Spoon & Shutter

Breakfast Buttercup and Meyer Lemon-Cranberry Muffin

From Susan: Weekdays, breakfast for us is a grab-and-go affair: coffee to start, then a smoothie or a quick bowl of cereal wedged in between exercise and getting ready for work. At least one morning of the weekend, I like to make the first meal of the day more of, well, a meal. Ted’s not much of a traditional breakfast person, so I have to be creative, and the timing has to be edging towards brunch for him to enjoy anything more involved than the Cheerios he’s been scarfing down lately hoping to lower his cholesterol. He’s the sort who will eat cold pizza or leftover Chinese food – even, occasionally, a hot dog – and call it “breakfast.” But not me. I’m a traditionalist, wanting what the English call a “cooked breakfast” – eggs, bacon and something sweet to linger over with extra cups of coffee and the newspaper. I also like to have an appealing but somewhat healthy baked good in the house so the kid can help himself to an alternative to the Pop Tarts he prefers for his weekday breakfasts (I know, I know, I AM ashamed to admit we buy them …)

The following two recipes fit the whole bill. The baked eggs in toast cups are cute and easy to do; the recipe is from one of my favorite magazines, “Cook’s Country,” put out by the America’s Test Kitchen folks. Perfectionists that they are, they tested it until they determined just the right method that would give them crisp bread cups and evenly cooked whites and yolks.

For the muffins, I used cranberries that I had frozen last fall during cran season. I love baking with these beauties almost all year long, so always buy an extra couple of bags to store in the freezer. The flavor combo of the sweet Meyer lemons (you can substitute ordinary lemons) and the tart cranberries, plus the subtle crunch of stone-ground cornmeal makes these one of my new favorites. As a bonus, they get a little health kick from the white-whole wheat flour and Greek yogurt, which has twice the protein of regular yogurt. The original recipe called for plain non-fat, but I used my new daily yogurt, Cabot low-fat vanilla Greek with real vanilla bean – so creamy and delicious it’s like pudding!

Meyer Lemon-Cranberry Muffins

Makes 12

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided

3/4 cup  low-fat vanilla Greek yogurt

1/3 cup canola oil

freshly grated zest of 1 Meyer lemon

2 tablespoons Meyer lemon juice

1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour

1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen, coarsely chopped (Best way to do this is in the food processor, using the “pulse” button. If you’ve ever tried to chop cranberries by hand you know that they skitter all over the place.)

Preheat the oven to 400. Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with cooking spray or line with paper liners. Mix 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 2 tablespoons sugar in a small bowl and set aside.

Whisk 1/2 cup sugar, yogurt, oil, egg, remaining lemon zest and lemon juice in a medium bowl until well combined.

Whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add the yogurt mixture and fold until almost blended. Gently fold in the cranberries. Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the lemon zest/sugar mixture evenly over the tops of the muffins.

Bake until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and let cool 5 more minutes before serving.

Recipe adapted from Eating Well magazine, February 2011

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Breakfast Buttercups

Makes 10

10 medium eggs (this is important – large eggs are too big)

10 slices hearty white sandwich bread (don’t try to use “better” bread, the Arnold white bread labeled “hearty white” is what’s called for here)

1 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

10 thin slices deli Swiss or cheddar cheese – about 5 ounces

5 thin slices deli Black Forest ham – about 5 ounces – halved crosswise

salt and pepper

Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Place eggs in large bowl and cover with very hot tap water. Let sit 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, roll bread slices as thin as possible with rolling pin and press into 10 perimeter cups of 12-cup muffin tip, leaving 2 center cups empty. Brush bread cups with melted butter and bake until light golden brown, 5-7 minutes.

Top each cheese slice with a ham slice. Make cut from center to 1 side of each stack and fold to make a cone. Press into toasted bread cup. Crack 1 egg into each cup and season with salt and pepper.

Return muffin tin to oven and bake until whites are barely set and still appear slightly moist, 14-18 minutes. Remove pan from oven and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Let sit for 5 minutes (the eggs will continue to cook). Serve immediately.

Of course, if you don’t want to make as many as 10 eggs, you can reduce the number to prepare as many as you wish. Just be sure to use the perimeter cups of your muffin tin; the testers found that eggs baked in the center cups did not cook thoroughly.

Recipe from Cook’s Country, March 2011