French Toast

I love french toast so when I saw some raisin challah at the local grocery store I couldn't resist. I love using challah for french toast and one of the best things about it is that I can cut the slices just as thick or thin as I want. Using raisin challah just allows me to add a little extra flavor without any extra work.

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf of raisin challah cut to 2oz slices - use 4 slices - two per person
• 1/2 cup egg beaters
• 1/4 cup almond milk
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Pre-heat skillet to medium heat.
2. Mix the egg, milk, and cinnamon in a shallow container. Dunk the break into the mixture coating all sides.
3. Spray the skillet with your favorite non-stick spray
4. Cook the dunked bread on the skillet for about 3-4 minutes on each side. Serve warm.

Calories per slice: 185

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Easter Sunday seemed like the perfect day to make a nice huge brunch. My friend Elliott came over and together we made a fruit salad that was amazing, apple cinnamon muffins - the ones from this blog - scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, and these banana oatmeal muffins. I will say that the apple cinnamon muffins are by far my favorite. However, these are nice for something a little different.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup Splenda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tbsp egg beaters
  
• 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons non fat milk
• 2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons apple sauce
  
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup mashed bananas
• Cinnamon

Strudel Topping:

• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp light butter
• 1 tbsp flour

Directions:

1. Combine flour, oats, Spenda, baking powder, soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat the egg lightly. Stir in the milk, apple sauce, and vanilla. Add the mashed banana, and combine thoroughly. Stir the flour mixture into the banana mixture until just combined. Divide evenly into 6 muffin tins.
3. Mix strudel topping ingredients with a fork. Top the muffins.
   
4. Bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 20 minutes.

Makes 6 muffins - calories per muffin - 140

Oatmeal Pancakes

I love Monday's off. Just another excuse to make breakfast. I love breakfasts which is new for me. Normally I am not a breakfast person because I have so many other things to do in the morning and I am not a fan of Bisquick anything but growing up Bisquick was the go to breakfast so that is what I think of when I think of making breakfast. However, that is starting to change. As I make more breakfast foods for me I am starting to enjoy it more and more.

These pancakes are an adaptation from all recipes. I really liked the idea of adding oatmeal to my pancakes to make them healthier. With no oil, no sugar, the substitution of egg beaters, adding banana, raisins, and whole wheat flour these are actually pretty healthy. Next time I think I will add a little Splenda because these do taste a little on the healthy side rather than the yummy breakfast side. However, they were VERY filling. I also only blended half the batter and next time I will blend all of it because I want them to be less dense. Maybe more milk? The batter was nice and thick and they were pretty fluffy but I wanted a few more air pockets without adding more baking soda or baking powder. Hum...All in all I will be going back to this recipe again when I want a nice big breakfast. Recipe below reflects the changes I will make next time.Ingredients:

• 9 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 1 cup quick oats
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 oz vanilla yogurt
• 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 cup egg beaters
• 3/4 banana
• 1/3 cup non-fat milk
• 1 tbsp Splenda

Mixins:

• 1/4 cup blueberries
• 1/2 box raisins (snack size box)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch all-spice

Directions:

1. Add all wet ingredients to the blender. Mix in the oats by hand and allow to soak for about 10 minutes.
2. Add all other ingredients except the mix-ins. Blend until smooth.
3. Heat griddle to low-med heat.
4. Split the batch in two portions, into one half mix the blueberries. Into the other half mix in the mix the raisins, cinnamon, and all spice. (Blueberry pancakes should have some spices as well, perhaps some cinnamon)
5. Pour about 1/4 cup servings onto the griddle and cook until brown on the sides. Flip and cook for another 2 minutes depending on the heat of the griddle. (I would cook these slower then your normal pancake)

Makes about 9 pancakes: Calories per pancake - 100

Cinnamon Bread - French Toast

This blog is really turning into a breakfast blog. I am not sure why I enjoy blogging about breakfast more than any other meal but I think it is partially because the pictures turn out so much better when taken in the light of day. Breakfast is really the only meal where most of what I make is made from scratch. Dinner often involves a pre-made sauce or pasta, or it involves a piece of meat that is seasoned and grilled. There just isn't that much that goes into dinner and meals that involve more difficulty are made so often that I don't really find them blog worthy. Trust me, I keep you from a lot of bad or boring meals.

So anyway, this post is about french toast but it is also about the bread I made to make the french toast from. I have been longing to have french toast. On the rare occasion that we go out for breakfast I ALWAYS order french toast. Of course when we do go out the french toast I order is always made from really interesting and wonderful bread. I didn't want to make my own french toast using regular wheat bread and then be disappointed but at the same time I have been looking for a bread recipe that isn't very high in calories, and that I could add yummy things to, for weeks without any luck. Well today I found something I figured I could alter.This recipe from Blissfully Delicious wasn't intended to be made into french toast but it looked so wonderful that I figured I would give it a try. I used light butter and substituted some apple sauce for some of the butter. I also used a combination bread flour and all purpose flour, egg whites only, and I used maple syrup instead of honey as that's that I had on hand. Oh, and I didn't wash it with an egg glaze. I guess with all these changes it isn't even really the same bread but the idea started with Blissfully Delicious so that's where the credit goes.

Ingredients for the bread:

• 6 tbsp warm water
• 3/4 tbsp granulated yeast
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 6 tbsp egg whites lightly beaten
• 2 tbsp apple sauce
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp Splenda
• 4 tbsp light butter melted
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cups + 6 tbsp bread flour
• Cinnamon

Directions:

1. Mix water and yeast and allow to sit while you combine the next ingredients.
2. Combine egg whites, apple sauce, salt, maple syrup, butter, and Splenda in a large bowl. Whisk for about 1 minute to combine the ingredients and make the egg whites nice and fluffy.
3. Add the yeast and water mixture to the other wet ingredients. Then add the flour and mix with the whisk until combined. Do not over mix.
4. Cover and place in a warm location for 2 hours. The dough should double in size while sitting.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Lightly flour your working surface and move the dough to the work area. Add more flour if needed to make your dough manageable. Roll the dough into a large square.
7. Sprinkle cinnamon over the dough to your taste preference. Roll the dough into a log an place an a baking tray wrapping the sides of the log around until they touch on one side of the log.
8. Bake for 35 minutes checking after 30 minutes so as to not over cook.

Makes 12 servings - 100 calories per slice

Ingredients for French Toast:

• Bread from above recipe
• 2 tbsp flour
• 3/4 cup non-fat milk
• 3/4 cup egg beaters
• Cinnamon and nutmeg

Directions:

1. Measure flour into a large mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in the milk. Whisk in the eggs. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. Whisk to combine all ingredients.
   
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium heat.
3. Soak bread slices in mixture until saturated. Cook bread on each side until golden brown. Serve hot.

Makes 12 servings - calories per serving - 125

Apple Cinnamon and Blueberry Muffins

I made the blue berry muffins from my blog again this morning but instead of making just blueberry I split the batter in half and mixed half with blueberries as before and half with apples and cinnamon. Last time I made these I used Splenda packets in combination with real sugar but last time I was shopping I picked up some granulated Splenda so I decided to try just using the Splenda this time.

These were excellent. Miles loves blueberry but he actually enjoyed the apple cinnamon muffins over the blueberry. The topping was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! I only made 4 muffins this time and we scarfed them down. You can actually see the steam coming off the inside of the blueberry muffins.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 6 tbsp Spenda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp apple sauce
• 2 tbsp egg whites
• 1/4 cup non-fat milk
• 3 tbs frozen blueberries
• 1/4 apple
• 1 tsp cinnamon
  

Topping:

• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tbsp butter - light version
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners. I used my Silicon bake-ware so I did not need to grease the muffin cups.
   
2. Combine flour, Splenda, salt and baking powder in a medium sized bowl. Place apple sauce into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg whites and enough milk to fill to 1/2 cup. Mix this with flour mixture.
   
3. Split the mixture putting half into the measuring cup. Into the measuring cup add blueberries and fold in gently. Put mixture into two of the muffin tins.
4. To the other half of the batter add 1/4 of an apple, peeled and cubed. Add the cinnamon and mix together. Split into 2 muffin tins. You should now have two blueberry muffins and two apple muffins. The tins should be between halfway and two thirds of the way full.
   
5. Mix topping ingredients with a fork in a small bowl until grainy and sprinkle muffins with crumb topping mixture. Sprinkle the cinnamon muffins with a little extra cinnamon.
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

Makes 4 muffins: calories per muffin - 145

Crustless Spinach Quiche

This morning I could not decide on what to make for breakfast. I wanted banana waffles with banana glaze, a smoothie with strawberry, banana, and blueberries, yogurt with blueberries, and(or) I wanted eggs with toast. I finally settled on having quiche...something that I hadn't even considered while I was still in bed making my list of breakfast possibilities. This might be the first quiche I have ever made. It was very tasty and very easy to make.

Ingredients:

• 5 tbsp egg white substitutes
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp fat free feta
• 1 slice nonfat sharp american cheese
• 1/4 cup nonfat sharp cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup onions diced
• 3 handfuls spinach
• salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Saute onions until nice and brown. Add the spinach until wilted.
3. In a small bowl beat eggs, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Add cheeses, onions, and spinach to the egg mix.
4. Spray 2 ramekins with a zero calorie non-stick spray such as Pam.
5. Pour the quiche mixture into the the two ramekins, distributing evenly.
6. Cook for approximately 25 minutes or until the eggs have firmed up and the top of the quiche is bubbling.

Serves 2: calories per serving - 150

Blueberry Muffins

Miles L-O-V-E-S blueberry muffins. He normally just makes Jiffy muffins but because he has been trying to loose weight he can no longer sit down and eat an entire box of Jiffy blueberry muffins. I wanted to treat him to his favorite breakfast and I found a recipe from allrecipes that looked promising...even with all the changes I would make to cut calories.

These "To Die For Blueberry Muffins" really were good. I used frozen blueberries and the blueberries were quite a bit larger than normal blueberries. Next time I will actually use fewer berries. I never thought I would say that but it is true. There were too many berries in this mix. I also followed the directions posted by other bakers that suggested making half the topping. Half the topping was more than enough. I probably only used half of the half that I made. I also used brown sugar for the topping instead of the white sugar the original recipe calls for.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 12 packets of Splenda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup apple sauce
  
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup non-fat milk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Topping:

• 4 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp butter at room temp

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners. I used my Silicon bake-ware so I did not need to grease the muffin cups.
   
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder in a medium sized bowl. Place apple sauce into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way to the top.
   
3. Mix topping ingredients with a fork in a small bowl until grainy and sprinkle muffins with crumb topping mixture.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

Made 7 fist sized muffins: calories per muffin - 175

Cinnamon Rolls - with Raisins

I spent all Saturday cooking and looking at food blogs. Every time I looked at another blog I wanted to cook something else. After making muffins, macaroons, grilled sandwiches, and wanting to make a half dozen other things I finally settled on cinnamon rolls. I have been craving breakfast foods -hence the muffins- and last weekend Miles and I made waffles and pancakes. I can't justify having cinnamon rolls without Miles so I decided to freeze these (from all recipes) for a later date.

Ingredients:

• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 2 tbsp white sugar + 3 packets of Splenda
  
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups bread flour

• 5 tbsp light butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup raisins

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with the sugar, salt, egg and 1 cup flour; stir well to combine. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well with each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Cover with a damp cloth and let rest in a warm place for 10 minutes.
3. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Smear the dough with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon, raisins, and brown sugar. Roll up the dough along the long edge until it forms a roll. Slice off and discard the ends. Then cut into the roll into 12 equal size pieces and place them in the pan with the cut side up.(At this point you can wrap the pieces in saran wrap allow to rise for 45 and then freeze)
   
4. Cover pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or cover and let rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake rolls until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.

Servings 12: calories per serving 165

Banana Mini Muffins

I LOVE bananas, chocolate covered bananas, plain bananas, banana bread, banana pancakes, banana everything. I have been craving bread recently and my work had some very ripe bananas that no one wanted to eat. Of course at this point I am thinking about how wonderful banana bread would be for breakfast this weekend.

After looking all over the internet for a recipe and only finding breads with tons of four, sugar, and oil I decided to combine a couple of recipes and make my own substitutions. This recipe was a complete invention so I wasn't sure quiet how it would turn out. In the end my kitchen smelled fabulous and the muffins were delicious. I like my banana muffins a little on the under-cooked side so these might be a little moist for some people. If you like your muffins more like cake-like I would cut the apple sauce down to 1 tbs and add a pinch of baking powder. I will definitely be making these again.

Ingredients:

• 2 small/medium very ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup AP flour
• 6 packets of splenda
• 1 tbs light butter (I used Land-o-Lakes)
• 1.5 tbs unsweetened applesauce
• 1.5 tbs egg substitutes
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Mix sugar with butter (this helps to get all the butter blended smoothly!)
3. Add egg substitute, and beat lightly to get the mixture to fluff up a little.
4. Add the bananas, smashing them into the mix with a fork.
   
5. Add the vanilla, and applesauce.
6. Then add all the remaining dry ingredients and mix well.
7. Spoon about one tbs of batter into each mini muffin cup
   
8. Bake for 15 -20 minutes. Keep an eye on them as oven temperatures and cooking times vary. You'll be able to tell it's all ready when the color is good and golden brown, or when a knife comes out clean from the center.
9. Remove muffins or loaves from pans to cool on a rack.

Makes 12 mini muffins. Calories per muffin: 50