McDonalds Egg McMuffin Breakfast Sandwich

We're big on breakfast around here, and this is one of my husbands favorites. It's super easy, and includes only common ingredients. It's fool proof!

Of course you can pick your favorite bread, but if you want to go all "McDonalds style," an english muffin is a must! To get the round shape to your eggs, you can use a biscuit cutter or something round that's about the size of the english muffin.

You'll need:
* 1 english muffin
* 1 slice of cheddar cheese (I used Kraft deli cheese slices)
* 1 egg
* dash of salt (totally optional)
* butter (optional)

To make:
Spread butter on each slice of the english muffin and throw in the toaster. Cook 1-2 slices of bacon between 2 paper towels on a plate in the microwave for about 2 minutes (assuming this is turkey bacon, if not, you're on your own with the cooking times.) Meanwhile, add a tiny bit off butter (or non-stick cooking spray) to a skillet over medium heat. If you're using a biscuit cutter to shape the eggs, spray it well or rub butter all over it, and place it in the hot skillet. Lightly beat an egg and pour it into the biscuit cutter. Let it cook a few minutes, or until the bottom of the egg is cooked (you can lift the biscuit cutter up to see the cooked bottom.) Once the bottom looks light brown, run a knife along the inside edges of the biscuit cutter to remove it from the eggs.

Once the biscuit cutter is removed, flip the egg (which should be cooked enough to keep it's shape pretty well.) The other side of the egg should only take a minute or so to cook completely. Grab your toasted english muffin, top it with the egg, 2 slices of cooked bacon, and come cheese. If the cheese doesn't melt right away, you can place the entire sandwich back on the skillet, or just put the whole thing in the microwave for a few seconds.

** Make sure your biscuit cutter is not plastic! No one likes plastic in their eggs -- not even Mickey-D's!

Baked French Toast Casserole

 

 So the other day I realized we had nothing for breakfast, and I wanted to make something yummy, warm, and (of course) involving blueberries! My husband was in the shower, and I only had about 20 minutes to throw something together. Eggs would have been fine with some toast, tea and coffee, but I wanted sweet! Something more than preserves. 

I grabbed some cook books but everything was going to take awhile to cook. I didn't have time for french toast (all the dipping and cooking), but it sounded sooo good. But then I stumbled across this baked french toast recipe and I was so glad I did!

It called for corn flakes, which we never have on hand, but I did have some Special K w/ strawberries that needed to be thrown out or used, so I used that in this recipe instead. SO WORTH IT! This was very good stuff!

The pictures do not give it justice. Since I liked the recipe, I snapped a few pictures real fast but didn't take any time to proof them in any way. 

 

Recipe:

* 3 C corn flakes

* 3 eggs

* 1/4 C milk

* 8 slices of bread (I used Ezekiel 4:9 whole grain bread)

* 1 tsp cinnamon

* 2 TBS sugar

* Maple syrup (optional)

* Blueberries (optional)

Preheat oven to 425. Whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl and set aside. Pour the corn flakes into a separate bowl that's about twice as big as is needed to hold the flakes (if that makes sense - just give it extra room). Coat a large (I used a 9x13") pan with cooking spray or butter. Dip each slice in egg mixture and then in corn flakes, and lay flat in the pan. You may need to stagger the slices a little (so that each one is just barely layered on top of each other). 

If you're using blueberries, just sprinkle them on top. If using frozen, thaw them out first. If you have any remaining egg mixture (I did), then just pour it over it all! Bake for about 15-20 minutes. The recipe actually says to freeze this for about 2 hours before cooking, but I didn't have time for that. Still worked really well and had a great taste! Since I used a slightly sweetened cereal, I didn't need the maple syrup, but my husband loved it with maple syrup.

Sweet Irish Scones

 I found this recipe a few weeks back on sheknows.com and couldn't wait to try it out! I've never made scones before, so this was a totally new thing in my book. I vowed to bake these on Saturday so that we could eat them through St. Patrick's Day. I'll post another recipe tomorrow, but for now, this can get you through breakfast  on St. Patrick's Day if you're interested.

I don't do a step-by-step too often, but I had time and while simple, these things were a more than I'm used to doing for breakfast, so I thought I'd share. 

Basic ingredients: Eggs, butter, raisins, milk, baking powder, salt, sugar and flour. For the flour, I used whole wheat, but I'd suggest an un-enriched all purpose flour. Whole wheat didn't make these rise much, but an all purpose would.

Speaking of flour, is this not the cutest mxing bowl? I'm truly obsessed with this bowl because first of all, I love glass mixing bowls, and second of all, my parents made it for me and gave it to us with wedding presents! It says, "Chris and Piper's Mixin' Bowl" LOVE it!

So let's get started! Sift the flour, sugar, and salt together. Dice up your cold butter into small pieces.

And then add the butter to the flour and mix it up with your hands. 

While I'm horrible at following directions, I promised myself I would in fact follow the directions on this recipe, since I've never made scones before. But it didn't look very mixed up, so I got this bad girl out:

And I was glad I did. It's not necessary, but it helped combine things a little since I left my butter out too long, and it was a little softer than it should have been. 

I really should have kept going, but I was impatient and had a sleeping husband, due to wake up any minute, and I wanted to have things ready when he woke up. 

So now that you've added the butter to the flour and mixed it up a little, add the raising and toss around with a fork. 

Until they are coated, and will look like this. 

In a separate bowl, pour in some milk.

and eggs.

And stir until combined.

Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mixture.

and stir it around with a fork until combined.

*Imagine there is a picture of it mixed up really well*

 The recipe instructs us to grab half the batter, but my huge cutting board wouldn't have supported that much, so I grabbed about a 1/4 of the batter. Now, shape it into a ball. 

And roll it out ....

Into about a 1/2-1" thickness. Mine was a little too thin on this batch, but it still worked fine.

Now at this point, you have some options. You can use a biscuit cutter and make little round scones, which I didn't do. Or, you could make them more traditional and triangle shaped. I went the triangle route this first time. 

And then cut into triangles. 

The recipe says to coat the top with milk for a glaze. I didn't notice this making any kind of glaze, but that could be because I used rice milk instead of cow's milk.

Place on a cookie sheet and place in the oven for 12-13 minutes.

Now these are "Irish" scones, so I thought I'd make them look more like it!

And since the milk wasn't doing much, and these aren't super sweet, I topped the second batch off with some cinnamon and sugar.

And then with the third and fourth batch, I added some blueberries and a blueberry glaze. As you can see, these were not very pretty, but my husband loves blueberries and since I didn't add them in there, I had to recover somehow.

And they all turned out pretty good. I didn't take enough pictures, but this was of the first batch, which I rolled out a little thin. For whole wheat, they tasted really good. Not too sweet, yet perfectly sweet with a bite with raisins. 

This was the inside. Very tasty! I'd make these again, but I'd roll them out to about an inch thick, and I'd use all purpose flour next time. 

Still great, though! SInce they weren't very sweet, I did add a glaze of powdered sugar and milk to them, which I tilted green. I'm not sure why I didn't take a picture of that

 But here's an unglazed picture. Very tasty little things! 

Recipe: 

Ingredients:
6-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
3 teaspoon baking powder
1-1/2 sticks butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup currants or raisins
3 eggs
2 cups milk 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F. Sift flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder together.

Using your hands, mix in butter pieces with flour mixture.

Add currants or raisins and stir with a fork.

Mix eggs and milk in a separate bowl.

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, and pour in milk mixture.

Working with 1/4 of the dough at a time, shape into a ball and roll flat into about 1" thickness on a floured board. 

Cut into pieces (with a cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, or just cut with a knife to make triangles)

Bake for 12-13 minutes or until very light brown.

I'm submitting this to the Paddy's Day parade. I'm new to this world, but man it sure is fun!!

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I also made some cupcakes. I just used a boxed cake mix (Naturally Nora) since that brand doesn't use enriched flour in the mix. They were soooo good!

Just plain vanilla cupcakes. 

BUT THE FROSTING!! The frosting is what made them to DIE for! 

I'm not kidding. 

It was the best frosting I've ever had. It tasted just like cheesecake.
 And in fact, I keep eating it my itself, which is NOT. GOOD. Especially because the recipe involves a massive amount of butter. 

I'll post the recipe sometime later today. 

And more St. Patrick's Day things tomorrow.