Granola You Make In A Skillet

Easy Skillet Granola

If you have some oats and a skillet, you’re halfway to having homemade granola.   I was skeptical about this recipe before I tried it.  I’m a big proponent of oven-baked granola.  I’ve spent months trying to find ways to make prefect granola clusters in the oven.  So, the idea of just throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan seemed like a lot of hopeful thinking.  To my surprise and delight, this recipe actually works quite well.

You end up with a looser granola than the oven produces, but it’s every bit as flavorful.  As I was making it, I couldn’t help but think how fun it would be to make this over a campfire.  I’d like to see how a little smoke from the fire affects the oats.  I’ll let you know next time I go to the forest. But for now, I used the stove-top.  Here’s how it’s done…

Melt butter and add honey and nuts

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Win A Breakfast Sandwich Maker

Win A Breakfast Sandwich Maker

From now until July 14th, everyone who signs up to receive updates from this blog will be
eligible to win a FREE Breakfast Sandwich Maker.  To enter, just go to the upper-right column of any page on the Team Breakfast blog and look for “Join Team Breakfast.”  Enter your email address, hit the subscribe button and confirm that you subscribed via an email you will be sent immediately.  It all takes less than a minute.

By signing up, you’ll get updates every time I post a new article.  Don’t worry about getting too much mail. I rarely post more than once a week.  But when I do… you’ll get tasty recipes, great tips, fun features and all the latest and greatest from the world of breakfast.

The winner of the Breakfast Sandwich Maker will be chosen randomly from all those who sign up during the promotion.

Please be sure to use an email account that you check occasionally as that will be the same address I’ll use to notify the winner.

If you decide to enter, let me be the first to say, “Welcome to Team Breakfast!  Good luck!”

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Banana Bread… So Easy, It’s Bananas!

How To Make Banana Bread

There’s nothing quite like a warm slice of banana bread with a nice smear of butter.  It’s as if the heavens looked down on the creation of butter and said, “Now we must create a perfect platform upon which to show off this butter.”  When made properly, banana bread is moist and loaded with flavor.  It’s pretty much a big, bread-shaped muffin.  Best of all, banana bread is so easy to make… it’s “nuts!”   Just kidding.  It’s totally “bananas!”

Banana Bread... So Easy, It's Bananas!

In this article, I’ll show you my favorite banana bread recipe and share a couple of tips for getting great tasting bread every time.  I’m also excited to present my latest cooking video.  Last week, I watched the movie The Artist.  It was cute.  But you know what it was missing?  A good banana bread recipe.  Here’s a few scenes that would have made it perfect:

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Cuckoo For Coffee Cake: 18 Great Recipes

Cuckoo For Coffee Cake: 18 Great Recipes

April 7th is National Coffee Cake Day.  So it seems like the perfect time to to share some of my favorite coffee cake recipes.  When you want a baked good for breakfast or brunch, you can’t beat a nice coffee cake.  They’re easy to prepare and ready within an hour. As they bake, your kitchen smells like a bakery.  If you have guests over, someone will always ask, “What smells so good?” If you need a dish to take somewhere, a coffee cake is the perfect, portable, party pastry.

The recipes here are all “quick bread” coffee cakes. That is to say, they don’t use yeast (which takes more time), but are made from scratch using flour as a base and baking powder or baking soda as their leavening agent.  (A couple of the recipes call for a store bought-baking mix like Bisquick which is basically flour plus baking powder.)

In a later post, we’ll address yeast-risen coffee cakes and short-cut coffee cakes (those which use dinner rolls, biscuits in a tube or some other time-saving base).  But for now, grab a coffee, sit back, relax and get ready to be hungry.  I present to you…

18 Awesome Coffee Cake Recipes

Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake

1. Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake – You can use any flavor jam that you like.  I’ve tried this recipe with both strawberry and raspberry jam and loved the results.

Cinnamon Flop (Coffee Cake)

2. Cinnamon Flop (Coffee Cake) – This easy-to-make coffee cake features soft fissures and cracks loaded with buttery brown sugar and cinnamon.

Raspberry Cobbler Coffee Cake

3. Raspberry Cobbler Coffee Cake – This colorful beauty has fresh red raspberries resting in a light vanilla cake.  Top it off with sliced almonds and a drizzle of icing and it looks like you bought it at an expensive bakery.

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How To Poach Eggs (New Video And Cheat Sheet)

I’m really excited about a new technique that I’ve been using lately for poaching eggs.  It’s a trick from the great Julia Child.  Usually, you add vinegar to simmering water which helps loose strands of egg white cling to the cooking egg. It’s rare that the vinegar taste lingers, but when it does, there can be an unpleasant, unnecessary tinge of sourness in your finished dish.

Thanks to what I’m calling The Julia Child Pin Prick Method, I no longer use vinegar.  You bring the water to a full boil, prick one end of the egg with a pin and boil the egg in its shell for 10 seconds.  Then, reduce the heat to a simmer and poach as usual.

I’ve had fantastic luck with this technique, so I’m trying to spread the word.  I’ve just made a new cooking demonstration video (see above) and I’ve updated my article “How Do I Poach An Egg” with the information and included a cheat sheet which you can also find right here.

How To Poach An Egg (Without Using Vinegar)

I hope you’ll give this method a try.  Poached eggs are great on their own with some toast, but you might want to explore some interesting breakfast recipes that use poached eggs.  I’ve got that covered…

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Top O’ The Mornin’ Lads And Lassies

Green Egg Casserole For St. Patrick's Day

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, many people are looking forward to healthy (size-wise) portions of corned beef, cabbage, Irish whiskey and Guinness.  While I plan to partake in all those great things, I’m most excited about St. Patrick’s Day breakfast.  Every year, I try to find new ways to incorporate green into my omelets, pancakes, waffles and other morning dishes.

One of my St. Patrick’s Day breakfast dishes was so green that it was literally unbelievable.  I submitted a photo of my Green Egg Scramble to the popular food picture site FoodGawker and they wouldn’t accept it.  They said it “looked overproccessed.”  I can see how they thought that, but seriously, it was food coloring and green peppers – not Photoshop.

Green Egg Scramble: Too Green?

Today’s featured St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast recipe is festive but not quite as over-the-top.  It’s a basic breakfast casserole with accents of distinct green from spinach, green pepper, green onion, chopped jalapeno and a garnish of parsley.

Ingredients For Green Egg Casserole

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A Reason To Be Crabby In The Morning

Crab Meat Omelette

March 9th is National Crab Meat Day.  What better way to celebrate than with a rich, delicious Crab Meat Omelette.  It’s loaded with fresh crab, green onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic.  As with any respectable crab dish, this omelette has a generous amount of butter which is well known to bring out the sweetness and general tastiness of crab.

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Vive la French Toast: 12 Great Recipes

Vive la French Toast: 12 Great Recipes

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly prepared piece of French toast.  The outside is ever so crisp and the inside is moist and tender.   Ordinary bread suddenly becomes a playground for maple syrup and other toppings. Use extraordinary bread and you’re in for a guaranteed breakfast bonanza.

Here’s 12 of the best French toast recipes on MrBreakfast.com:

Basic French Toast

#1.  Basic French Toast

Everybody needs a good go-to French toast recipe.  This is mine.  The custard that you dip the bread into is a simple combination of milk, beaten eggs, sugar and a hint of salt.  If you’re craving no-frills, classic diner-style French toast, this is a recipe you should try.  Get the recipe here.

Crunchy French Toast

#2. Crunchy French Toast

I can still remember the first time I tried Crunchy French Toast.  It was several years ago at a restaurant in Los Angeles called Fred 62.  I took a bite and was an immediate fan.  A crisp French toast exterior is great.  A crunchy exterior is even greater.  The trick is dragging your bread through crushed corn flakes after you dip it in an egg and milk mixture. Get the recipe here.

Cinnamon Crunch French Toast

#3. Cinnamon Crunch French Toast

Once you try Crunchy French Toast (#2), you might want to explore other ways to achieve a crunchy French Toast exterior.  In this recipe, the crushed corn flakes from the previous recipe are replaced with crushed Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.  Get the recipe here.

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