I know I’ve mentioned on here before that  we are a cold cereal for breakfast kind of family, but today I decided to bend my own rules. I can cook breakfast if I want! No one can stop me! Let them try! I’ll just…I’ll just…I’ll go back to bed and snuggle in under the warm covers, that’s what I’ll do!

Sadly, no one tried to stop me from making breakfast this morning. I really could have used the extra sleep, darn it.

Ah, well. These cinnamon squares woke me right up. They’re full of sugar, you know. In fact, the more I think about it, these probably aren’t even breakfast food. When I came across the recipe I thought “ooh, these will be just like cinnamon rolls, minus all the work!” Well, looking back over the recipe, I’m pretty sure these are supposed to be served for dessert. Whoops!

These really tasted like a brownie made with cinnamon instead of chocolate. They were darn good, is what I’m saying.

These were quick to come together, forming a crumbly dough that you press into a cookie sheet. I love simple recipes like these.

I pressed the dough into the pan with my finger tips and then smoothed it out with the back of spoon. Brush the dough with egg whites and sprinkle with some chopped nuts. It doesn’t get simpler than that.

You bake these for about 20 minutes, let them cool, and then enjoy your breakfast. Okay, okay. You can serve these for dessert if you insist. My kids were pretty happy with me this morning, though.

Cinnamon Squares
Recipe adapted from Betty Crocker

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 egg, seperated
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 15×10x1 -inch pan. Beat together sugar, butter, and egg yolk until creamy. Mix in flour and cinnamon. Press dough in pan. Beat egg white and water together until frothy and brush over the top of the dough. Sprinkle with nuts. Bake for 18-23 minutes or until light brown. Cut into squares immediately. Cool in pan on wire rack for 30 minutes.

When I think of coffee cake, I think of a crumbly cake, preferably with a streusel topping, that you serve with coffee (much like this one).  I do not think of pastry dough and rolling pins, but this Raspberry Coffee Cake has shown me the light. The crust is so flaky and tender and the inside is just oozing with red raspberry preserves. It’s a raspberry lovers dream come true, but you could also make this with just about any other type of preserve you wanted. You could also use a seedless raspberry jam (which I usually buy, but my husband did the shopping this week) if you are scared of all the seeds.

The dough is a mixture of flour, butter, cream cheese, milk, a little salt, and some baking powder. It’s so simple! You just cut in the butter and cream cheese, pour in the milk and give it a quick mix, and then knead it just a tiny bit until you have this scraggly lump of dough.

Don’t be intimadated by this pastry dough! I had zero problems and the dough came out perfectly light and flaky! If the girl who relies on store bought pie crusts can master this dough, so can you.

Roll the dough out, transfer it to a baking sheet, and spread the middle third of the dough with preserves.

Slice the outer thirds of the dough diagonally, careful to leave a bit of space around the preserves, in about one to two inch thick strips.  Start on one side of the dough and flip one strip of dough over on top of the preserves.  Switch sides and just keep alternating back and forth until all the strips of dough are covering the preserves and you have a fancy braided looking coffee cake.

This bakes in just 12 to 15 minutes.

I forgot to line my pan with wax paper and my kids are really going to hate me for that when it comes time to wash the dishes. Oh well, I’ll just give them a big chunk of this as an apology.

Whip up some powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla and drizzle it over the top. You won’t regret it.

Mm! Perfect for breakfast, brunch, with coffee, or as a dessert. Heck, I might even eat this for dinner.

Raspberry Coffee Cake
Recipe from The Luna Cafe

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter (recipe says unsalted, but I used salted butter)
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup raspberry preserves (or preserves of your choice)

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Cut in the butter and cream cheese. Pour on the milk and stir just until combined. Turn out on a floured surface and knead lightly 4 or 5 times. Do not overwork the dough! Roll the dough out on wax paper into an 8 x 12 inch rectangle. Transfer dough to a lightly greased (or wax paper lined) baking sheet. Mark the dough with a knife lengthwise into thirds. Spread preserves down the center third of the dough. Make diagonal cuts every couple of  inches on the outer thirds of the dough. Do nut cut into the preserves. Fold strips over the preserves, first from one side, then from other until you have folded over all the strips of dough. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes, until dough is fully cooked and lightly browned on top.

Icing

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla

Stir together and drizzle over the coffee cake.

(The recipe posted on Luna Cafe does show how to fold the dough over to make the braided shape if you need a visual!)

I’m going to make an educated guess here and say that you love muffins. I mean, come on. Everyone loves muffins! They are easy to make, delicious to eat, portable, freezable, and delectable. Delectable. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before. I just really needed another “-able” word to round out that sentence. Forgive me.

Now, these muffins. I came across them in an old Taste Of Home magazine and I ripped the recipe out and stuck it in my To Bake Soon pile. All of my recipes are in the To Bake Soon pile. I don’t bother ripping out recipes that I don’t want to make as soon as possible. I’m wild and crazy that way.

Enough about the piles of papers littering my house, let’s discuss these muffins.

They did what every muffin should do, and that’s bake up nice and tall. I hate when I make a muffin that doesn’t achieve that beautiful round top. Flat muffins are bad, man. My kids loved these muffins, but I had one complaint. The orange zest in them gave them a bit of an odd flavor. Next time (and, yes, there will be a next time) I will make these without the orange zest. These were still very good and I still ate more of them than I care to tell you, I just found myself wishing I had left the orange zest out. If you choose to make these (and why wouldn’t you?), go ahead and add the orange zest if it sounds good, or leave it out if it doesn’t. The world will keep on spinning either way. True story.

This muffin recipe mixes up like most others, wet ingredients and then dry. Easy peasy.

I was supposed to end up with twelve muffins, but I had enough batter for twelve regular muffins and twelve somewhat skimpy mini-muffins.

The streusel topping is just flour, brown sugar, and butter. Cut the butter into the flour and brown sugar and sprinkle a little (or a lot) of the topping on the muffins before baking. You could also add a bit of rolled oats to the streusel topping if you want to feel all healthy and virtuous.

Bake these guys for 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees. Your house will smell lovely.

Let the muffins cool on a wire rack and try your darnedest to keep your kids away from the streusel topping. Something about streusel topping just begs kids to pick it off.

Look at how tall and round and perfectly muffin-like they are?

I love muffin-like muffins. Am I still even making sense? Did I eat too many muffins and now I’m in the midst of some sort of pumpkin muffin overload and it’s causing me to type things without even caring if they make sense?

It’s totally possible.

Pumpkin Steusel Muffins
adapted from Taste Of Home

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2/3 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

STREUSEL TOPPING:

• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cold butter
• 2 tablespoons rolled oats (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Cream together butter and sugars until creamy. Beat in pumpkin, buttermilk, eggs, molasses, and orange peel. Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl and mix into the batter. Stir just until combined. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin tins 2/3 full of batter.

For topping, combine the flour and brown sugar and oats (if using)  in a small bowl. Cut in butter until the mixture is crumbly. Spoon streusel topping over the muffins and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Enjoy!

I have a confession to make. Before I do, please promise me that you won’t shun me. Are you ready?

My children eat cold cereal for breakfast every morning. No, I mean EVERY morning. And they aren’t eating the healthy shredded wheat crap either. They eat the Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes and Sugar Filled Sugar Lumps kind of cereal.

Go ahead, say it with me: Bad mom!

I can’t help it. They like instat oatmeal, but it has more sugar than most of the cereal they eat. They like bacon but that’s not exactly a health food. They love fruit, but not for breakfast. They won’t eat eggs unless they’re in cookie batter.

I’m pretty much okay with it, but sometimes I want to eat breakfast myself and I really don’t do cereal. I like cinnamon rolls and french toast and chocolate donuts and, wait a minute! I think I see where they learned their poor breakfast habits!

Let’s just move on from my bad examples and I’ll show you the sugar donut muffins I baked up for breakfast the other day. You’re gonna love these. They taste just like a cake donut, but they are baked in muffin tins. After they bake you pop them out of the muffin tin, dunk ‘em in melted butter and then roll ‘em around in a cinnamon and sugar mixture. They were so delicious warm, but the next morning? They were like little bites of heaven. The butter had really soaked in and the flavor was much more pronounced. Oh my. You’re really going to need to try these, both because they are delicious and because they are ridiculously simple.

Sugar Donut Muffins
yield: 24 mini-muffins or 12 regular muffins
Recipe from Baking Bites

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking power
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup milk (low fat is fine)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons melted butter, for dipping
• 1/2 cup sugar, for rolling
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon, for rolling

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and grease muffin tin with cooking spray. In a large bowl beat together sugar and egg until light and fluffy. In small bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Pour into sugar/egg mixture and stir until well combined. Add in vegetable oil, milk, and vanilla extract. Mix well. Pour into muffin tins, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for about 15 minutes until tester comes out clean.

Melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave. Stir together sugar and cinnamon in another small bowl. When the muffins are done allow to cool for a few minutes, until you are able to handle them easily. Dunk the tops of the muffins in the melted butter and then the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

My husband is not one to get excited about food. I know. I don’t know what I was thinking when I married him. I mean, IT’S FOOD. What’s not to get excited about, right?

There are three foods that I have heard him talk about with any sort of excitement. Number one is the steak we had on our wedding night. It was a filet mignon and it had a big blob of butter on top. He loved that steak. He still dreams about it.  Number two is sausage egg rolls. He loves those things. They are a pain in the butt to make though, so he doesn’t get them often. Number three is a cheeseball. He likes cheeseballs. He’s a simple man.

The other day I made this scrumptious banana coffee cake with chocolate chip streusel and do you know what my husband said about it? HE TOLD ME I SHOULD SELL THE STUFF. Sell it. For money. Because it’s just that good. This is quite possibly the nicest thing my husband has ever said about my food before.

I’m certainly not going to start selling the stuff though, so why don’t you make your own and tell me what you think?

The first thing we need to do is preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

And then butter an 8×8 baking dish. And don’t worry. I won’t start carrying on about my love of butter.

For the streusel topping, we’re going to get a small bowl and dump in 1 cup of chocolate chips, 2/3 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.

Stir it all up and then spend a couple seconds picking out chunks of brown sugar and eating them. I like chunks of brown sugar.

Set your streusel topping aside before you eat all the brown sugar.

At this point the recipe says you should sift together 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. But, me? I don’t DO sifting. I dump everything in the bowl and then I stir it. That’s good enough, right?

Take a fork and mash your bananas. I only had two bananas. The recipe called for three. I’m sure this would be tastier with three bananas but I didn’t let it ruin my day.

Next, beat together 1 stick of softened butter, 3/4 cup of sugar and 1 large egg until the mixture is nice and creamy. Take a lick. Go ahead. I dare you.

Add in your mashed bananas and either 3 tablespoons of buttermilk OR 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt. (I ended up using 5 tablespoons yogurt to make up for the missing banana.)

Slowly add in your flour mixture and blend well.

Spread half of this mixture into your 8×8 baking dish and sprinkle half of the streusel topping on top. Lather, rinse, and repeat with the remaining batter and streusel. Er, maybe just repeat.

(I forgot to take a picture of the layering process. Please forgive me.)

If you have a short person nearby, let her poke at the topping and listen attentively while she whines about her tummy grumbling. Tell her that if she doesn’t quit whining you’ll toss her in the oven along with the coffee cake.

Bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let this cool for just as long as you can stand it.

Don’t be like me and get impatient. Don’t take a bite right out of the whole cake. It’s not polite. It’s rude. You’ll regret it.

Oh, who am I kidding? You won’t regret it.

Oh, yum.

Banana Coffee Cake with Chocolate Streusel Topping

Adapted from here and here.

• 1  cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 2/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/3 cups mashed very ripe bananas (about 3 large)
• 3 tablespoons buttermilk or plain yogurt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and an 8×8 inch baking dish.

Stir chocolate chips, brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon in small bowl until well blended; set streusel aside.

Sift together (or just STIR TOGETHER) all purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter, and egg in a large bowl until fluffy. Mix in mashed bananas and buttermilk or yogurt. Add flour mixture and blend well.

Spread half of batter in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with half of streusel. Repeat with remaining batter and streusel. Bake coffee cake until toothipick inserted in center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool for about 10 minutes and serve.