Breakfast

We eat a lot of pancakes in our house (largely because it’s something all three of my kids will actually eat!). Saturday morning pancake breakfasts are a tradition we’ve all come to love, and maybe your family is the same way. As much as we love our standard pancakes, though, it’d be nice to upgrade our breakfasts to something a little more special. And thanks to my friends over at FamilyFun magazine, I have six great pancake recipes to share with you – and none of them use more than 5 ingredients. Just take your standard dry pancake mix (our favorite is this Kerbey Lane buttermilk mix) and cook the pancakes as you normally would after you’ve added the extra ingredients listed for the recipe you choose.

Easy and delicious? Love it!

CHOCOLATE PEANUT-BUTTER CHIP

• 1 cup pancake mix
• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 Tbs. sugar
• ? cup peanut-butter chips
• Water

RED VELVET

• 1 cup pancake mix
• 2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa
• 2 tsp. red food coloring
• water

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We’re big breakfast lovers in our house, so for this week’s Mini Chef Mondays I decided to do a twist on a classic breakfast with french toast “muffins.” You could modify these to be a breakfast casserole, but I like the idea of something small, and I figured the kids would like it too!

French Toast “Muffins”

“Muffin” Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 loaf French bread, torn into bite-size pieces
• 2 cups milk
• 6 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• Pinch of salt

Crumble Topping Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup cold butter
• 1 cup flour

Directions:

1. Melt butter in microwave and mix with brown sugar. Put 1/2 tablespoon in the bottom of each of 24 cupcake liners (greaseproof liners work best!). Fill each liner with bread pieces (not packed tightly).
2. In a separate bowl, mix milk, eggs, cinnamon, granulated sugar, and salt. Pour a little less than 1/4 cup of this mixture over the top of each liner.
3. Make the crumble – use two knives or a pastry cutter to mix the butter and other ingredients together, then sprinkle over top of each muffin.
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 450 degrees F, or until the tops of the muffins are caramelized and the centers are cooked through.
5. Optional: You can serve these with syrup, or can make a simple glaze of cream cheese, powdered sugar, and milk to serve drizzled on top.

Now, if you’re familiar with my Mini Chef Mondays posts, you know what comes next – step-by-step photos to use with your little one!

First, get a loaf of good French bread. We taste-tested our loaf several times to make sure it was high-quality enough. So, although the recipe says to use a whole loaf, we used a loaf minus probably 3 slices total.

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Note: I received the blender to facilitate my review. I was not compensated monetarily for this post. All opinions are honest and are entirely my own.

Now that the school year is underway, we’re fully immersed in what I like to call the wake-and-dash routine.

This involves getting up, waking the kids up, taking the dogs out, showering and getting ready, making sure the kids have breakfast, making sure the kids are getting dressed, making lunches for the kids… you get the picture, and if you’re a parent you know all too well how much of your morning routine is taken up with thinking about the kids.

As a result, I’m often out the door with no thought of breakfast for myself, and I end up snacking on things not ideal for starting the day. I’m thrilled, though, to discover the Black and Decker BL1820SG-P Fusion Blade Digital Blender to help save my mornings.

At first glance, this might seem like your typical blender; and in reviewing it as just that, it stands up pretty great against competitors. I love the glass vessel and the plastic casing around the bottom that slips over the base and stabilizes everything. I’d buy this blender just for having a good blender.

Black & Decker takes it one step further, though – or several steps, really – by providing pre-programmed buttons and a personal smoothie jar, too. Love it!

If you’ve ever made a smoothie before, you know that you typically have to start and stop the blender several times, jostling things around to get it well-blended. No more! Just push the “smoothie program” button and you can walk away and finish one of the other million things you need to do.

If you watch the video above, you can see how simple it is – and how well it works – but you can also see my before & after pics below. I just threw in some frozen fruit and some orange juice, and ended up with a great smoothie ready to take with me!

I love that once you’re done blending you can just put on the new lid and you’re ready to go; you don’t have to try to pour it into a different cup, potentially spilling it all over the counter (ahem… speaking from experience), and you don’t have to bring a cup with no lid in the car, accidentally splattering some of the smoothie in the car (ahem… again… speaking from experience).

You can find the Black & Decker digital blender on Amazon or at Target and other retailers. You’ll love it for making your busy mornings a little less crazy, and for all the other things you can make with this high-quality blender, too.

We eat a lot of sandwiches around our house, especially now that I’m trying to make a concerted effort to eat healthier. It can be easy to fall into the rut of eating the same sandwich over and over again… but I’ve been inspired to try something new with Hungry Girl Flatouts.

One thing I love about the flatouts is that they’re available at Walgreens, so I could run in quickly and buy ingredients without having to make a long trip to the grocery store. Of course, these are popular… the first Walgreens I went to was ALL OUT!

I wasn’t about to give up, though, so I went over to another location and found some – yay!

There are several flavors available, but our store only had the rosemary & olive oil variety. I happen to love rosemary, so that was fine by me! I was looking forward to adding new flavors, and rosemary isn’t something I typically get with a standard-fare sandwich.

Once I had my flatouts, I went ahead and grabbed some other ingredients for my sandwiches. I had never realized before how many staple items are available at Walgreens, by the way – I was able to find quite a few things I needed!

We decided to try out a couple of different ideas for sandwiches, to add a little creativity and variety. It was a lot of fun, and I think we came up with some really tasty creations.

First, we came up with a basil chicken sandwich – SO easy and packed with flavor. The ingredients for this sandwich are:

• Rosemary & Olive Oil Flatouts
• Mayo
• Basil
• Deli Chicken
• Tomato Paste
• Shredded Italian blend cheese
• Italian Seasoning

First I made a quick basil aioli by blending olive oil mayonnaise with fresh basil:

I spread that on the flatouts, then topped with cheese and then the chicken:

Then, for a little extra punch, I spread a thin layer of tomato paste and sprinkled some Italian seasoning.

That’s it – SO easy! You could add some baby greens too, if you wanted, but I think it was really good as it was:

Then we decided to make a hot sandwich. Since we LOVE breakfast for dinner, it was only fitting that we made a breakfast sandwich. We added scrambled eggs and bacon, and for a twist we used goat cheese spread on the flatouts. Yum!

I popped the sandwiches in the toaster oven to warm everything through, and give the flatouts a nice crunchy finish:

We loved these! Brian said the crunchiness of the toasted flatout really added to the sandwich, and the goat cheese was a nice, unique flavor with the eggs, bacon, and rosemary from the bread.

Note: I am participating in the Flatouts program with The Motherhood. I have been compensated for my time.  All thoughts and opinions are honest and are my own.