It’s no secret I love muffins. I’ve shared my recipes for blueberry coconut muffins, oatmeal strawberry muffins, berry muffins sweetened with agave, Halloween orange muffins, banana coconut muffins, chocolate chip mini muffins, apple cinnamon muffins, raspberry oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, peachy flax molasses muffins and lemon poppy seed muffins.

Hmmmm … I wonder how all those chocolate chips got into the recipes? I guess it’s also no secret that I love chocolate….

Many of my muffin recipes are borne from us being completely sick of Keith’s pancakes … delicious, but tiresome every weekend. So as Owen and I were brainstorming ideas for muffins this morning, this is what “won.” The result is a fluffy, moist, flavorful muffin that you could easily make with cranberries instead of chocolate chips if you swing that way. I was thinking they’d taste great with both, but I was vetoed.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 1-3/4 cups spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 1/3 cup palm sugar (or sugar of your choice)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup oil (I used rice bran oil) or melted butter
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used grain-sweetened)

Blend all dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix all wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add wet to dry and stir until just blended, then fold in chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. Serve warm, because you can, and why would you miss the opportunity for gooey chocolate chips?

Alternate version: Either substitute frozen or fresh cranberries for the chocolate chips and sprinkle Turbinado sugar on top of the muffin before baking, or use half chocolate chips / half cranberries.

Cooper is obsessed with fruit, so we basically weigh him down with an orchard’s-worth every time we pack his lunch. However, we forgot to take into account the fact that he wouldn’t be in school for four days due to Thanksgiving, so we ended up with some extra bananas that were rapidly turning brown.

Banana bread is one of those things that I always say I’m going to make, but the bananas invariably get thrown away, because I never actually do. I just have some sort of mental block against banana bread– I always think it’s going to be way more complicated than it actually is, I guess.

In any case, I had a few days off (and the previously mentioned browning bananas), and muffins seemed to be the thing to do with both. I went on to my Big Oven iPhone app (I mention them a lot, but I’m not shilling, I swear!) and tried to find an easy banana muffin recipe. I certainly succeeded. With only six ingredients, it took just a couple of minutes to whip up.

Now, this isn’t a healthy recipe, by any means. I’m sure I could have modified it, but I just stuck with what it said, which includes an entire stick of butter. However, I did do a half cup of brown sugar and a half cup of white sugar instead of a full cup of white sugar. Okay, just typing this out makes it sound really bad, which it is, but they’re quite delicious.

It is a very basic recipe, so if you’d like, you can certainly dress it up a little bit. I just added some cinnamon, but I’m sure some nutmeg, etc. would have been nice as well. If you’re really pressed for time, I recommend mini-muffins– it cut the baking time down to about 15 minutes.

Last week, we went to my in-laws’ house for a lovely visit with a delicious bonus — my father-in-law has many blueberry bushes (which he wisely protects from the birds) that were bursting with ripe berries. While Owen and Keith picked for the instant gratification, I planned ahead and more of my berries made it in the container than in my mouth.

A couple of weeks ago, I made an amazing blueberry buckle that was the beginning of a momentous baking discovery for me. When I combine my sprouted spelt flour with a bit of arrowroot, the texture is what I’ve been missing. Instead of being a bit crumbly and seeming dry (but not really … it’s a weird phenomenon), the arrowroot “glues” in the moisture and keeps the muffin, cake, what have you, together as if there’s gluten. Arrowroot works like a pseudo-gluten when combined with the spelt and I have so been enjoying the texture.

Anyway, Owen and I were on our own while Keith went to Comic-Con and we couldn’t wait to bake something with all of those blueberries. I had been eying this recipe for strawberry coconut muffins, so I figured they’d taste good with blueberries too. I did a little search on the internet — as I tend to do — and I’m so glad I did. Although I ended up goig it mostly on my own, I have to credit this loaded blueberry coconut muffin recipe for the brilliance of using coconut milk as the liquid in the recipe. I can’t say I would have thought of it on my own and it made a world of difference in the recipe … so coconut-y and dare I say creamy?

When your five-year old says the likes of, “Every time we make muffins they need to be this recipe,” then you know you’ve done something right. And it’s really great cooking for such an appreciative crowd!

Blueberry Coconut Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1-1/4 cup sprouted spelt flour
• 1/4 cup arrowroot powder
• 1/3 cup palm sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup (5-1/3 tablespoons) melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (though I’m sure frozen would work just as well, even though your muffin would end up purple)
• Turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, and all wet ingredients in another (leave out blueberries and Turbinado). Add wet to dry and mix until just moistened. Fold in the blueberries. Fill greased muffin tins and then sprinkle Turbinado sugar on the top of each muffin. Bake at 400 degrees for about 18-20 minutes.

Then serve the muffins warm to your five-year-old and bask in the glory of his praise.

Back in the day when I ate more carbs and less protein for breakfast, one of my favorites was a simple toast with butter and apricot jam (all-fruit, of course). Something about the combination was comforting and made the perfect way to start the day.

Even though I’ve moved on to sprouted 11-grain English muffins and sunflower seed butter with a soft-boiled egg, every once in a while I still crave some apricot jam, even though I no longer keep any in the house. Weirdly enough, an article crossed my path recently that solved this problem. We almost always have dried apricots, and if you’ve got those in the house, and some apple juice and a bit of arrowroot, you can make apricot jam in 20 minutes.

This intrigued me on so may levels. First, if I had a craving and didn’t feel like running to the store, I could have my apricot jam. The fact that there’s no added sugar pretty much rocks my world and I could have my treat in 20 minutes — bonus! You can simmer the few ingredients while making your homemade waffles and over-easy eggs so that your whole breakfast is ready at the same time.

I’m thinking this jam is a pretty good idea … what about you?

Sometimes Keith is hard to tame when it comes to breakfasts. It’s not his fault; he loves to make pancakes every Saturday morning and every vacation day imaginable and sees himself as the breakfast master chef. I find it rather endearing when he takes charge of the kitchen, but when he wants to pack up all the ingredients for gourmet pancakes and try to make them in an efficiency kitchen in a small beach rental, I have to put my foot down.

When we go away for four days, I just don’t see why we have to have a different breakfast each day. Honestly, can we just keep something simple in this family? I took matters into my own hands and used up the blueberries in the fridge and made a blueberry buckle the day before we left, so we could take it with us and have a yummy breakfast every day.

Inspired by this blueberry buckle recipe, my recipe makes changes that suit our family’s needs and just taste good. I combined my usual sprouted spelt flour with some arrowroot to lighten things up a bit and help the cake be less crumbly. Success! I also cut back the sugar, substituted palm sugar and pumped up the crumb topping.

This was one amazing blueberry buckle. Let me explain to you in five-year-old terms just how wonderful this cake was — Owen requested that I make this cake for his birthday. His birthday, people! The kid doesn’t want a gooey cake dripping with day-glo frosting … he wants a blueberry buckle! Either the kid’s got taste or he’s as weird as his mother, or the blueberry buckle was that good … make it and you be the judge!

Blueberry Buckle

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons organic unsalted butter
• 1 extra-large egg
• 1 1/2 cups sprouted spelt flour
• 1/2 cup arrowroot flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 3 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt
• 2 cups fresh blueberries (other berries can be substituted)

Crumb Topping:

• 1/4 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons sprouted spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons organic unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan. Add 1/3 cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons butter and an extra-large egg to a large mixing bowl and beat on medium to blend well.

In a separate bowl, mix together the spelt flour, arrowroot, baking powder and salt. Add half of the flour mixture to sugar mixture in mixing bowl, along with half of the milk. Repeat with remaining flour and remaining milk and yogurt, beating just until blended.

Stir in the blueberries gently with a mixing spoon and pour into prepared pan.

For topping, add 1/4-cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, cinnamon and 2 tablespoons butter to a small bowl and blend with a fork. Sprinkle crumb mixture over the cake batter, breaking the crumb mixture into small pieces with your fingers if necessary.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until texture seems firm in the center of the cake. Serve warm or cold.

I’m having flashbacks of this cake that can only be described as obscene … is it wrong to lust after a breakfast food with such fervor?

As I may have mentioned, the strawberries at our CSA farm are at their peak right now and I’ve been looking for ways to use them since the very ripe ones don’t last but a few days, if that. The strawberry ice cream recipe was a smashing success and we’ll be making more of that this weekend, but I’ve got the hankerin’ to use some berries for breakfast tomorrow. We’ve just been eating them as-is or with yogurt, but with just a little more creativity, I’m sure a great breakfast is in my future — with a berry on top.

Berry muffins sweetened with agave could do the trick … we actually have some store-bought (gasp!) blueberries too, so these would be delightful. Or maybe these oatmeal strawberry muffins are what would make my world go ’round….

Maybe I’ll just toss some in a strawberry banana smoothie for Owen and Keith, while I partake in my favorite (bananaless) smoothie. I’ll just use strawberries instead of cherries … done!

If I’m feeling decadent tomorrow, perhaps I’ll make these strawberry crepes with honey sauce for the family … can you make crepes with spelt flour…?

It’s been a while since I’ve made a quick bread and this strawberry bread (with lots of cinnamon) has me feeling inspired. It would need a bunch of tweaking to make it work with fresh berries and less sugar or an alternate sweetener, but I just might be up to the challenge.

Last year, I woke up on my first Mother’s Day, got up, made my own coffee, did laundry, and cleaned the downstairs for the guests we had coming over after brunch– not exactly what I had in mind for that morning. It’s a year later, and Luke has not heard the end of it. The point of this is two-fold: One, I’m nervous about what’s going to happen this Sunday, and two, DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.

Breakfast in bed is where it’s at, people. If you have a special mother in your life, get on that. Seriously. Even if you have a big thing planned that day, she will be thrilled with the opportunity to spill coffee on her comforter, or drop her cell phone in the mug. Not that any of these things have happened to me, of course. Mother’s Day isn’t about expensive gifts. It’s about toast, juice, and seeing your child’s smiling face. Preferably from afar. Kidding! (not really).

Here are a few ways to make mom realize you care this Mother’s Day:

• Creme Brulee French Toast – Nothing says, “I love you and appreciate all the hard work you do,” more than acknowledging how you drive her to drink. It’s breakfast with Grand Marnier! Nothing beats that.
• Asparagus, Spinach and Feta Frittata – Tell mom that you respect her need for time by herself by pumping her full of asparagus and garlic first thing in the morning. That 5-foot barrier between you will give her the peace and quiet she so desperately craves.
• Champagne Breakfast – Maybe you can’t afford to send mom to a fancy hotel where she can sit around in a white robe and order room service. You can at least recreate the experience with this champagne breakfast. Muffins, fresh fruit, and sparkling wine. It’ll take her back to a time before  6 am wake-up calls and, “Okay, you eat while I take the baby outside. Hurry up. No, seriously. I’m hung– honey, no. Stop biting mommy. Honey!”
• Toast and Coffee – No link for this, because it’s literally toast and coffee. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do. Sure, she’ll appreciate a fancy breakfast (not to mention the booze), but it’s really about taking the time to let her know that spending 40 weeks baking a kid inside of her means something to you. Whether you’re extravagant or simple, the fact that you care is really all that matters. Also, sleeping in– but mostly the caring.

After experiencing the chewy goodness of these cinnamon oatmeal waffles, I haven’t been able to get waffles off the brain. Honestly, these are so good that I almost can’t imagine finding any that I like better, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Even if I don’t find a recipe that’s as good, I still might get some fun ideas for serving waffles or

Alton Brown’s basic waffle recipe has a lot of promise. We know that Alton likes to get the science of his recipes right, and this one has two different kinds of flour and lots of buttermilk. Surely the can’t be as wonderfully perfect as the cinnamon oatmeal ones, but a comparison might be fun.

I hadn’t thought of pumpkin waffles, and this recipe is very simple. I’m more inclined to substitute some of the liquid in the cinnamon waffle recipe with the pureed pumpkin than to try this recipe though. It seems I’m hooked.

Is it even possible to make a peanut butter waffle and not want to drizzle chocolate syrup all over it? Or better yet, just add chocolate chips to the batter (incidentally, that’s what Alton Brown does in his chocolate waffle recipe) and call it day. Epicurious’s recipe has whole wheat flour so I’m thinking I could substitute spelt pretty easily. Now this recipe I just might try, though I’ll still probably be thinking of my cinnamon oatmeal waffles….

OK, I just may be starting to forget those oatmeal waffles. You know, I think they might have had some cinnamon in them, but hey, these gingerbread waffles with apple and vanilla bean compote sound good enough to die for. Really, who thinks these recipes up, ’cause it’s just a waffle … a really, really mouth-watering waffle that could be a dessert.

Dude, they crumble eight slices of bacon into these bacon cornmeal waffles … that’s downright illegal. I’m officially salivating shamelessly.

It’s possible that I may never fully recover from writing this post. Thoughts of throwing a waffle party have even crossed my mind, and that’s borderline weird. I’ve got to find another hobby….

The fun part about writing a food blog is that I can go on and on about a recipe I loved, long after my family is sick of hearing about it. You’d be surprised at how long I can not only rave about the amazingly perfect chewiness of these addictive oat waffles … almost as long as I can make Keith feel guilty for eating the last leftover one and saving me exactly none!

My inspiration for this recipe came from Mothering‘s outta here oat waffles. In fact, Mothering is almost back in my good graces after the clearly untested chocolate pretzels recipe that they published, which was a complete fail.

Besides the outrageously perfect texture — crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside — these waffles are prepared in such a way that they are nutritionally maximized. Because the grains are soaked in an acidic medium — in this case, yogurt — the anti-nutrients that are present in most grains are become chemically inactive, allowing the rich nutrients to get where they need to go — into you.

Cinnamon Oatmeal Waffles

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rolled or whole or steel cut oats
• 2 1/2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1/4 cup organic plain whole milk yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 tablespoons melted butter

Combine oats, milk and yogurt in blender. Cover and let soak, refrigerated, for 8 hours. Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Preheat an oiled or nonstick waffle iron. Pour batter onto griddle and cook for about 5 minutes, or until golden. Serve hot however you like — a little drizzle of grade B maple syrup was all I needed.

Makes 8 waffles.

It seems like a lot of prep time, but if you just do the first step before bed, blending in the other ingredients in the morning is a snap, and if you have a waffle maker, you don’t even have to watch it — just take it out when they light turns green.

Out of all the waffles I’ve ever made, this texture is my hands-down favorite … I can’t wait to make them again.

I know, another food rut. I haven’t even finished writing all my posts about homemade pasta when I suddenly become addicted to scones, seemingly out of nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere — last week’s orange date chocolate chip scones were heavily inspired by recipes I have loved through the years.

This week’s little collection of scone recipes to try? They are just because I can’t get scones off the brain.

Would you believe Heidi Swanson just happened to publish a scone recipe this week? She’s a psychic enabler, feeding my addiction like that. These figgy buckwheat scones are going to be made soon … it’s in the stars. I just bought some buckwheat flour this week and the fig butter reminds me a lot of my fig port sauce that I created a few weeks ago for roasted garlic and rosemary chicken. Destiny’s calling….

I think I might like these cranberry oat scones since I love oatmeal muffins so much. There’s something so hearty and satisfying about oatmeal in baked goods. Since I’ve never met a cranberry I didn’t like — plus there’s lemon zest! — I’m putting these on my to-bake list.

Really? Pina Colada scones? I love that there are minds out there that think of recipes like this one. I adore just about everything coconut, so why not?

Honorable mentions:

• Ina Garten’s cranberry orange scones
• Heidi Swanson’s maple syrup scones
• Martha Stewart’s cheddar chive scones
• Joan Nathan’s ginger scones with cardamom

Share your favorite scone recipe in the comments.

Owen calls them “those big cookies.” I just call them delicious. They are dense and buttery and I can only eat one, but it’s plenty.

The inspiration for these scones came from three different places. I know I’ve mentioned Uprisings before, and there’s a recipe in there for orange date scones that caught my eye. My friend Michelle often makes her Grandma’s chocolate chip date cake for playdates, and it’s something we all beg for … so good. Finally — does anyone else out there remember the chocolate chip orange scones that Trader Joe’s used to sell but then had the nerve to discontinue? Back when I could still eat wheat, we’d buy them often and eat them with wild abandon.

All of those and more went into this recipe.

Orange Date Chocolate Chip Scones

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter
• 4 cups spelt flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons agave syrup
• 1/2 cup orange juice concentrate + 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup dates, chopped
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Put the butter, flour, baking powder and baking soda in your food processor and blend until you’ve achieved coarse crumbs. Or if you must, cut the butter into the flour by hand and eat these for breakfast next year or so.

By hand (meaning with your hands), mix in the eggs, agave and orange juice mixture until just moistened. Fold in the dates and chocolate chips.

Plop that dough right on your countertop and flatten to about 1 inch high. Use a large round biscuit cutter to make your scone shapes or just form them into biscuits shapes by hand. There’s no right or wrong here — they’ll taste great no matter what.

Place scones on a greased cookies sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

I recently made a lemon poppy seed bread. It was dense and buttery and everything it should have been, but today I was craving something light and airy and lemony.

It’s hard to get lemony enough for my taste, but since I don’t like my baked goods too sweet, the lemon shines through more. A little vanilla extract takes the edge off, so the muffins aren’t tart. The poppy seeds add a delightful “pop” and I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast.

If you fear the lemon, sprinkle a little turbinado (raw, coarse) sugar on the tops of your muffins. They’ll look spectacular and your sweet tooth will be satisfied.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups sprouted spelt flour (or your favorite)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup agave syrup, or your favorite sweetener
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk (I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/3 cup oil (I used rice bran)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
• turbinado sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and the wet in a medium bowl. Add the wet to the dry and mix until just moist. Fill 12 greased muffin tins and sprinkle each with turbinado sugar if you wish. Bake at 400 degrees for about 16 minutes. Enjoy with a little butter or just fresh out of the pan. My kid had three — is that a shining recommendation, or what?

I bake a lot of breakfast muffins. You know, you’ve seen the recipes:

• Oatmeal strawberry muffins
• Berry muffins sweetened with agave
• Peachy flax molasses muffins
• Banana coconut muffins

I’ve even ventured out into the savory muffin territory which was a really, really good idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about savory muffins because we don’t like to use too much sugar if we can help it (though I do use all-natural sweeteners like palm sugar and agave syrup) but also because I’ve got myself a good case of the cheese cravings. There’s nothing like a cheesy muffin and right about now, I really want to sink my teeth into one.

So I’ve done the next best thing — I’ve virtually sunk my teeth into nine instead. Cruising the internet for savory muffin recipes brought on about as much salivation as an actual muffin would. Let me wipe my chin and share some of the recipes with you.

These savory mini-muffins, with goat cheese, red onion and rosemary, would go perfectly with a frittata stuffed full of fresh herbs and tomato slices.

Bacon, cheese, buttermilk and Canadian bacon combine in these savory breakfast muffins. How do you think biting into a big chunk of bacon while eating a muffin would be? I’m on the fence, but I think I could get used to it.

These savory muffins sport two kinds of cheese and garlic and a pretty high ratio of egg to batter. I’m thinking they’d be like a flour-y quiche.

When I think about baking with zucchini, I think about molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg … but not dill weed. These dilly zucchini muffins take a different approach, and add in a whopping amount of ricotta cheese while they’re at it. Suffice it to say that I’m interested by these muffins. They intrigue me.

Hmmm … dill weed’s coming up again in these cheesy herbed muffins. Maybe it’s a thing that no one told me about. What attracted me to this recipe, though, was the onion, garlic and mixed herb topping that you sprinkle on before baking. These just seem so … fresh.

Cheesy sweet potato muffins … now that’s what I’m talking about. Grated sweet potato and gobs of cheese are spiked with paprika. Holy yum, that combination is clearly my favorite. I never would have thought of that but the uniqueness has got me running for my muffin pan.

Now wait a minute — these pumpkin cheddar muffins may have just trumped those precious sweet potato yummies. Dude, they’ve got a savory streusel topping with cayenne and pumpkin seeds, and the muffin itself includes pumpkin, cormeal and roasted poblano peppers. These have just moved from breakfast to brunch and I’ve invited several friends over.

Reading these savory muffin recipes has officially begun to hurt. How is it possible that they just keep getting better and better? Just Bento’s got not one but two savory (vegan) muffin recipes that are causing me physical pain: pumpkin miso and carrot-onion-hazelnut. Come on! Who thinks of these recipes?

If I don’t stop now my drool will ruin my laptop, but I’ll definitely be making some savory muffins — soon!

You can give any muffin the look of love with the right baking pan, but try one of these CliqueClack-tested recipes:

• Oatmeal strawberry muffins
• Berry muffins sweetened with agave
• Blueberry cinnamon muffins
• Peachy flax molasses muffins
• Banana coconut muffins

For the muffins pictured, I did a basic blueberry muffin recipe, replaced the sugar with agave syrup (and cut back the amount) and added some lemon juice and cinnamon sprinkled on top. I also put in a lot more blueberries than the recipe called for. If you can’t bake to excess, is it really worth baking? Take some liberties with those instructions!

Last weekend, I took my mother out to brunch for her birthday. Yes, it was nice to spend some quality time with my Mum with no other family members around, scrambling for our attention. My omelet / frittata was delightful, no doubt about that. But the memory of that brunch that has lasted through the week was the little taste of lemon poppy seed bread I snuck from the bread basket.

I don’t eat wheat so a whole piece of bread was out of the question, but I couldn’t resist a taste and I’m glad that I indulged. But I had to find a way to have more than just a taste of this bread, so I created my own recipe for spelt lemon poppy seed bread based on the famous lemon poppy seed bread recipe from The Joy of Baking.

Other than the strange order of adding the ingredients to the mixing bowl (to create a dense and moist texture), the first thing I noticed was the creaminess of the batter. We’re talking irresistibly creamy, and I’ll lick just about any batter. Owen was mad that I didn’t save more of it for him, since he takes after his mom … my little batter boy! Anyway, it almost seemed a shame to actually bake it. It seemed more appropriate to just take a spoon to it and enjoy. Then I thought of you, and how you’d miss out on the recipe and photographs of this bread and I mustered every bit of will power I had and transferred the batter to the loaf pan.

One more thing — you’ve got to plan ahead and give this bread time to soak up the syrup. The original recipe recommends overnight, but we found that as soon as the bread was cool it was ready to eat.

Spelt Lemon Poppy Seed Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup vanilla almond milk (or milk of your choice)
• 1 1/2 cups sprouted spelt flour (I used the extra fine sifted spelt flour)
• 1/2 cup palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (though you could also add 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest)
• 3 tablespoons poppy seeds
• 3/4 cup butter, softened

For the syrup:

• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a loaf pan.

Whisk together eggs, vanilla and milk. Set aside.

Mix dry ingredients together in mixing bowl, then add lemon juice, butter and half of the egg mixture. Mix for one minute. Add half of the remaining egg mixture and mix for 30 seconds, then add remaining egg mixture and mix for 30 more seconds.

Bake for 55 minutes or until browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Meanwhile, melt syrup ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Make holes in the top of bread with a toothpick and brush half of the syrup over the top of the loaf. Take out of the pan and do the same to the bottom. Let cool completely and enjoy.

As someone who is allergic to soy and egg, my 3-year-old (soon to be 4-year-old… my Lord!) son has missed out on many things that the rest of us can eat. This is particularly true at breakfast, which is an egg paradise, and especially true of French Toast and its many varieties. I mean, you can’t spell French Toast without ‘egg’, can you? It’s the gooey stuff inside the shell that makes the meal.

Sure there were alternatives: like Ian’s soy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, taste-free French Toast sticks that would take 20 minutes to bake and five minutes to harden up after contact with air. But they weren’t the same. So I turned to my friend the Interweb for an egg-free alternative. Lo and behold, I finally found a recipe that worked, was quite tasty, and could be modified to provide different flavors. All was well with the world.

No Egg French Toast

Ingredients:

• l loaf of thick, egg-free, soy-free white bread (country-style normally works)
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
• 3 generous tablespoons of plain yogurt or applesauce (see below for variation)
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• a dash of cinnamon

Mix the sugar, vanilla extract, and plain yogurt/applesauce in a medium bowl until well blended. Combine with the milk and cinnamon. Coat the bread in the mixture until both sides are covered (don’t leave in too long or the bread will fall apart).

Place the bread onto a greased and heated pan or griddle. Flip when edges begin to turn golden brown. Repeat the process. Depending on how much mixture is soaked into each slice of bread, the recipe will provide you with a large amount of French Toast. Make sure your family is hungry.

Variation

• If you like your French Toast on the sweet side, replace the plain yogurt/applesauce with 3 tablespoons of cinnamon applesauce. You can still add the dash of cinnamon in as well.

In my continuing journey to find allergy-free recipes that my son, who has reactions to soy and egg, would enjoy, I have come upon a number of variations for homemade pancakes. One that has popped up numerous times on various websites has been a recipe that has included sugar in the batter.

In my previous pancake adventures I had never used sugar, so I thought that this was a bit wonky, Yet, according to my family, the end result is still delicious with a bit of sweetness to it. Another success to add to the list! Now, if we could only remove soy and egg from every other recipe we would be golden.

Eggless Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons of pure canola, sunflower or olive oil

Dry ingredients go first — flour, baking powder and sugar. Stir until blended. Add the milk and the oil; stirring rapidly until the batter is smooth.

Heat a pan or griddle to medium. Pour 1/4 cup of batter onto the heated surface. As you as you see the pancakes bubble and their edges turn a golden brown,  flip them over. Remove from the hot surface when the bottom is a golden brown as well. Should make somewhere in the area of 6 to 8 pancakes; enough for two to three people.

Seriously — is that bread a thing of beauty, or what? I’ve been tweaking Marilu Henner’s recipe for healthy zucchini bread for years. I find her recipe has far too much oil. No, I’m not being overly healthy — it has stained my cloth napkins that I line my bread basket with, it’s so greasy. That not appetizing, Marilu, that’s just gross.

Even though she uses healthy sugars, I prefer to cut down the amount of sugar she suggests in her recipe as well. There’s a certain ratio of sugar to zucchini that’s just right in my estimation; when you go beyond this, the zucchini doesn’t shine on its own and is actually highlighted in a negative way by too much sugar.

This particular bread was served right alongside the traditional pumpkin bread at Thanksgiving this year and was enjoyed by one and all — even the not-so-healthy eaters in the family. It’s a wonderful breakfast bread too, and complements a frittata, breakfast meats and even a bowl of cereal.

Here’s the recipe with my tweaks, exactly as I made it in the picture above. I’ll list some of the variations I’ve tried over the years as well, so you can decide what works for your family. I like this version the best because the bread rises the way I like it.

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup rice bran oil
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3/4 cup palm sugar and turbinado sugar combined
• 2 cups grated, unpeeled raw zucchini
• 2 cups sprouted spelt flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 heaping teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 scant teaspoon ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter (or spray with canola oil) a 9×5 loaf pan. Beat eggs, oil, applesauce, sugars and vanilla until light and thick. Fold grated zucchini into oil mixture.

Mix dry ingredients together well. Stir into zucchini mixture until just blended. Pour into buttered loaf pan. Bake on middle rack of oven for 55 minutes to an hour or so, or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool slightly, remove from pan, and cool completely on a rack.

Variations:

• I’ve used 1/2 cup almond butter and 1/2 cup applesauce for the fat, but it doesn’t rise as nicely. It’s delicious, though!
• I’ve used melted organic unsalted butter and applesauce too, which works.
• Yeah, I went there: I added chocolate chips.
• When Owen was allergic to eggs, I used egg replacer, but it didn’t rise as nicely. It does work, though!

I admit, my eye-catching title sure doesn’t make it sound simple, but trust me, this is the easiest healthy breakfast you could possibly create. You can plan ahead a little, right? It’s that simple.

I’ve been experimenting with oatmeal in the slow cooker and I’ve gotten it down to a science. It’s not only convenient, but it’s also the healthiest way to cook oatmeal to get all of the nutritional benefits. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but it’s not just about the ingredients here: the process is important in boosting the nutrition of this yummy breakfast. Yeah, I admit it — there’s a place for technique.

We’re not talking some snobby French cooking school technique … just follow these three simple steps and you’ll have your healthy oatmeal.

1. The morning before you plan on eating the oatmeal, put the ingredients into your slow cooker and allow them to soak all day.
Ingredients:

• 1 c. whole oats
• 3 c. water
• 1/2 c. organic whole milk yogurt, plain
• 1 c. dried fruit (try to find unsulfured and unsweetened or fruit sweetened; I used currants in the above picture)

Why would you do such a thing as to soak your grains? The yogurt interacts with the oats, causing the anti-nutrients to dissipate, leaving a more digestible grain and boosting vitamin content, especially B vitamins.

2. Before bed, set your slow cooker to low. You want the oatmeal to cook about 7-9 hours, so plan your bedtime and waking time accordingly.

3. Wake up to your delicious breakfast! You want to try to serve this oatmeal with a little fat, which helps the nutrients absorb better. Swirl in some unrefined coconut oil, a little whole milk yogurt, flax or hemp seed oil or even some organic butter.

Did I mention all of the amazing benefits of this breakfast, besides the nutrition?

• Convenient — It is hot and ready for you when you wake up, smelling up the house with its hearty aroma.
• Variable — You can change it up so it is never the same oatmeal twice. Use different dried fruits, add nuts and seeds before serving, even swirl in more yogurt.
• Cheap — Oh, it is cheap to make (buy whole oats in bulk) and there is no packaging to clutter up the house and the environment.
• Portable — It can be portable — just stick it in a thermos, coffee cup, container of choice and eat it on the run.

You know you have the 24 hours to spare, and you’re dying to try this oatmeal. All the cool kids are doing it….

This article was originally posted on That’s Fit three years ago by me. It has been altered to fit CliqueClack Food’s style.

It’s no secret that we love pancakes in our house (chocolate chip banana pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, all good things about pancakes….), especially for a weekend breakfast. It’s pretty much a tradition that every Saturday morning, Keith whips up a batch of the-flavor-of-the-week pancakes, often involving chocolate chips. We can’t change who we are, even at breakfast time.

In fact, we’re so set in our ways, you could probably walk into our house on any given Saturday morning and find the following things going on: Keith slaving away over a hot griddle, carefully tending to the pancake-of-the-week; Owen, with a giant grilling spatula, safely helping Keith flip the pancakes from a distance; Debbie cleaning up around and in-between Keith and Owen, determined not to spend the rest of Saturday in the kitchen. You might also hear Owen grumbling at his well-meaning mother for cleaning the batter bowl before he finished licking it….

We’ve been in a pumpkin groove lately, what with the pumpkin cornbread, the pumpkin carrot muffins and the pumpkin coconut ice cream. It only stands to reason that we’d pull our trusty ol’ pumpkin pancake recipe out of the files (read: Keith’s brain) for the season.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sprouted spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice or nutmeg, or a combination
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 cups milk (we use unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• chocolate chips

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisk wet ingredients together in another. Add wet to dry and carefully mix until just moistened. Do not overmix. Cook the way you like — griddle, pan, oven — and enjoy. We plunk the chocolate chips in as the first side of the pancake is cooking, so they’re in place when we flip. I always sprinkle ground flax seeds on mine, but you can serve yours with just butter and syrup if you like.

I just wanted to point out that even though these are fairly dense pancakes, with the pumpkin puree and the whole-grain flour, they are fluffy at heart. Look at the picture to see how they puff up while cooking; they are a wonder to behold, and nothing less. And our kid is eating squash, but please don’t tell him that pumpkin is a squash.

There’s nothing like starting the day with a warm breakfast … except maybe smelling it cooking while you’re still in bed. That’s the beauty of this crock pot breakfast cobbler.

Another thing I like about this recipe is that it is so easy to prepare the night before. Let’s face it, no one really wants to be making a gourmet breakfast at ten-o-clock at night. What Keith and I do is dump all the ingredients into the crock pot when we are cleaning the kitchen from dinner, then we push the start button before we head to bed.

This is a recipe we’ve made for years, especially when we have lots of apples to use up. I’ve based it on this recipe for breakfast cobbler, but it has morphed throughout the years and we actually make it different every time … and there’s not really a whole lot of measuring going on these days.

Crock Pot Breakfast Cobbler

Ingredients:

• 6 apples, peeled, cored and slice (yes, get the fancy gadget; it’s worth every penny)
• about 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• about 2 cups of your favorite granola cereal (we use whatever is in the cabinet by Nature’s Path, who incidentally has a new one sweetened exclusively with agave syrup)
• about 1/4 cup slivered almonds

Place all ingredients in your crock pot. I put the cereal and almonds on top and don’t stir it until the next morning, but anything goes really. Cook overnight on low, about 8 hours.

I like to serve it with a dollop of plain, whole milk organic yogurt. But the spoon’s the most important part!

You can alter this recipe in endless ways — try adding some dried cranberries, using pears along with the apples, or mixing some nutmeg in along with the cinnamon. I’m not sure you could go wrong, unless you put in mayonnaise or something….

One of my favorite healthy baking cookbooks is Uprisings: The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book. You’re probably wondering why, since I always substitute sprouted spelt flour for everything anyway, but the real reason is because these treats are creatively sweetened. In fact, this cookbook has made me think even beyond itself. Most of the recipes are sweetened either with honey or maple syrup, which I’ll do, but I like to venture out into other territories as well. Sucanat, agave syrup and different fruits are all sweetening options I think about when baking these days.

Like making this pumpkin cornbread, for instance. The recipe my pumpkin cornbread was based on used a whopping 2/3 cup of brown sugar. To me, that’s gross on so many levels. First of all, I can’t stand a sicky-sweet baked good. Cornbread should be mostly savory, in my opinion, and that much sugar would seem out of place. Did I mention how offended my liver would be, at being asked to process all of that sugar? I’m apologizing to the livers of the world, or at least to anyone who has eaten that pumpkin cornbread.

Pumpkin is pretty sweet on its own (or at least my fresh-from-the-farm puree that I made today was), so like banana bread, I didn’t want to overdo it with the added sweeteners and make it unappealing. I want the real flavors of the ingredients to come through and not be masked by an unwelcome sweetness.

A tweak here and there and I’ve created the corbread that’s perfect for my family. We ate it with chili last night, and again for breakfast this morning, slathered with apple butter or organic butter and dipped in maple syrup (depending on who you are at the McDuffee residence).

Pumpkin Cornbread

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sprouted spelt flour (or whole-grain flour of your choice)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or freshly cooked and processed)
• 2 tablespoons Sucanat
• 1/3 cup rice bran oil (or melted butter)
• 2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

Mix wet in one bowl, dry in another then mix until just moistened. Pour batter into a greased 10-inch pie pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until springy.

You might think with all the cinnamon and netmeg that this cornbread wouldn’t go very well with chili, but somehow it worked. And trust me, I am not a nutmeg fan….

When you go ugly-apple picking, you’re bound to have to find something to do with your apples besides just eating them whole (well, take bites) as an afternoon snack. I’m a big fan of the breakfast muffin, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now since I’ve shared recipes for peachy flax molasses muffins, berry muffins sweetened with agave, oatmeal strawberry muffins and even banana coconut muffins. Yes, a daring choice beloved by one and all.

So it’s probably no surprise to you that I dreamed up a little apple cinnamon muffin recipe to use up an apple or two. As most of my muffin recipes are, I based this one on the Better Homes and Gardens basic muffin recipe from my beloved red plaid cookbook, and then I changed pretty much everything about it.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins
Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups sprouted spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 1/4 cup Sucanat or maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk (I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
• 1/3 cup butter, melted (5.3 tablespoons)
• 1 cup finely chopped apple

For the streusel topping:

• 3 tablespoons flour
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons sliced almonds

Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients in two separate bowls, then add wet to dry and mix until just moistened. Fold in the apple and divide batter among 12 muffin cups in a greased muffin tin.

For the topping, mix the first three ingredients together and cut in the butter to make coarse crumbs. Stir in the almonds, top each muffin cup and bake at 400 degrees for 17-19 minutes.

As always the four-year-old gobbled these up at an embarrassing pace. Someone’s got to teach that kid some table manners.

I admit it — I’m in a breakfast rut. Pancakes are the pinnacle of our weekend existence (though we did branch out and make apple cinnamon pancakes this weekend), leaving room for the occasional muffin and frittata, but not much else.

So I took it upon myself to find some unique breakfast recipes that excited me, that made me want to break out of my weekend breakfast routine and shout, “No more pancakes!” I suppose I need to clear that with the four-year-old, but I found two recipes that I’m very excited to try.

Individual mini quiches made in muffin tins are crustless, so they are easy for the lazy in me and wheat-free for the tummy-ache in me (and don’t get me started on Owen’s behavior when he eats wheat). They’ve got sausage in them, so you don’t need to make a breakfast meat on the side, so one less step. This is one recipe for crustless quiches, but treat them as you would a frittata and customize them to your liking. You can literally do anything with these quiches to make them the perfect breakfast for you.

Since I’m a freak, I’d alter this recipe for egg and salmon sandwiches a bit. Instead of just using egg whites, I’d use the whole egg (a yolkless egg — really? Who would do that?) and of course I’d serve it all up on my favorite Ezekiel sprouted English muffin. Not your egg, cheese and sausage biscuit to be sure. I can’t wait to try this one. Again, you can customize the breakfast sandwich idea to be perfect for you, but I love the idea of smoked salmon.

What breakfast recipes get you out of your rut?

Not spice as in, say, red pepper flakes, or one of the Spice Girls. Rather, something to give your muffin the kick it needs to make you fall in love again with the bluest of berries and yellowest of muffin. Perhaps something cinnamony like…oh, I don’t know…cinnamon! Yes, it’s true — just like it did for Deb’s raspberry and strawberry muffins, a little cinnamon can go a long way in reviving your blueberry muffin.

Blueberry-Cinnamon Muffins

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg (or substitute)
• 2/3 cup milk
• 3 tbsp. oil
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup fresh or thawed frozen blueberries

In a large bowl, beat the first 8 ingredients together until smooth. Then, fold in the blueberries until well mixed. Lightly grease a 9-deep muffin tin. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups, filling them two-thirds full. Bake in a 375-degree oven for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick (or fork) inserted into the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

Should you use an egg substitute rather than a genuine egg, the result will be flat-topped muffins. Yet, the taste of both the cinnamon and blueberries will be the same. Serve with your favorite breakfast meat, vegetable, or alcoholic beverage.