Some Great Breakfast Ideas

Great breakfasts around here this week! Remember the principle that you frontload your day, eating a hearty breakfast and then a lighter lunch and an even lighter dinner, with no evening snacking. This morning I threw together a rather complicated crustless quiche that used up most of a container of spinach that I had foolishly bought last week and the rest of an opened log of goat cheese. I will point out that soft goat cheese is richer and tangier than regular cream cheese—as well as being more expensive, of course. But I buy mine at Costco, and although it comes in a two-pack I think the unopened log will stay good for a while. So I found a recipe this morning for “Quick and Easy Spinach Quiche,” using fresh spinach instead of frozen (because that was what I had) and goat cheese for the cream cheese (ditto). And I didn’t have a pastry shell sitting around, all rolled out and ready to go, so that wasn’t in the mix. I just sprayed the pie pan with Pam and sprinkled panko breadcrumbs into it, sautéed the onions until browned and then added the chopped-up spinach and cooked until it wilted, let that cool while I crumbled up the goat cheese into the pie pan, mixed up the milk and eggs, and grated the cheese (which happened to be Gouda but could be cheddar or any other flavorful grating cheese). Everything went into the pan and it baked for about 45 minutes at 325⁰. I realize that not everyone has that kind of time in the mornings, but I like to get up early and can put together somewhat elaborate breakfasts. Jim and I ate about half of it.

But the picture is of some muffins I made earlier this week, a recipe adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction. (Not a great picture, since it was taken under the kitchen lights.) I love Sally, although I’m not interested in actually making most of her recipes as they’re for dessert. She has some serious muffins on her site, though, and this is one of them—that is, with some sort-of-minor adjustments. I include the info on the changes because I always want people to know that they can change recipes. The muffins looked lovely, and it’s always nice to know that a recipe was originally written for whole-wheat flour. But I had several issues with Sally’s version:

1. She has you put in a whole teaspoon of baking soda, as well as a teaspoon of baking powder. When I made the recipe the first time they looked great but tasted of soda. (Not so much that we didn’t eat them, of course.) So I wrote a question in the comments section, and she responded that I could use less soda if I wanted to, which wasn’t exactly what I was asking. I wanted to know why she had that amount of soda in the first place. Oh well. I cut the amount in half.
2. She has you put in 2/3 cup of maple syrup. (And she says, “No refined sugar!” But longtime readers of this blog know that sugar is sugar.) At least she wasn’t calling for a whole cup. Many muffin recipes do call for that much of whatever sweetener they’re using. When I made the recipe the first time I put in the amount of syrup she called for, and both Jim and I agreed that the muffins were too sweet. (Many if not most muffin recipes are pretty much indistinguishable from cupcakes.)
3. She had you use 1/3 cup of oil and 1/3 cup of applesauce, which I am not ever going to do. Using applesauce for part of the oil or butter is supposed to be a way to make a recipe healthier by making it lower fat. But fat is our friend, if it’s a healthy fat such as coconut oil, which is one of her choices. No “vegetable oil” or “canola oil” for me! (Vegetable oil can be made of any oil, including the awful ones such as soybean and cottonseed, and canola oil has to be heavily processed to remove its erucic acid component.) Also, having to keep applesauce on hand or remember to buy some is a pain, and lower-cost versions have a lot of sugar in them. So forget it! You’ll note that I call for 1/2 cup of oil, not 2/3. The muffins come out great with that amount.
4. She calls for pecans but I think walnuts go better with apples. You can use whatever you like best or have on hand, though. I usually have both on hand in the freezer, along with almonds, pine nuts, and pistachios. (Nuts are great!)

So below is my tweaked recipe, one that is just barely sweet and therefore lets the apples shine. This recipe is a little different from most muffins because its only liquid comes from the syrup and the eggs, with, I suppose, some allowance made for the juice from the apples. I eat mine with just butter and no apple butter or jelly, although if I manage to swing by Trader Joe’s one of these days I might pick up some of their apple butter that’s just made from . . . apples.