In the Kitchen – Healthy Egg McMuffins

There is always a crazy rush in the morning before leaving for work between Mr. H and I. (Mostly because I sleep in until the last possible second, I am not a morning person!) Usually I end up running out of the house without breakfast and lucky to have grabbed a drink. Mr. H usually does the same, but grabs breakfast from his favorite cafe or Dunkin Donuts. Well not eating breakfast is not so great for you & buying breakfast every morning can really add up quickly so this year one of my resolutions was to try to be more prepared so the mornings go a little smoother as well as save a little money. I had seen these make-ahead healthy egg mcmuffins quite some time ago on pinterest but sort of forgot about them until last Sunday when I realized we needed breakfast for the week. The great thing about these egg mcmuffins is that they are totally customizable to your taste. I like my food more plain while Mr. H needs more than just an egg and cheese, so I made them plain and then in the morning when you reheat them Mr. H just adds what he wants. It doesn’t hurt that these make at home egg mcmuffins will also save you some calories, which I’m sure is on every resolutioners check list right now.

 

 

Ingredients:

• eggs
• english muffins
• american cheese
• salt & pepper

Directions:

1. Cook eggs in jumbo muffin tin or ramekins (regular muffin tins work but the egg will be smaller and quite thick like mine)
2. You can break the yolk so that you get a more authentic taste like McD’s
3. bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes
4. while eggs are baking separate muffins & place cheese slice on bottom muffin
5. once eggs are done you can place on top of cheese & wrap individually in tin foil.

You can add bacon, sausage or whatever you’d like at this point as well. Place them in the freezer and just defrost in the fridge the night before you want one. I place mine in the toaster oven for about 10 minutes in the morning and then add salt and pepper to taste.

 

I hope you enjoyed this quick make ahead breakfast! I have been loving bringing these to work and eating breakfast on my own time and not rushing to eat at 5 am. I can’t wait to post what I have cooking in the kitchen next week. One of my resolutions was actually for the blog! I will be introducing The Baking Challenge 2013 next weekend & explaining my thoughts behind it.

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In the Kitchen – Cinnamon Roll Casserole

Usually for Christmas Eve we have dinner at my house, but this year due to downsizing our house before we move my sister volunteered to have it at her house. This was her first time ever doing it and it was a huge success and a wonderful evening. Mr. H and I went over first thing in the morning to help out as much as possible so I volunteered to make breakfast for everyone. Of course I decided that I wanted to make breakfast for all of us the day before so I didn’t have very much planned. Thankfully I hopped on Pinterest and knew I had a few things that I could try. I made a cinnamon roll casserole that was absolutely delicious. There are definitely a few things I’d like to tweak on the recipe the next time I make it but really you can do whatever you like to this and it will still taste fantastic! Mr. H already said that he wants sliced apples on it next time.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of melted butter or baking spray
• 2 cans (12.4 oz each) Pillsbury® refrigerated cinnamon rolls with icing
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 2  teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2  teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 cup maple syrup (I did not measure this out, I just poured some over the rolls)
• Icing from cinnamon rolls

Directions:

• Heat oven to 375°F. Pour melted butter into ungreased 13×9-inch baking pan.
• Separate both cans of dough into 16 rolls; set icing aside. Cut each roll into 8 pieces; place pieces over butter in dish.
• In a medium bowl, beat eggs. Beat in cream, cinnamon and vanilla until well blended; gently pour over roll pieces.
• Bake 20 to 28 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 15 minutes.
• Place icing in microwave 15-30 seconds until warm enough to pour over rolls. (REMEMBER TO TAKE METAL TOPS OFF, I almost forgot)
• Pour icing over rolls, serve & enjoy!

 

I hope you all had a lovely holiday & a happy New Year! Follow me on Pinterest & pick what I make next!

Back in the Swing of Things

During the summer I decided that focusing on my family was more important than blogging. Unfortunately I feel like no matter what I do something always has to suffer in turn. There is just not enough time in the day for everything I want to accomplish! I’m sure there are plenty of other bloggers out there who will agree with me. I planned on returning to blogging in the fall when things slowed down, but then I got a new job that is a lot further away and I am just exhausted when I get home. The honest truth is that I haven’t truly baked or cooked anything new since my last post in July. It makes me so sad, but I just truly didn’t have the time.

I do apologize for leaving without any notice, but I do hope that you forgive me and that even though posts may not be as frequent as they used to be you will continue to stop by and read when I do get around to posting.  I have pinned so many fabulous recipes that I’ve been dying to try, but haven’t gotten around to so hopefully I will be able to start experimenting in the kitchen once again! Not cooking or baking anything new is truly very bland and I can’t wait to get out of my funk!

In the Kitchen – Banana Cupcakes

I will admit with the holiday weekend I have been very lazy in regards to the blog, I apologize! But I do have a new recipe that has been a hit with the taste testers! Mr. H has been eating at least one of these cupcakes every morning. Now I don’t think it’s a great breakfast food, but there’s no arguing with Mr. H. This weeks inspiration came from Annie Eats, which I found of course through Pinterest. I changed her recipe just a little bit & since I was being lazy this week I did not make the caramel frosting that she uses, although some day I may attempt it, I just used the whipped cream topping I used for the Pink Lemonade Pie.

In the Kitchen – Ruby Tuesday’s Pasta Salad

Better late then never right?! Sorry, but life got a little hectic this weekend with work & I wasn’t able to post this till just now!

I don’t know ’bout you guys, but I seriously just go to Ruby Tuesdays for their pasta salad at the salad bar! Everytime we go there Mr. H and I sit there trying to decipher the recipe, thankfully we now have Pinterest so I can recreate the pasta at home. I’m sure I could of googled it before and found it, but let’s be honest I’m way to lazy for that! This pasta salad is great for all the parties I’m sure everyone will be going to this summer because you can really add whatever you’d like to it!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound cooked rotini pasta
• 3/4 cup ranch dressing
• 3/4 mayo
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
• 8 ounces diced ham (I just got a fully cooked ham steak and cut that up)
• 1 cup frozen peas

Directions: 

1. Cook pasta & peas according to packaging
2. Whisk together ranch, mayo and seasoning salt.
3. Pour over rotini
4. Slowly fold ham and peas

I added more ranch to mine just because I don’t think you can taste the mayo on the one at Ruby Tuesday’s, but add whatever you’d like to your taste! Mr. H is loving that this is his lunch for the week! Definitely an A+ recipe that will be made again and again at our house. Follow me on Pinterest & help me decide what I make next In the Kitchen.

 

Side note: Mr. H went through my pinterest earlier in the week & picked Pink Lemonade Pie to be made this week for In the Kitchen, but unfortunately I had to work all weekend and forgot to pick up one of the ingredients I didn’t have so alas Pink Lemonade Pie will be brought to you next week!

In the Kitchen-PuppyCakes

This weekend at my job we had an open house and I was in charge of making cupcakes that visitors could have for free. For those of you who don’t know I work at animal hospital & of course I couldn’t just put out plain ol’ cupcakes, baking is in my blood and someday I will open my own bakery! This weeks In the Kitchen is inspired by a pin I found on Pinterest. It didn’t have any source or any instructions so I winged it all, but I have to say it came out pretty darned good!

Ingredients:

• any kind of cupcake you’d like. Since I was making so many & didn’t have much time I used a box mix
• chocolate frosting
• smarties (eyes)
• Nutter Butters (ears)
• Nilla Wafers
• Junior Mints (nose)
• Black gel frosting, you could also use an edible marker for this

Directions:

1. Bake cupcakes & let cool
2. Frost with chocolate frosting
3. Split Nutter Butter cookie in two and use as ears
4. Place Smarties & Nilla Wafer as eyes & nose
5. Put some frosting on back of Junior Mint and add to top of Nilla Wafer
6. Dot eyes with black gel & draw mouth on wafer

These cupcakes are super easy to make & would be great to make with kids! There wasn’t a single cupcake left at the end of the event and kids were coming up to me telling me they were the best cupcakes in the entire world. Also if you receive the Derry Newspaper keep an eye out as the cupcakes and a puppy should be featured!

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In the Kitchen-Baked Sweet & Sour Chicken

The husband & I are on a strict & tight budget which means we don’t get to go out to eat as much as we used to. Mr. H recently made a comment saying he was surprised we hadn’t caved yet and gotten chinese, which got me REALLY craving it of course. I had seen a recipe on Pinterest for sweet & sour chicken & decided to give it a try. This weeks recipe comes from Life as a Lofthouse.

Ingredients:

Chicken coating:

• 4 boneless chicken breasts
• salt & pepper
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil because thats all I had)

Sweet & Sour Sauce:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 tbs ketchup
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp garlic salt

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees
2. Rinse chicken breasts and then cut into cubes (this was my favorite part)
3. Season chicken with salt & pepper (I did this very sparingly)
4. Dip chicken into cornstarch & make sure covered well
5. Then dip chicken into eggs
6. In a large skillet heat oil & cook chicken until browned but not fully cooked through
7. Place chicken in greased cooking dish
8. Mix sweet & sour sauce in bowl & pour evenly over chicken
9. Bake for one hour turning chicken every 15 minutes

Now Mr. H ate the chicken along with some fried rice that I made, but I must admit that I did not eat this. The smell of the sweet & sour sauce was just too much for me & Mr. H did say that he thinks there was too much vinegar in it. The comments at the Lofthouse have people raving about it, so maybe I screwed something up? All I know is that I’m still craving chinese!

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In the Kitchen-Buffalo Flatbread Pizza

As part of this little revamp that I have going on here, I decided that once a week I would post a recent recipe that I had tried. As of right now I only have my phone to take pictures with, but hopefully soon I’ll be getting a new camera!

This weeks recipe is taken from Mama Loves Food, a favorite blog of mine that I discovered thanks to pinterest. I took her recipe & altered it slightly since I am not a buffalo fan whatsoever but the husband is. Back on Superbowl Sunday I had tried buffalo chicken dip for the first time ever & really loved it, so I took parts of that recipe & added it here.

Ingredients

• Tortillas
• cooked chicken, shredded (instead of cooking the chicken we grilled it)
• Buffalo wing sauce (we used Franks buffalo sauce for this)
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Cream Cheese ( I used light cream cheese to make this slightly lower in calories)

Directions

1. Mama Loves Food recommends toasting your tortilla before you start, of course being the impatient person I am I skipped this step. I definitely agree that the tortilla should be toasted first! It gives it that pizza feeling, otherwise trying to eat it by slice will be VERY hard to do.
2. Then I put a layer of cream cheese over the whole tortilla. I did this because it will help with the hotness of the buffalo sauce. You can skip this step if you want, but it did make it super creamy!
3. Then you are going to spread a layer of the buffalo sauce over the cream cheese. Top with shredded chicken and really lay on the cheese!
4. The original recipe says to put back in the toaster until the cheese is completely melted, but I put mine in the oven. Either way works!
5. ENJOY!

I got a little too excited while making this and forgot to take pictures of most of the steps, but I think you all get the idea of how to make this recipe.

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