A Rice Pudding-ish Breakfast

Rachel here.

Back in the day (because we've been blogging for a while now so, you know, we can say things like that) we used to write about breakfast here with some regularity. My mom had S in the house still and M hadn't risen to her benevolent dictatorship yet and we had breakfast on the brain. Since S left for college, though, and M arrived, breakfast has received short shrift around these parts. Today, I rectify this problem by offering up this little recipe I concocted this morning.

There are days when M eats whatever we put in front of her and then there are days where she rejects the very same food she inhaled two days prior. The only real constant that we've found is brown rice. The kid, quite simply, loves it. Handfuls at a time, she smacks it to her gaping mouth, delighting in munching on the pieces that get in and marveling at gravity's work on the pieces that don't. Brilliantly, John thought to make a ton of brown rice over the weekend. We, quite literally, have tupperware after tupperware brimming with the stuff in our refrigerator. It's made life that much simpler and, you know, simple can be spectacular.

We've been instructed to help M pack on the pounds which has led us towards whole milk yogurt. Ugh--it's so creamy and so tangy and so, so delicious.

So here's what I whipped up today for M. Much to my delight, she rejected it and I got to eat the whole plate. I'm officially adding it to my breakfast/lunch/snack/whenever repertoire because it was absolutely delicious in addition to being super healthy.

I mashed 4 super ripe blackberries and half a banana together before sprinkling a tablespoon or so of flax meal over the fruit and then tossing in a handful of cold, cooked brown rice. I covered everything with yogurt, mixed until it was the fabulous pink that blackberries stain things and then, as soon as M refused it, devoured every last drop.

SO. GOOD.

And that, my friends, is a rice pudding-ish breakfast for you.

Fruit Bread Frenzy

Janet here: I remember very little of my father's grandmother, Nana, who died when I was in elementary school except this: she made outstanding date bread that I loved to eat smothered in cream cheese. Her recipe died with her and I've been on the lookout ever since for that exact date bread. This one is one I've come up with that is pretty darn close. Do you have a favorite date bread recipe? Share it up! In the meantime, find some cream cheese after you make this version.

Date Nut Bread

Ingredients
8 ounces chopped dates
1 1/2 cups boiling water
2 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cups chopped nuts--I used pecans and walnuts this time

Method
Combine all the dry ingredients together. Then add the egg, sugar, butter, vanilla and dates. Stir. Add nuts.
Pour into baking pan. Bake at 350 for one hour.

Delicious with cream cheese....

Rachel here: Banana bread, I think, is what I make best. It's certainly the only thing of any complexity that I have made over and over again without a single mishap and, if I do say so myself, the recipe I use is just perfection (it's from "The Best Recipe" by Cook's Illustrated and after I made it for the first time I wrote "perfect" next to the recipe, so...). I am so pleased with this banana bread, in fact, that I have overnighted it across the country to two of my nearest and dearest friends, Jessica (my bff since high school) and G (my brother who is closest to me in age). I'm pretty sure that Jessica and G will agree: this banana bread has straight-up healing powers, be it a broken heart or a head wound (I just realized that this could serve as incentive for people I know to feign ailments in the name of getting their own fresh-from-the-oven loaf from California...uh-oh). Anyway, I love making it and I've loved sending it to people I love when they're down for the count (I should confess that I love my ma's date bread, too...a certain somebody I co-habitate with doesn't "do" dates, though, so I haven't made it in years). Oh, and I love making it for myself, as well, including the challenge of trying not to consume the entire loaf before the sun has set. While it's no aphrodisiac, clearly for me banana bread is a food of love...do you have one?



Ingredients
2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 tspn. baking soda
1/2 tspn. salt
1 1/4 c. toasted walnuts, chopped coarse (I use closer to 1 1/2 c. because I love nuts)
3 very ripe, speckled bananas, mashed well (approximately 1 1/2 c.)
1/4 c. plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 T. butter, melted and cooled
1 tspn. vanilla extract

Method
With rack on lower-middle position, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. If you're using a non-stick loaf pan, grease and flour the bottom and side. If you're using a regular loaf pan, grease and flour only the bottom. Combine dry ingredients (flour through walnuts) in a large bowl, whisk, and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine the wet ingredients (bananas through vanilla) using a wooden spoon or spatula. Fold the wet ingredients into the dries using a rubber spatula until just combined. Batter should be thick and very lumpy. Pour batter into loaf pan and place pan in oven. Cook until a toothpick comes out of the center clean, approximately 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes before removing to finish cooling on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Muffin Ma'am

Janet here: We're kicking off this week's blogs with, appropriately, a breakfast item. If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, why not make it something just a little special? I've been eating yogurt — usually Dannon's coffee flavor, although Stoneyfield's organic non-fat yogurt has been a staple since I did Weight Watchers — for decades. My husband and son S, meanwhile, are cereal eaters. All kinds of boring, don't you think? And that's the joy of muffins. Bake up a batch on the weekend, and you have instantly made breakfast a cheerier meal for the rest of the week.

Muffins' ability to bring cheer hit home with me last year after my mother-in-law died. My father-in-law was understandably bereft losing his help and soul mate after 56 years of marriage. She was also a good cook so the loss was a double whammy for a man who enjoys a good meal. So I started making these muffins. I made them week after week after week — so regularly, in fact, that he started calling me the Muffin Queen. We all got just a bit tired of them, but he didn't and so I kept baking, bringing just a bit of sunshine to a life that was all shades of gray.

This particular recipe is from one of my favorite culinary ladies, Ina Garten aka the Barefoot Contessa. I have five of her cookbooks and I refer to them all the time. (Indeed there will be another recipe of hers featured later this week; stay tuned.) This one for triple berry muffins is from The Barefoot Contessa at Home. I amended it to just use blueberries and raspberries; I'm pretty sure Ina would approve. I also make my muffins in large tins rather than the regular size. Why scrimp when muffins are so special?

Triple Berry Muffins

Ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon (the ingredient that really gives these pizazz I think)
1 1/4 cups milk
2 extra large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup fresh raspberries
1/2 cup diced fresh strawberries
1 1/2 cups sugar

Method
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in large bowl. (FYI, I don't sift. Ever.)Stir with your hand to make sure ingredients are combined. In another bowl combine milk, eggs and butter. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour wet ingredients into the well and stir until just combined. There will be some lumps; don't overmix the batter. Add the fruit and sugar and combine gently.
Use a 2 1/4 ice cream scoop to spoon the batter into the liners. Bake 20-25 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean and the tops are brown.


Rachel here: So, my partner and I are in the process of moving. We have the good fortune of having two apartments this month and, with that luck, the accompanying difficulty of remembering what is where at any given moment. Seriously, the only thing I own whose location I am positive of these days is my bed. Anyway, needless to say, this created some err....fun...baking escapades this morning.

The plan was to spend the day at the new apartment, unpacking what we could and generally getting things going in the new space. So, after our coffee this morning, I dutifully packed up my cookbook, butter, a spatula, and other muffin making necessities, checking items off of the list I'd developed in my head. No sooner had I preheated the oven (oh, and what an oven it is...it's an O'Keefe and Merrit a la photo number 6) then I realized I had brought no measuring spoons NOR did I have a single spoon in the house, I had fewer muffin/cupcake paper wrappers than I needed AND I had neglected to bring the paddle to my KitchenAid mixer. Grrr...

My partner was adamant I could still pull these muffins off. This optimism irritated me until I decided that, if not, it would at least make a good story and, most likely, a pretty yummy mess. And so, instead of creaming my butter and sugar into a wonderfully fluffy goo, I threw them in my Cuisinart (which, of course, I only had the sharp metal blade with me for) and turned them (along with the eggs, banana and yogurt...which I also didn't bring enough of) into an unpromising liquid. At this point I had strayed so far from the recipe's orders that I was convinced there was no way in hell these muffins wouldn't come out like little boulders. Instead, in some freak incident I'm sure (because if not following the rules always works this well than my entire world will be turned upside down), my muffins came out just fine. WEIRD. OK, they're not wonderful, but they are completely edible and definitely still better than their store-bought counterparts. Could they be fluffier? Absolutely. Will they all be eaten? Without a doubt.

The moral of my story is, I suppose, twofold: First, just because your partner thinks something can still work out doesn't mean he is trying to ruin your life with his optimism or that your general propensity toward skepticism need be re-evaluated; second, evidently muffins (and baking in general?!?) might not be the finicky princesses I had figured they were beforehand. Anyway, follow this recipe from The Best Recipe (I added some strawberries to the banana walnut variation) or just mix all of these ingredients together and cross your fingers. Either way, I'm pretty sure your breakfast tomorrow morning will be a little bit brighter.

Ingredients
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tspn. baking soda
1/2 tspn. salt (*Note: I always lean towards the generous side with salt during baking. I swear it brings out flavors.)
1/2 tspn. nutmeg
10 T. unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 1/2 c. plain low-fat yogurt
1 c. light brown sugar
1 1/2 c. finely diced banana
1/2 c. strawberries
3/4 c. walnuts

Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in middle position. Whisk flour, baking powder, soda, salt and nutmeg in bowl and set aside. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each one. Add half of dry ingredients and incorporate. Beat in 1/3 of the yogurt. Continue alternating dries and yogurt until everything is incorporated. Fold in bananas, strawberries and walnuts.

Now, according to the official recipe you should scoop your batter into greased muffin tins. I used little cupcake paper wrappers, though, to cut down on clean-up (on account of the move). While the sides don't get quite as well cooked, I personally feel like there's nothing wrong with this approach. If I were making them for an event I wouldn't use the paper wrappers, but when it's just for home, the time I save on clean-up is worth the compromise to me! Anyway, enjoy!