Egg Muffins

Hubby and I have been talking about getting back into the habit of working out. For him, it makes sense to do it in the mornings at the little gym in his building at work. This got us to talking about streamlining his morning routine and ways we could make it quicker and easier.

Then I remembered this Pinterest find, egg muffins. From what I could tell on the site, they would make for a quick, easy, hot breakfast that could be kept in the fridge and heated up last minute.

So I made them!

I started off with some breakfast sausage. Don’t worry, I didn’t use all of this!

I squeezed three links out of their casings and into a hot skillet.

I used my meat-breaker-upper to crumble the sausage as it cooked.

While it was cooking, I made the educated decision to incorporate some leftover roasted baby red potatoes from earlier in the week.

As the sausage sautéed, I used a paring knife to quickly cut up the potatoes into much smaller chunks. Since they were cooked but cold, this was super easy.

Then I prepared my muffin cups. The original blogger prefers silicone cups, but I didn’t have those. Her second best was paper liners, but I didn’t see the point of that with egg muffins. So I just used cooking spray to heavily grease a nonstick muffin tin.

And brushed it around just to make doubly sure that it was evenly coated.

That probably wasn’t necessary since I was using pork sausage, but oh well. I went ahead and put some sausage into each of the 12 muffin cups.

Topped by some of the chopped potato.

Then I got out some grated cheese and put that in.

This last step attracted a silent but intense observer. He loves cheese and is always hopeful that I will indulge him, though he knows better than to beg.

Anyway…

Next, I chopped up some green onions.

And put those on top of the cheese.

Next, I cracked a dozen eggs into a big bowl.

After whisking, I added some salt.

And some dried parsley. I would, have preferred some chives, but Wegman’s was out.

After mixing all that up, I poured the egg mixture carefully into each of the muffin cups, topping everything that was already in there.

Then I put it into the oven, which I had preheated to 375 degrees.

My buddy practiced his wistful face while we waited for them to cook.

25 minutes later, they were looking beautiful!

I believe my exact words, as I pulled them out of the oven, were, “Holy awesome!”

They had definitely done some rising in the oven.

They came out of the muffin tin super easily, luckily.

Oh my.

Light and airy, since they were baked.

Pretty good. Not knock-your-socks-off good, but certainly better than simple fried eggs or something light that. Could have used more salt, but other than that, a pretty good breakfast for the next few days!

They’re quite versatile. I could have added all kinds of veggies or meats or whatever I wanted, and so I probably will next time. It’ll keep us from getting bored, I think.

 

EDIT: I made these again a week or two later. I made some changes. (1) Instead of breakfast sausage, I used chopped ham. (2) Instead of potatoes, I used chopped and sauteed peppers (red and green). (3) Instead of salting the entire egg mixture, I salted each muffin once the egg was poured. (4) I added chives, since Wegman’s had them this time.

They were better this second time! They were more flavorful all around – better seasoned and more flavors than before. I recommend these changes!

Mini Blueberry Muffins

I was perusing the fridge yesterday, looking for something to have for lunch, when I spotted some fresh blueberries. I decided on the spot that I needed to make blueberry muffins after lunch.

I’ve blogged healthy, bran-filled blueberry muffins before, but this time I was more interested in the yummy factor.

I noticed in my review of the cupboards that my SIL has both mini-muffin liners and a pan to fit them. Somehow I needed to use these instead of the normal ones that she also had. I like to live on the edge.

I made a lot of changes to the base recipe, partly because reviewers called for changes and partly because I did, too. For one thing, the original recipe pretty much had you mix everything together in a big bowl. I split mine into wet and dry, then created a well in the dry ingredients and poured the wet in. I’ll get to that.

First, here are my wet ingredients. Let’s start with milk.

And an egg.

A bit of vegetable oil.

And although the recipe didn’t call for this, a teaspoon of vanilla.

Okay, now onto the dry ingredients. Some flour…

And then I decided not to take pictures that would look pretty much exactly the same, so here’s everything all mixed together and shaped into a well. This includes flour, baking powder, and sugar (which I doubled), as well as a bit of salt (not in the original recipe).

Pour in the wet ingredients

And then lightly mix it. You only want to get everything moistened and then stop.

Then I remembered that I wanted to add some cinnamon. So I did.

Finally, the blueberries. I doubled this amount, and rightfully so!

Very gently, fold in the blueberries.

Put a little bit of the batter into each little mini muffin cup.

I had this much left over. Apparently I’d have to do two batches.

One of the first reviewers on the original recipe commented that she used a mini-muffin tin instead of a regular one, while also complaining that they turned out dry. I think she’s an idiot because she didn’t think to reduce the cooking time. In addition to cutting the temperature (400 seemed excessive, so I went with 375), I cut the time from 20 minutes down to 8. They ended up needing about 10 minutes and then looked like this.

I scooped them out of the pan with a spoon to cool on a wire rack while I made another batch.

The biggest complaint from reviewers was that these were bland (thus my additions of vanilla, salt, and cinnamon, and doubling the sugar and blueberries). I can’t decide if that was enough. When I ate these, my focus was entirely on the warm, flavorful blueberries bursting in my mouth as I bit into them. So delicious!

Personally, my only complaint is that I felt like a piggy when I had 4 for breakfast the next day.

I sure enjoyed them.Here's the recipe for my version. I’ll also put a link in the “recipes” tab.