Breakfast muffins

Can you believe there are 9 fruits and vegetables stuffed into these little muffins? Let me tell you, that fact makes it soooo easy to justify cake for breakfast! But they’re amazingly delicious, pretty filling, and only 191 calories each – so not a terrible option for something sweet and decadent, or breakfast on the run. A big shout out to Smitten Kitchen for the recipe – mine is an adaptation of an adaptation, which is pretty much the joy of cooking: no one does things exactly the same, and that diversity is beautiful. 

This recipe yields 16 small muffins, which is perfect for me because I have one with coffee an hour or so after a bowl of Weetbix and berries, but making 8 larger muffins to have as a full breakfast is a viable option, as well. Just adjust the cooking time, and start checking on them afyer about 30 minutes. They’re a super moist muffin, but a skewer should still come out clean.

Ingredients

1.5 Granny Smith apples, grated 

1 large carrot, grated 

225g can crushed pineapple, drained well

1/3 cup dessicated coconut

1/4 cup dried fruit (I used a mix of dried apple, beetroot, craisins, blueberries and sultanas)

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

2/3 cup raw sugar

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups self raising flour

2 tablespoons  pepitas

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
  2. Place apple, carrot, pineapple, coconut, dried fruit, lemon zest, sugar, spices and oil in large bowl. Add eggs, and stir to combine.
  3. Add flour, and mix very gently.
  4. Fill paper cases to about 3/4 capacity, and sprinkle with pepitas, making sure to save some for the next batch.
  5. Bake for 20 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes, and transfer to a wire rack. Repeat with remaining batter and pepitas, remembering that cooking time will be slightly less due to a smaller amount of muffins being cooked in the pan the second time around
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Stuffed Sweet Potatoes and Leftover Bubble & Squeak

I love a good two for one deal, and in this case, it’s a delicious deal that I’ll be keeping on rotation. Fluffy baked sweet potatoes with the flesh scooped out and put aside for tomorrow morning, topped with a concoction of tomatoes, beans, and smoked ham, baked to perfection under a sprinkle of cheese – yes please! And the next day, taking the scooped flesh, mixing it with the leftover bean mixture, frying it to gnarly goodness and topping it with a runny egg is the best way to start any day – especially during the blah-ness of Covid-19 quarantine.

I have served this with almond-crusted beef schnitzel for a more decadent dinner, but it seriously is delicious and filling enough to work as a meal on its own. As a stuffed potato, this recipe is 327 calories. The bubble and squeak with 2 runny eggs clocks in at 340 calories. Very reasonable for a superb breakfast!

Serves 4, with enough to make a B&S to serve 2-3 (calories counted at 3 serves)

Ingredients

2 sweet potatoes (about 600g total)

1tbs + 1tsp olive oil

1 red onion, diced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

400g diced tomatoes (tinned or fresh)

1tbs barbecue sauce (a smoky one is great here!)

2tsp dijon mustard

chilli powder, to taste

400g can 3 bean mix, drained

100g ham, chopped

1/4 cup grated cheese

fried eggs, to serve with bubble and squeak

Method – stuffed potatoes

  1. Preheat oven to 230.
  2. Wash and halve sweet potatoes lengthways, prick with a fork and rub with one tablespoon of olive oil. Place on baking tray, cover with foil, and bake for 45 minutes, or until tender.
  3. Meanwhile, heat remaining oil in a pan over low heat. Add onions and carrots and sweat for 8 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook for one minute.
  4. Stir tomatoes, mustard, sauce and chilli into onion mixture and cook for 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup water if drying out too much, although this rarely happens over a low heat.
  5. Stir in beans and ham, and cook for 10 minutes, allowing mixture to thicken.
  6. Remove cooked potatoes from oven (do not turn oven off), and allow to cool enough to handle. Scoop flesh into a bowl (cool and refrigerate for later), leaving a 1cm thick layer of flesh in the skin.
  7. Fill potato shells with tomato mixture (reserve and refrigerate the leftovers).
  8. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for 5 minutes, or until cheese has melted and turned golden.

Method – Bubble and squeak

  1. Bring potatoes and tomato mixture leftovers out of fridge and rest to remove the chill. Combine into one mixture
  2. Heat 1tsp olive oil in a frypan. Upturn mixture into pan and flatten into a giant patty. Cook for 5 minutes, and flip. Don’t stress if it breaks… this isn’t a pretty dish anyway! Cook underside for 5 minutes, until slightly charred, gnarly bits form.
  3. Meanwhile, fry eggs to your liking.
  4. Using a spatula, cut the bubble and squeak into 2 or 3 serves, and slide onto warmed plates. Top with fried eggs, season liberally with salt and pepper and serve.

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Crab Cake Eggs Benny

My eldest turns 12 today. Crazy.

He’s always angling for that next seafood meal, so I made him crab cakes, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce for breakfast. A worthy birthday breakfast for my favourite little foodie.

But kids always have that knack of keeping you humble, right?

“It’s okay that you didn’t make the English muffins from scratch this time, you’re still a good mum.”

Thanks, dude.

Despite the glaring failure of store bough English muffins, the rest was seriously good. And because all the components came from a range of sources, I’m collating them here for next time. Something tells me there will be a next time. Probably 365 days from now.

I’m not even thinking about calories here. It’s not an everyday kind of breakfast, so let’s just leave it “many”.

Aside from resting the crab cakes for 30 minutes, this only takes about 15 minutes of active cooking time, and can easily be coordinated together (even for me… and I usually hate cooking breakfast because I freak about the timing). Might I suggest:

  1. Prepare the crabcakes and rest in the fridge
  2. After 30 minutes, heat the pans for crabcakes, eggs and hollandaise – remember, you want the crab cakes pan hot and the other two just at a simmer.
  3. Steps 1-3 of Hollandaise
  4. Fry the crab cakes, while still stirring the hollandaise
  5. Pop the crab cakes in the oven
  6. Step 4 of the hollandaise
  7. Between stirs of the hollandaise, poach your eggs
  8. Remove sauce from heat – steps 5-6 – and toast your muffins
  9. Assemble

Serves 4 

Ingredients

Crab cakes

450g crab meat (from a can is fine, if like me, you didn’t win the lotto last night)

2tbs mayonnaise

1 egg, beaten

4tbs dried breadcrumbs

1tbs sweet chilli sauce

2tsp dried parsley

1tsp dijon

salt and pepper, to taste

2tsp olive oil

hollandaise sauce

2 egg yolks

1.5tsp cold water

1.5tsp lemon juice

100g butter, melted

salt and pepper

pinch cayenne pepper

poached eggs

Water, to come up a few inches in a wide pan

2tbs white vinegar

4 eggs

2 English muffins, split, toasted and buttered, to serve

Method – Crab Cakes

  1. Drain crab meat (if canned), and place in a large bowl.
  2. In a separate bowl, mix all other ingredients except for oil. Gently fold into the crab meat, being careful not to overmix.
  3. Shape into four flat patties. Mixture will be a little wet. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to firm up a bit.
  4. Preheat oven to 180C.
  5. On the stove, heat oil in an oven-safe frypan over medium-high heat. While you’re at it, start simmering the water for the eggs and the water in the double boiler for the hollandaise.
  6. Carefully transfer crab cakes to pan and fry for 2 minutes, until the underside is golden. Very gently (honestly, they’re a bit fragile) turn and cook for a further two minutes. Should one break a little when you turn it, you will be able to reshape it.
  7. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook for about 10 minutes, while you make the rest of the components.

Method- Hollandaise Sauce

  1. In the top bowl of a double boiler (off the heat), whisk the yolks, water and lemon juice until pale and frothy. Actually, I use a rubber spatula, rather than a whisk because I hate the sound of metal on metal, so pick your weapon.
  2. Set the bowl over the base, with 2.5 inches of water simmering (definitely not boiling!) over low heat.
  3. Stir constantly and vigorously over this low heat for two minutes. (If the eggs start to scramble, immediately place them over a bowl of very cold water and continue to whisk the lumps out. Strain the eggs, pour back into the double boiler, and continue with the method. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to restart.)
  4. Whisk in the butter very slowly – a bit at a time. Continue to whisk vigorously for another minute or two, until thick and glossy.
  5. Remove the entire double boiler from the heat and separate the two pans while you cook the eggs (otherwise the eggs will continue to cook and will scramble). Season with salt, pepper and cayenne.
  6. You can leave for a short while, but once the water is no longer simmering hot, placing the sauce back over the water pan will keep the sauce warm and smooth while you finish up.

Method – Poached Eggs

  1. Add vinegar to a wide pan with enough water to reach a few inches up the side, and bring to a simmer.
  2. Crack each egg into a deep saucer or teacup/espresso demi-tasse, taking care not to break the yolk. One egg at a time, create a small whirlpool in the water – just large enough for one egg – and gently slide the egg into the vortex.
  3. Simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Bringing it all together

Butter your toasted muffins, top with crab cake, egg and sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

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Black Pudding Hash

I may be in my thirties, but I want to be Nigella Lawson when I grow up. I am particularly fond of her unique brand of pretentious unpretentious-ness, her confidence in admitting her laziness in the kitchen (you know what, I don’t want to stress in my happy place, either!), a fear of sounding too bossy (I like that, as I always tweak recipes), and preference for accessible and affordable ingredients and methods. Basically, she speaks to me as a busy person who cooks as a hobby, but who really sometimes just can’t be bothered.

And then there are weekends like this one, where I just want to cook all.the.things. I unsuccessfully attempted to satiate my cooking-craving by simply reading cookbooks, and I was astounded to realise that I hadn’t cooked a thing from my copy of Nigella’s At My Table. Criminal, really. So when I found the recipe for Black Pudding Hash with  Fried Egg, well, I knew what my Sunday morning would look like.

But it had to start with a run. Between the potatoes in the hash and the oats in the pudding, this sucker is all carbs and at least as twice as many calories than I’d usually consume at breakfast, but it’s filling as could be, and you know what, sometimes you need to feed the soul as much as the body. I found it works itself out in the long run, as a light lunch is in order after such a heavy breakfast, anyway.

As always, I changed things up to make the recipe work for me. It’s very similar, but I just couldn’t see the need for doubling the oil or black pudding that I usedI love Nigella, but I will never understand how she eats the way she claims, and still manages to look as she does! I also was concerned that it might be a little dry, so I threw in a punnet of halved cherry tomatoes towards the end, allowing them to collapse and created a bit of a sauce that was simply divine. The addition of sweet potato was purely because I have too many in my cupboard right now, but it did make for a prettier dish.

As it stands here, my version comes in at a slightly indulgent 484 calories. If you’re not so worried about the calories, I would bet the farm that a piece of olive-oil-smeared sourdough would just take this whole dish to heaven. But I didn’t tell you that!

Serves: 2

Ingredients

1tbs olive oil

150g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

200g sweet potato, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

100ml water

Salt and pepper, to taste

100g black pudding ( I used Clonakilty), diced

150g cherry tomatoes

1 spring onion, thinly sliced

1 birds eye chilli, finely diced

2 second spray olive oil

2 eggs

Method

  1. Heat oil in a heavy-based frypan (a cast iron skillet is perfect) on high heat. Fry potato and sweet potato, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes, until coloured and starting to soften.
  2. Gently pour water over the potatoes (this is dramatic, noisy, and may set off your smoke detector, but it’s kind of fun), and add a good grinding of salt and pepper.
  3. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cook the potatoes for another 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally to avoid them sticking to the pan.
  4. Add the black pudding and cook for 3 minutes or until heated through.
  5. In a separate pan, cook fry 2 eggs to your liking. I like a runny egg, so I crack it onto a pan over low heat and let it do its thing until the white is cooked through. All the better if the bottom goes crispy!
  6. Meanwhile, tumble tomatoes into the hash, and allow to cook without stirring, while the eggs cook.
  7. Give the hash one good stir to combine, and divide into two bowls. Top with egg, and sprinkle with spring onion and chilli.

 

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