Good mornin’, good moooornin’! It’s great to stay up late, good mornin’, good mornin’ to you! Sorry. Hope you don’t mind if I hit you with a little Debbie Reynolds this morning! A personal favorite of mine…Anyway, I’m particularly excited about these muffins- they’re the perfect way to wake up in the morning! They’re cheery, colorful and full of tons of juicy, delicious fruit – who wouldn’t want to have one of these first thing in the morning?! I got the idea for these from my favorite kind of yogurt – Yoplait makes a strawberry-orange-banana yogurt called “Strawberry Orange Sunrise” and it’s super delicious! I thought it would be fun to create a muffin based on these flavors, and while I’m at it, go ahead and add in a little fresh peach (YUM!). So I got in the kitchen with my Michael Jackson blaring (yes, there was indeed some booty-shaking involved…not gonna lie) and whipped these little babies up. They’re moist, fruity and just perfect with a cup of hot coffee bright and early in the morning! Enjoy!

Strawberry Orange Sunrise Muffins

2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 ripe bananas
1 1/2 cups strawberries, hulled and chopped
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1 medium-sized peach, peeled and chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners. In a small bowl, mash the bananas. Add the strawberries, orange juice and peach. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, cooled butter, eggs and vanilla extract.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until combined (you’ll have a very thick batter). Gently stir in the fruit mixture. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Makes about 18 muffins.

There’s a store near our house that sells locally grown fresh fruits, vegetables and grains (and organic groceries) and every summer they’re literally bursting with ripe, delicious summer fruits and veggies. I go all the time and stock up on berries, peaches, corn on the cob, watermelons, etc. Every summer, I’m up to my ears in fresh berries and I love it! Luckily, I just happen to have some delicious blueberries, raspberries and blackberries and immediately, Ina Garten’s recipe for Tri-Berry Muffins pop into my head. What a fantastic way to use all three berries!

Unfortunately, my sweet hubby has been in Miami for two days training for a new software. Big time bummer (thank heavens he comes home tonight! Yippee!!). I had been planning all week to bake him something delicious to take on the plane (besides his travel-size bag of mini-Oreos), and these muffins were the perfect thing! Great for a snack and breakfast!

Tri-Berry Muffins
-adapted from Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa At Home cookbook

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cups milk
2 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup fresh raspberries
1/2 cup fresh blackberries, sliced in half
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Stir with your hand (or a whisk) to be sure the ingredients are combined. In another bowl, combine the milk, eggs and melted butter.

Make a well in the middle of the dry mixture, pour the wet mixture into the well, and stir until just combined. There will be some lumps but don’t overmix the batter. Add the blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and sugar and stir gently to combine (*be really careful when you do this, otherwise the batter will turn blue!)

Using a large spoon or scoop, spoon batter into the muffin cups to fill the liners. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean and the tops are nicely browned.

Yield: 16 to 18 muffins

Since Mother’s Day is fast-approaching and so many of us are busy making meal plans, I thought this would be the perfect time to give you a list of some of my best “mom-friendly” recipes. And since Brunch is most often the meal of choice for honoring our moms, here are some of my favorite Brunch recipes. Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 9! Show your mom how much you love her by hosting a relaxing Brunch with these simple, delicious dishes!

Bacon, Asparagus and Mushroom Quiche- everybody loves quiche; and luckily, this one is as simple as they get! If you’re short on time, use a store-bought pie crust. Mix the filling, pop it in the oven, and presto! Hot, delicious quiche!

The Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Rolls – I made these for my Mother’s Day Brunch last year and they were a HUGE hit. And let me tell you, I felt oh-so proud of myself for conquering yeast and ending up with such a delicious result! If you’re as scared of yeast as I am, don’t worry – these are so simple and straight forward, they’re almost fool-proof! You can do it! And you’ll look like a rock star making awesome homemade cinnamon rolls for everybody!

Or if you’re short on time but still want delicious cinnamon rolls – these Easy Sticky Buns are perfect! They use frozen puff pastry so they come together in literally no time, but they’re not lacking in flavor (or wow factor!)!

Here’s another super-quick one: Lindsay’s Simply Sweet Coffee Cake- it’s as simple as arranging refrigerated biscuits in a pan, topping with melted butter, cinnamon and sugar and baking. Easy and delicious!

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Strata (you’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the post, there are a couple of other recipes in there)- I made this for my first Mother’s Day Brunch and it was sooooo good! The good news is, you can make it the night before and bake it the next morning, so there’s no stress involved! I love the green chiles in this; they really add a great burst of flavor that goes really well with the eggs and bacon.

Anytime I serve brunch I always like to have a variety of baked goods, fresh fruits, savory dishes and drinks. Also make sure you’ve got a good balance of sweet and savory (personally, I always tend to lean more towards the sweet side, since my family definitely likes their sweets!). If you didn’t see anything here that floats your boat, head over to my friend Katie’s blog, Good Things Catered; this girl knows her Brunch! She has such wonderful tips for hosting and entertaining- you’re sure to get some fantastic ideas from Katie!

Whether you’re hosting or maybe just bringing a covered dish to your sister’s house this Mother’s Day, I hope I’ve given you some good ideas to help get you started. These are all great, no-fail recipes that are super simple and super delish (that’s pretty much what I’m all about!)- and they’re great for anytime, not just Mother’s Day! Enjoy!

**And don’t forget about my $60 giveaway that ends May 7th!

I recently saw this bread on Memoria’s blog, Mangio da Sola and knew immediately I wanted needed to try it. And boy am I glad I did – I found a winner! I actually ended up making this two weeks in a row we liked it so well! After making it twice, I discovered I had actually been doing it wrong (oops); instead of doing two layers of cinnamon/sugar, I just dumped it all in the middle. Well, I actually think I like it better that way – it makes for a nice, thick layer of gooey “cinnamony-ness”…mmmm, cinnamony-ness. Anyway, the bread part is actually more like a buttery, soft pound cake, and the layer of cinnamon/sugar adds the perfect amount of sweetness and flavor. We really loved this one…it will most definitely be in the regular rotation from now on! Great for company, too – absolutely perfect with morning coffee!

Cinnamon Swirl Bread
-adapted from Mangio da Sola

1/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup white sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup cooking oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9″x5″x3″ loaf pan. Combine the brown sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.

Combine the 1 cup of white sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl or mixer bowl. In a separate bowl, beat egg. Stir in buttermilk, vanilla and oil. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the egg/buttermilk mixture. Stir just until mixed. Do not over-mix.
Pour half of the batter into loaf pan. Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon mixture. Repeat (obviously I didn’t do this and it turned out great). With a wide rubber scraper or spatula, swirl mixtures together with a down and up circular motion.
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until done. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Look, it’s smiling at us!

The word ‘parfait’ always reminds me of my good friend Michael. There’s a quote from the first Shrek movie about parfaits that we used to think was so funny; so naturally, we quoted it all the time (Michael does a really good ‘Donkey’ impression).

Anyway, hubby and I have started running every evening, getting healthy, etc; so naturally, we’ve altered our diet a little (chocolate chip cookies stay, though. There will never be a world in which I exist without chocolate chip cookies. Never.). We’ve been eating a lot of plain non-fat yogurt sweetened with honey in place of desserts, which is great; especially with some fresh fruit mixed in. So of course I was excited when I received a box of the new Special K Granola to try out and review. And what better treat to make with granola than parfaits!

A little yogurt/honey mixture, a little granola, some blueberries and bananas and presto! – delicious parfaits (I could’ve stacked each layer neatly in a pretty glass like real parfaits, but this was much easier)! The crunch of the granola is great mixed with the soft fruit and sweet yogurt- a great dessert, breakfast or snack.  I also received a box of Special K fruit crisps, which honestly, I didn’t really like, so I just won’t go there. But the granola really is good – it would be great in Dorie Greenspan’s Granola Grabbers, which are some of my favorite cookies.

Next time you need a healthy dessert or breakfast, try one of these parfaits – they really are satisfying and delicious! I won’t post a recipe, because really, you don’t need a recipe, you just pile stuff in a bowl and go wild. Enjoy!

This week’s TWD recipe, Coco-Nana Bread was chosen by Steph of Obsessed With Baking. I was toying with the idea of skipping this week, but I heard so many great things about this bread, I decided to give it a shot. Really glad I did; it eats almost like cake- really moist and tender, and the banana is barely noticeable. The best part, though, is how chocolaty it is – the chocolate chunks throughout the bread make it super moist and gooey. Yum!

This bread is pretty much more of a dessert than a breakfast food, but genius that she is, Dorie is trying her best to make all things chocolaty accepted as breakfast food. I vote yes. And I’m betting that this stuff will taste pretty darn good with your coffee in the morning. If you’d like the recipe, check out Steph’s blog – she’s got it posted.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, happy Christmas! We certainly did – we witnessed our very first White Christmas (in Texas!)!! It was totally wonderful (except the part where we had to drive home on frozen highways…not so much fun…). The weather lately has been totally unbelievable and completely wonderful – I’m sitting here typing this post watching the snow fall outside again! It’s SO cool! And this time I’m very thankful to be watching it snow from the comfort of my home, instead of driving in it.

Anyway, this post is all about a wonderful tradition. Coffee cake. The coffee cake my family has eaten for breakfast every Christmas morning since the 80′s (at least!).  It absolutely wouldn’t be Christmas without it. Yuuuuummmm.  And yes, I realize Christmas is over, but I wanted to share the recipe because really, there’s nothing “Christmasy” about this cake. It’s just a simple, normal coffee cake that can be enjoyed any day of the year – we just choose to eat it on Christmas. But that doesn’t mean you have to!

(If you’re wondering why only half of it has pecans, hubby hates nuts, so I made it half and half….silly boy!)

This couldn’t be easier to make – 5 ingredients total. Just assemble the night before, let it sit out overnight and bake it the next morning, and you’ve got delicious, gooey, coffee cake! Too easy! You’ve got to try this one!

Overnight Coffee Cake

1 package frozen white dinner rolls (I use Rhodes brand)
1 package butterscotch pudding (not instant!)
1 cup chopped pecans
1 stick butter, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar

Spray a bundt pan with cooking spray and sprinkle chopped pecans over the bottom of the pan. Arrange the frozen rolls in the pan and sprinkle with the butterscotch pudding mix. Mix the melted butter and brown sugar together in a small bowl and pour over the frozen rolls. Grease a piece of foil and cover the pan; let sit out overnight (do not refrigerate).

The next morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the coffee cake for 30 minutes, covered loosely with foil. Let sit out for 10 minutes before inverting on to a platter and serving.

I really don’t recommend omitting the nuts – it just doesn’t turn out the same (as you can see on the left side of the cake…) – they’re really necessary, in my opinion. This is a wonderfully delicious breakfast treat – give it a try this weekend! It would make a great New Year’s Day breakfast!

I know -I’ve been a terrible TWD member lately. I haven’t participated in weeks…bad, I know. And I’ve missed it a lot, too – it seems like every week, something got in the way of me baking that week’s recipe.  My students’ All-State Choir auditions have been going on for the past few weeks and that’s been distracting, not to mention my hubby starting a new job…not that I’m complaining or making excuses, even – I just felt I should at least let you know where I’ve been as far as TWD goes. But now I’m back, and that’s all that matters! And what a recipe to welcome me back on the wagon! Dorie’s Sweet Potato Biscuits…mmm, MMM!!

These were DE-licious. They start out the way all normal biscuits start out; but then you add in mashed sweet potatoes (canned, even!) and a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon and you’ve got a slightly sweet, spicy, flaky biscuit that will knock your socks off!  I made a little maple compound butter (just a fancy way of saying “butter with stuff mixed in” – saying it that way makes me feel important…) to spread on these bad boys and WOW – we seriously gobbled them all up. They couldn’t have turned out better, in my opinion. A lot of other TWD bakers said they were having issues with the biscuits baking up totally flat like cookies – I guess the biscuit gods were smiling down on me because mine seemed to rise perfectly. Thanks to Erin of Prudence Pennywise (seriously love her blog!) for choosing these wonderful biscuits!  Go now and check out her blog – you’ll absolutely love her! Get the recipe for these babies while you’re there – make ‘em for Saturday breakfast this weekend!

Ok, I know I’ve been sort of MIA lately…it’s been a busy couple of weeks (translation: I started teaching voice lessons last week and have 12 freshman girls…it’s not the easiest thing in the world trying to  get someone to open their mouth wider when they obviously think you’re the biggest loser that ever walked the earth…).  But anyway, here I am, back to normal (hopefully) and blogging on a regular basis again!  Let me just take a couple of seconds to tell you about this bread…it’s seriously good.  I was browsing allrecipes.com for zucchini bread and just wasn’t feeling all that impressed with the recipes.  They all sounded pretty boring to me.  So I finally just closed my eyes and picked one (sort of) and ended up with this recipe.  I’m SO very glad I did, because this turned out to be really, really good!

The inside of the bread was soft and incredibly moist, with just a hint of spice (I don’t like an overpowering amount, so this was just right!), and the top of the loaf had sort of  a crust on it that was crumbly and delicious – the top crust was by far my favorite part!  I can tell you with complete honesty that I will most definitely be making this recipe over and over again!  It’s just perfect for Fall….or for those of us who just have to pretend it’s Fall since it’s still a blazing 95 degrees outside…ugh.

Zucchini Bread
-allrecipes.com

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl.  Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined.  Pour batter into prepared pans. (I sprinkled a little brown sugar over the top before baking and it helped to create the nice crust!)
Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

**Note: This recipe makes two loaves – I cut it in half and came out with one perfectly sized loaf.

In the town where hubby and I grew up, there is a small little restaurant called The Purple Turnip that serves really good “chick food”.  If you were to go for lunch on a weekday, you’d see 90% women – teachers, old ladies, business women and “ladies-who-lunch”…of course there will be the occasional male, but chances are he was dragged there by his wife.  Their biggest seller? Quiche.  It’s SO good.  It’s different every day.  Sometimes it has broccoli, sometimes spinach, sometimes asparagus…but it’s always totally delicious.  Naturally, everytime we’re visting home, I always want to go to Purple Turnip. Quiche, followed by out-of-this-world tiramisu. Perfect.

Recently, I had a major hankering for quiche, and since an hour’s drive to Purple Turnip wasn’t in our near future, I decided to just make my own awesome quiche.  And boy was it good!  I was really pleased with the way it turned out – light and fluffy and filled with tons of asparagus, mushrooms and bacon…YUM! I will most definitely be making this one again!

Quiche with Asparagus, Mushrooms and Bacon

1 9-inch pie crust
7 large eggs
3/4 cup half and half
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and chopped
1 small can sliced mushrooms, drained (you can use fresh, I just happened to have canned on hand)
4-6 slices bacon, cooked and diced
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Press pie crust into a pie plate and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half and half and salt and pepper. Add the chopped asparagus, mushrooms, bacon and cheddar cheese and stir to combine. Pour into pie plate and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until quiche is set (the center might still be slightly jiggly- that’s ok). If it starts browning too soon, cover it with a foil tent. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

*I like my asparagus slightly crisp, so I don’t cook it before putting it in the quiche; but if you like it really tender, you can blanch it in some boiling water for about 5 minutes before adding it to the egg mixture.