Basic Homemade Granola

makes 4-5 cups

3 cups of rolled oats (Not quick cook or instant)

1 cup slivered almonds, sesame seeds, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, cashews, and/or toasted pumpkin seeds (one, none, or any combination of these)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup maple syrup or honey

1/2 cup raisins, currants, dried cranberries, dried cherries, dried & chopped figs, and/or dried and chopped apricots (one, none, or any combination of these)

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 300F.

Toast oats in a dry skillet over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, stirring or tossing regularly. Add nuts and continue to toast for 2 additional minutes. 

Remove from heat and add cinnamon, syrup or honey, and a pinch of salt. Mix well and spread the mixture on a cookie sheet. 

Cook for 10 minutes. Stir. Cook for 10 minutes more. 

Remove from oven. Stir in fruit. Allow to cool to room temperature. Keep in a sealed container. 

Some good combinations would be vanilla & almond, cranberry orange with nuts, super nutty, cherry (coconut) pecan, apricot and currants with sesame and sunflower seeds. 

Pre-caffeinated Mommy wants just leeetle more sleep. Please.

"NO! We're starving! Listen to our bellies rumbling." 

Grumble. grumble.

This scene gets played out at our house, oh, every weekend morning. Yesterday I just growled, "You're getting toast with jam and some fruit and you're gonna like it." Something like that. Then they danced around me like savages wildly chanting, "Puffy pancake! Puffy pancake! Chocolate Chip Pancakes! Puffy Pancake! Puffy Pancake! Blueberry Pancakes!!!!"

"Toast." 

I felt a little guilty today when the breakfast cry rang out. So I threw some blueberries in the pan and boiled up a little blueberry syrup to go with fluffy little lemon ricotta pancakes. The breakfast beasts were appeased and happy.

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Blueberry Syrup

--adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

3 eggs, separated

1/4 cup flour

3/4 cup ricotta 

1/4 cup butter, melted

2 TBS sugar

pinch of salt

1TBS grated lemon zest

3/4 cup fresh blueberries

2-3 TBS sugar

1/2 cup water

squeeze of lemon juice

Put the blueberries, 2-3 TBS sugar, water and lemon juice in a small pan over medium-high heat. Let this cook and get syrupy while you make the pancakes. Make sure the liquid doesn't boil away. Add more water if you need to. 

Put the egg white in a large bowl.

With a hand mixer (or a rotary egg beater or a whisk) beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Then use your mixer in the other bowl, mixing the egg yolks, etc. until well combined.

Heat your skillet over medium heat. Use roughly 2 TBS of batter per pancake. Be sure not to make them too big because they are heavier than regular pancakes and can be difficult to flip if you make them too large. Cook the pancakes for about 2 minutes or so on the first side and about a minute on the second side. Top with blueberry syrup. 

If you're having pancakes at my house, you're having buttermilk pancakes from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham. I always keep a quart of buttermilk in the fridge, just so I can make them whenever we want. If you don't happen to have buttermilk, squeeze a little lemon juice into regular milk and let it sit for a minute or two, then proceed with the recipe. 

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

Makes 10-12 pancakes

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

3 TBS unsalted butter, melted

1 egg at room temperature

1/2 pint fresh blueberries

Heat your skillet over medium heat.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, mix well. In glass liquid measuring cup, measure the butter milk, add the melted butter and then the egg and beat together with a fork. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix with a fork until just combined. It will still be a little lumpy. Use a 1/4 cup to scoop the batter onto your skillet.

Drop a small handful of blueberries into each pancake.

Cook until the edges of the pancake begin to set (or if you peek at the underside using a spatula and see that it is golden brown). Flip and cook another minute or two. Serve with maple syrup.  

With the persistence of cloudy skies and seemingly constant wet pavement, I must again thank the heavens for bright winter citrus. For those with an abundance of lemons to use this winter, this is a great, easy recipe (no more than 30 minutes start to finish) that will start the day with a ray of sunshine. Perfect with a cup of tea.

Lemon Buttermilk Muffins

--adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

Makes about 12 muffins

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

2 TBS honey

2 eggs

1-1/4 cups buttermilk

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Grated zest of one lemon

Lemon Syrup:

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup sugar

3 TBS water

Preheat oven to 375F. Butter muffin tins. 

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a large bowl and whisk well to evenly distribute ingredients. In a glass or plastic liquid measuring cup measure buttermilk and add honey, eggs, melted butter and lemon zest and beat well with a fork. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry and mix gently with the fork until just combined (will be a little lumpy). 

Fill the muffin tins with the batter. Bake at 375F for 15 minutes or until the top begin to turn golden and a toothpick or wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. 

While the muffins are baking, put the sugar, lemon juice, and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for just a minute and then remove from the heat and set aside. 

When the muffins are done and you have pulled them out of the oven poke them gently a few times with the tines of a fork. Line your countertop with a piece of parchment or waxed paper (this just make clean up a little easier). Set the muffin tins on top of the parchment and spoon the the syrup over the muffins. 

The syrup will sink into the holes made with the fork (and will roll off the muffins onto the pan and the parchment). Let the muffins cool for a minute or two in the pans and then turn the muffins out and eat! 

These are best eaten warm, but I don't think you'll have a problem with leftovers. Happy Weekend!!

I love to make scones. They are quick. They are easy. They are fun to make with kids. You can eat them for breakfast or brunch or afternoon tea. Kids and adults both seem to love them. These would be very nice with a little fruit for a weekend breakfast. 

I cut these with a Bonne Maman jam jar, which is the perfect size in my opinion. You can also cut them into wedges. This recipe will make about a dozen Bonne Maman circle-shaped scones.  

Oatmeal-Currant Scones 

--adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 TBS sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

1-1/2 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup currants

1 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 375F. 

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the cut butter to the dry ingredients and work it in with your hands or a pastry cutter until it feels like coarse meal. Mix in the oats and currants until well combined. Pour in the buttermilk and mix it all together gently with a fork until you can pull the dough together into a ball with your hands. 

Put a little flour down on the work surface and turn out your dough onto the flour. Kneed the dough 6 or 7 times to pull all the last bits together. Roll the dough into a big ball and press it out into a circle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut in pie shaped wedges or into circles with a lightly floured biscuit cutter or jam jar. Place scones on an ungreased baking sheet and cook for 25 minutes. 

Crumble topping (optional)

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 TBS Flour

3 TBS rolled oats 

1 TBS butter, melted

Mix together until the butter permeates the dry ingredients. Lightly press onto the tops of the scone just before baking.  

Serve the scones warm with your favorite jam.

You know when you go to a restaurant for breakfast and you order an omelette with lots of nifty sounding things packed in it, you eat it, and then you feel like crap for the rest of day? I hate that. Thus, I have developed a prejudice against these stuffed eggy pancakes, and it has been many years since I have ordered one in a restaurant. 

Who knew you could make cinnamon rolls in an hour or less? Someone at Fine Cooking did. And as my grandmother would have said, "Oh boy! Oh boy!" am I happy about that! 

I had planned to make an awesome looking recipe for no-rise cinnamon rolls this weekend, but our modem broke down and I had no access to the internet so that recipe had to be put on hold. Because of the technical failure, I decided to peruse some of my old recipe clippings and found this one by David Lebovitz (in a strikingly odd coincidence, Lebovitz's most recent blog post is on these very same popovers! Go there to get his story) from the March 11, 2009 New York Times Magazine. 

I adjusted Bittman's recipe slightly. I used the blender method (that Lebovitz uses), which I've used when I've made popovers before (perhaps Marion Cunningham's recipe in The Breakfast Book?). In any case, recipes for popovers are easy to find. Here's what I did: 

Popovers

2 eggs

1 TBS melted butter

1 tsp sugar

a good pinch of salt

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 425F. Butter a muffin tin with a dozen muffin cups. 

Put everything but the flour into the blender and mix quickly. Add 1/3 of the flour, blend again briefly, add another 1/3 of flour, blend, and the last third, and blend. Pour the batter into the buttered muffin tins, filling them about 2/3 full. Set oven timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, reduce the heat to 350F and set the timer for another 15 mins. When they are done, they should be golden brown and puffy on top. Turn the popovers out onto a cookie sheet. You may need to use a small paring knife to loosen and remove the popovers from the muffin tins. 

When cool enough to handle brush melted butter over the puffy prizes and roll in cinnamon sugar. These sugary delights are so easy that I made them again today for tea.

PS Sorry the Weekender is coming on a Monday. We were experiencing modem failure for the last two and half days.

Ever since trying the homemade version, I've had pop-tarts on the brain. This week for lunch I made a savory little number with sweet potato, red pepper, onion, and goat cheese.