Before I started using this muffin, I would become a raging hunger monster by 11AM, snapping at clients, making interns cry, etc. My breakfast just couldn’t last! No cereal, fruit, bars could keep me full until lunch (and allow me to wake up 17 minutes before I have to leave, and not be disgusting like bran muffins). Hence, I started developing these muffins, which riff on several recipes for “morning glory” muffins, mostly from epicurious.

I have altered the recipe until they maximize filling-ness, tastiness, protein and have a good mix of vitamins and fiber.  The shredded fruit and vegetables are key: instead of being full of sugar and air, these dense muffins are full of taste and fiber. In the morning, I grab two and sometime toast and spread peanut butter before running out the door. Most importantly, these muffins freeze beautifully, so you can make a double batch, freeze half, and have breakfast for weeks in advance!

MAKES 12 BIG MUFFINS

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar (I have significantly cut down on this because I don’t think the muffins need to be supersweet. You may change it back to the original 1 cup if you like. Also, sometimes I mix brown and granulated sugar for fun).

¼ cup honey

¼ lb carrots (you can use up to 1.5x this amount and it will be fine)

½ cup pecans/walnuts,  chopped

¼ cup pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds

½ cup raisins

3 large eggs

1 cup plain yogurt (you can use vegetable oil if you’re trying to gain weight).

2 tsp vanilla

1 Granny Smith apple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees .

First, mix together flours, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, then whisk in sugar and honey in the BIG BOWL. Shred the carrots and apple in a food processor (see picture). You should have between 2 and 3 cups of shredded fruit.

Mix the carrots and apples into the flour until each shred is coated (see picture). Then mix in all the nuts, seeds, and raisins.

Next, in a separate bowl, mix together eggs, yogurt, vanilla. Pour this wet mix into the dry mix and stir them all together. Butter/oil/spray/put doilies into your muffin tin. Put the batter in each cup, just up to the rim of the tray (or pile it on if you like huge muffin-tops).  For a classy touch, put a full pecan on top of each muffin. Bake muffins about 18 minutes and test with knife to see if they are done. If not, keep baking until there are. Let cool a bit in tin before taking out.

(Welcome to Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

It’s been a while since I did a Breakfast Briefs post, but that’s because it’s been a while since I’ve done anything interesting for breakfast. It’s been a lot of yogurt and bananas at my desk, and it’s been getting old.

I saw some version of these muffins on a blog I can’t remember and had been meaning to try them for a while, so I finally went out, bought a muffin tin and some of those little paper muffin cups, and put on my breakfast hat (a jaunty fedora).

Baked goods are great for breakfast as you can just grab and go, but if I eat something sweet like a regular muffin for breakfast, I usually find myself hungry an hour later. Not so with these babies, which are basically an egg sandwich in muffin form.

And they’ve got green stuff in them, so they’ve got to be healthy, right?

The recipe here is an adaptation of several I’ve seen out on the interwebs.  There’s a fair amount of wiggle room in ingredients, I’d imagine, but try to keep the egg-flour-baking soda-cottage cheese ratio roughly the same. If you are a meat lover, you could definitely add bacon. Other ideas include bell pepper, tomatoes, or fresh herbs. I used scallions because I had some around, but any onion will do.

These muffins do tend to stick to the paper quite a bit. If you’ve got some spray olive oil or the like, greasing them up is probably a good idea. Popping one in the microwave for 30 seconds before eating also makes it easier to peel and warm to boot, but they are certainly good cold as well.

Savory Eggy Muffiny Breakfast Things

1/2 pound mushrooms,cleaned and sliced
1 bunch spinach, rinsed, and chopped
1/4 cup scallions, rinsed and sliced
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
5 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup cheddar, grated

1. Saute scallions in a small amount of olive oil for 2-3 minutes.  Add mushrooms and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

2. Add spinach. The spinach needs a little water in the pan to steam. If you just washed it, the water on the leaves will be enough. If it’s had a chance to drain, add two tablespoons of water.

3. Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, cottage cheese, and cheddar. Stir to combine.

4. When the shrooms/spinach are cooked, let them cool, then add them to the mix. If there is a ton of water left in the pan, you may want to drain some off first.

5. Grease muffin cups if desired. Fill cups with batter until almost full. (This recipe makes about 8-12 muffins depending on size.)

6. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until tops are nicely browned and/or a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

There are certain packaged foods that are simply the Platonic ideal of their kind, never to be bested by homemade versions: Oreos, Heinz ketchup, and Coca-Cola being my top three. Is the taste of these foodstuffs so perfectly irreplaceable because they are actually perfectly formulated? Or is it just that we are so used to those flavors that nothing else will quite do? If I had grown up eating Newman-O’s and Hunt’s ketchup, and drinking Pepsi, would I now be just as insistent on those brands as the apotheosis of sandwich cookies, tomato-based condiments, and corn-syrupy carbonated beverages?

I have one more to add to the list, but this one I feel guilty about: JIFFY Corn Muffin Mix. I felt way more guilty about it until my recent realization that EVERYONE loves Jiffy, or at least everyone who wasn’t born and/or raised in the South (and here, “everyone” mostly means my Gossip-Girl-dinner-party-club and Deb at Smitten Kitchen, which is a large and varied enough sample size for me).

Still, while I have no need for homemade Oreos, ketchup (Heinz or otherwise), or Coke, I would actually like to make cornbread from scratch. I’ve made it a couple times in the last year, always with recipes from Southern cookbooks and always in a cast-iron skillet. And it always came out great, but as an entirely different species of cornbread than I am used to — crunchy on the outside, very bready, and extremely savory. What I want is soft, cakey, and sweet. There, I said it. All Southerners can now crucify me.

So I was delighted to find that Deb — and Dorie Greenspan, the original source of this recipe — feel the same way. They promised a sweet, cakey muffin that would make me forget the Jiffy box, and while nothing may ever get me to forget Jiffy, these muffins came close enough that I don’t have to wear a big scarlet “J” on my forehead.

The one thing that always bothers me about corn muffins is that, as golden as they may be, they’re a bit too uniform. These have a nice textural contrast from the fresh corn kernels galore stuffed in, but I still wanted to mix up the color a bit. Also, as much as I love me a sweet muffin, I don’t mind a touch of savory in my morning, and I also don’t mind if the sweet-savory is all in one (all the better!). So, on a bit of inspiration, I bought a nice-looking bunch of basil, chopped it up pretty roughly, and mixed it in with the corn.

Perfection, best served with Frog Hollow peach preserves and a cup of tea. And without cardboard packaging or an R&D lab in sight.

Fresh Corn and Basil Muffins, to Rival Jiffy

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins or 48 miniature ones

Ingredients

- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
- 6 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 3 tablespoons corn oil
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk

- 1 cup corn kernels (add up to 1/3 cup more if you’d like) – fresh, frozen or canned (in which case they should be drained and patted dry)

- 1 cup basil, roughly chopped

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Fit the molds with paper muffin cups (you can also spray, but the paper muffin cups make clean-up/transport a whole heckofalot easier).

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg, if you’re using it. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg and yolk together until well blended.

3. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy, and that’s just the way it should be.

4. Stir in the corn kernels and basil. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

5. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes (12 minutes for minis), or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean (if you have to err one way or the other, these should be undercooked, otherwise they’ll get dry and crumbly). Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.