long time ago, so I don't remember a lot about these, except they were SO GOOD!
http://www.ehow.com/how_5055887_make-pork-carnitas-its-easy.html


---Copycat Lofthouse Cookies---
Review: So we haven't actually made these yet, but the person who originally posted this on some blog claimed that her grandma used to work for Lofthouse waaay back in the day and that this was the original recipe. True or not, this sounds super good anyway!

Here's her post:
"I have never made this recipe but I know it is the original. For some reason the copy that was given to me only has the ingredients listed and no directions. So with that in mind, please don't be mad at me if they don't turn out just right for you.

Lofthouse Cookies:
2 eggs
2 C. sugar
2 C. cream
2/3 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 C. shortening (Lard)
Vanilla to taste
Enough flour to form a soft ball (She told me that the key to making soft, fluffy cookies is to add a lot of flour. But she didn't tell me how much. )

I assume that you just mix all of the ingredients together because there are no special directions listed. Bake at 350º (again no specified time) and the cookies need to stay white.

Icing:
1 pkg. powdered sugar
1 egg
1 can condensed milk (for spreading)
1 tsp shortening
1 tsp butter

I'm sorry that these recipes are so vague as to the directions. I didn't realize that when I posted that I had the recipe. But now you have all of the ingredients, so maybe, just maybe you can make it work."
(found the post here: http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=2007754)

Bestest French Bread Evar and its No-Knead

The title explains it all! A whole batch of the original recipe is supposed to make 3 loaves, but I always do half a batch of it and make 2 loaves with it, and both turn out fairly large. Apparently this bread freezes well, but it disappears so fast we haven't tried that yet! This recipe came from the textbook we used in my cooking class at Freed, although I halved the ingredients for this post and modified the directions for better yeast rising.

---No-Knead French Bread---

Ingredients:
-1/4 cup WARM water (our water temperature is set to 120 degrees and I wait until the water coming out of the sink is as hot as it gets!)
-1 and 1/4 tsp sugar
-2 and 1/4 tsp yeast
-1 cup WARM water (see above)
-1 Tbsp butter (sometimes we use butter spread instead)
-1 tsp salt
-3 and 1/4 cup to 3 and a 1/2 cup flour
-a little olive oil or other oil or more flour
-optional: 1 large egg and 2 Tbsp milk

Directions:
Rinse a liquid measuring cup in running hot water to get it heated up, then fill it with the 1/4 cup WARM water. Quickly add the yeast and sugar, and let it sit for 5 minutes. While you're waiting for that, melt the butter and put 1 and 1/4 cup flour into your mixing bowl (I use an electric standing mixer). When the 5 minutes is up, pour the yeast mixture into the bowl and stir into the flour until well mixed. Add the 1 cup WARM water, melted butter, and salt and stir until mixed. Gradually mix in the rest of the flour until you have a soft dough. Cover the dough and let it sit for 10 minutes, then stir gently for a couple seconds (I detach the paddle from the mixer and moosh the dough up and down by hand). Repeat this step 4 times. Put dough onto an olive oiled surface (or flour can be used instead) and divide it into 2 equal portions. Roll each into a large rectangle, a little less than 13x8 inches. Roll up the bread starting with the long side of the rectangle and pinch down the ends to seal it. Put the loaves seam side down onto a greased baking sheet with plenty of space in between them. Place the baking sheet on the top rack of a cool oven and place a pan full of boiling water on the bottom rack, close the oven door and let the bread rise for 40 minutes or until doubled. Optional: Make diagonal slits about 1/4 inch deep along the length of the loaves with a very sharp knife. Optional: Beat the egg and add the milk, then brush gently over the top of the loaves. Bake the loaves at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, or until loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Cornbread

Some people have only ever had "Southern" cornbread, which is dry, dry, DRY, and kind of tasteless. This cornbread is nothing like that! This recipe is for "Northern" cornbread, and is moist, sweet, and delicious. It's wonderful plain, and even better when topped with butter, honey, or jam. Or you can mix it into your bowl of chili, which is what my husband likes to do! This recipe has been passed down from my grandma.

---Cornbread---

Ingredients:
-1 and 1/4 cup and 1 Tbsp flour
-1 and 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
-1 and 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
-1 and 1/2 tsp salt
-2 eggs
-1/4 cup and 2 Tbsp sugar
-1 and 1/2 cup milk
-1/4 cup and 1 and 1/2 tsp honey
-1/4 cup and 1 and 1/2 tsp vegetable oil

Directions:
Mix together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and the sugar together, then add the milk, honey, and oil and mix well. Quickly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until there are no lumps. Bake at 400 degrees in a greased 9 x 13 pan for 20 minutes. Or you can make cornbread muffins- bake those at 375 degrees for 12 minutes or less.