Breakfast-in-a-cup

Did you know you can bake most ceramic coffee cups? Rule of thumb, if they're dishwasher safe, they're probably oven safe too.

I love stuff-in-a-cup. You can make cookies,  cakes, mini - lasagnas.. All sorts of things. This is a technique I suggested to a friend who's overseas and doesn't have an oven- microwave works just as well.

For a quick breakfast all week, you can prepare these, minus the baking part, cover with plastic and keep them in the fridge for a couple of days in advance.

Anyhow, with this breakfast:

Layer toast, ham, cheese and egg in a cup.
Splash over about a tablespoon of milk or cream or half-and-half.
Bake at 350 for 15-20 min.

Drinky Drink: Strawberries and Creme

Hey, its Friday. Time for drinky-drinks!
This tastes like a strawberrys and cream popsicle with booze.

4 oz Amarula creme liqueur (or Bailey's works too)
1-2 tablespoons c macerated strawberries
1 large ice cube

To make the strawberries - chop about 4 berries into small pieces and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Cover and refrigerate about an hour or so, until it makes its own sauce.

Pour liqueur into small glass, spoon in berries and drop in ice.

Berries soak up the alcohol over time, sip slowly :)

Pumpkin and Apple Butters

I know it's about as far from fall as you can get. But with the seasons unable to make up their minds of late, going from hot to cold every few days, its good to have something warm every now and again.
A friend gave me some pumpkin she'd canned last fall and also some yummy home made apple sauce, so I decided to make a nice butter.
These are basically compound butters, which is a fancy way of saying its butter with flavorings mixed in.

So easy... even a caveman.. yeah.

Pumpkin Butter

1/2 c pumpkin puree
1/2 c sugar or honey
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 stick of butter, room temperature

In a pan, heat the pumpkin, sugar and spices on low heat for about 5 minutes, until everything is soft and combined. Let cool until its warm but not too hot to touch.
Stir in the softened butter.
Cover and keep refrigerated.


Apple Butter
The apple was already spiced so I just stirred in a stick of softened butter.
But you can make your own from a cinnamon-flavor applesauce:

1/2 c cinnamon apple sauce
1 stick softened butter

Stir together until combined. Cover and keep refrigerated.


There are all sorts of uses for flavored butters. Stir them into your morning oatmeal. Pour over ice cream. Stir it into cookie mix.
My favorite is simply spreading on toast:

Home Made Granola Protien Bars and Cinnamon Citrus Banana Chips

Make granola from cereal instead of buying all the ingredients individually. This box of granola cereal cost me about 3.50 and will yeild you about a dozen granola bars (or more if you cut them smaller). The same price might get you 4-6 bars in a box. This is pretty quick and easy, why not give it a try?
These are delicious and have all sorts of protein in them: whole grains, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and more.

Home Made Granola Protein Bars

1 box  Post Great Grains cereal 

1 cup honey

2 tablespoons natural peanut butter

1 bar of dark chocolate , melted

Spread cereal thinly on a large cookie sheet, bake at 350 for about 10 minutes, until toasted. 

Put honey and peanut butter in a bowl and microwave 15 seconds or until warm enough to mix. 

Dump toasted cereal in a big bowl, mix in honey mixture until incorporated into all the cereal.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment and spread mixture into the pan. Cook at 350 for about 10 more minutes, then take it out and let cool for about 30 minutes. 

Cut, brush with melted chocolate (optional). 

Banana chips! SO CHEAP! SO YUMMY! I made about a cup of banana chips from one banana.

These guys are pretty expensive in the store, but cost practically nothing to make at home.

Lemon juice keeps them from getting brown and the cinnamon makes a great flavor with banana (leave it out if you dont like it though). 

From: Momables Recipe 

Cinnamon Citrus Banana Chips

1 Banana

1 tsp cinnamon

Small Pinch of salt

1-2 tablespoons Lemon Juice

Slice banana thinly, about 1/8", not thick, but not see-through-thin.

Lay out each piece on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Mix lemon juice, salt and cinnamon and brush on each banana slice. 

Bake in a 200 degree oven for 2 hours or until they're hard. Let cool and store in a container.

Slow-Cooker Black Bean Soup

This spring can't decide if it wants to be Spring or Winter. Last week it was 80 degrees and today its 40 with a chance of snow. Go home, Winter, you're drunk.
So its cold, time to bring back something nice and warm - soup! This is an easy, dump-and-go, slow-cooker recipe.


Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup

1 15oz can black beans
2 c broth (i used turkey)
2/3 c uncooked rice
1 onion, sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 chipotles in adobo, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp Goya Sazonador Total mixed seasoning

Dump everything in the pot and turn on low for 4 hours.
Eat this with crusty bread or tortilla chips.

Tip: 

• Use less chipotles if you want less heat. I'd say 1 is good for mild, 2 for medium, 3 for hot. 
• Use 1 cup of broth to make thicker, spoon into tortilla shells for quick taco dinner. Top with avocado and sour cream.
• Vegetable broth makes this 100% vegetarian. 
• Add 1 chicken breast. At the end of cooking, take the chicken out, shred it with two forks and stir meat back into pot. 
• Dump in a can of corn or 1 cup chopped carrots.

Bacon and Egg Thingies

Thanks to my facebook friends who posted this article, my fiance and I had a lovely brunch today.
You may have seen these Bacon and Egg Cups on pinterest or elsewise on the internet. If you havn't made them yet, here they are, super simple.
Note: I've seen these without the bread, but I prefer with the bread. It soaks up the juice from the bacon and the egg and keeps everything together in one piece. 



Step 1: Bread Disks
I cut these out using a baby food jar. I got two circles out of each slice of bread, then mushed up the scraps to cut with my jar too. It doesn't really matter what  it looks like, the bread is there for stability, so you can just you can just mush up pieces of bread to fit.
For 10 cups, I only used 2 slices of bread.






Step 2: Bacon
Wind bacon around the bread, along the wall of the cup. 1 slice of bacon per cup.
















Step 3: Egg and Season
Crack an egg in the middle of each bacon-cup, sprinkle on a dash of seasoning. I like to use Goya All Purpose seasoning. Garlic salt is great or just salt and pepper, whatever you like.

Step 4: Bake and Eat

Bake at 400 degrees (F) for about 20 minutes. 

 Variations:

• Add in veggies before you crack in the egg.
• Fry the bacon about 1/2 way before putting in the cups, for crispier bacon.

Cold Brew Iced Coffee - Simple.

Now that it's finally starting to get warm out, its time for iced coffee! I live on this stuff most of the year actually.

This stuff is wonderful for iced coffee because you don't get the bitterness of hot-brew, plus you don't have to use a lot of it so its super thrifty!

There's as many ways to make iced coffee as there are people who make it. This is my way. Its easy and it tastes amazing.

Once you dump everything into the container, it has to brew at least 8 hours. I leave mine over night. But if you make a large batch once a week, its quick to just throw together a glass of coffee when you want it. In that sense, it can be faster than waiting for coffee to brew in the pot. 

What you get is basically a concentrated coffee. Drinking it straight is a bit like sipping espresso. 

And did I mention it tastes amazing? It does.

Step one: 

Get a French Press. 

Believe me when I say I am not into useless, one-job, gadgets. Waste of money. Waste of space.

But the way I drink coffee, this thing actually has come in very handy. 

They are not expensive, probably less than you'll pay for a coffee pot. Definitely less than you'll pay for a week or two's worth of Starbucks.  

I paid $40 for this guy on Amazon. But that is really a lot, I kind of splurged on mine. Starbucks sells them for less than $20 and you can find them at other coffee shops as well as big stores like Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and even Walmart.

The point of a french press is that its a container with a mesh-lined plunger, so it separates liquid and whatever you are brewing easily. No electricity. No buttons or whistles. 

Step two: 

Dump in Coffee and Water. 

My press is 32 ounces, so I'll dump in about 1/2 pound of coffee (that's 1/2 of a bag) and fill it up the rest of the way with water. Put the lid on and leave it on the counter over night. 

In the morning, push the plunger down to separate the grounds and liquid. That liquid is glorious coffee concentrate. Strain that into another container and refrigerate. Probably keeps at least two weeks but mine never last more than a few days.
The great thing about cold brew is that it doesn't get stale after a few hours, like coffee brewed with hot water. 

Step three:

Brew 8+ hours, Make coffee.

Fill glass with ice.
Fill halfway with coffee.
Fill the rest of the way with half-and-half + a pump of flavor syrup. 

Variations: Treat it like you would espresso or make your favorite iced coffee beverages: 

Iced Caramel Macchiato:

One Pump caramel syrup + Drizzle Caramel Sauce + Fill glass with ice +  Fill 1/2 glass with coffee + Fill the rest of the way with milk or half-and-half + Top with caramel sauce.

Vietnamese Iced Coffee:
Fill glass with ice + Pour about 1 cup (8oz) coffee over top + stir in 1-2 tablespoons Sweetened Condensed Milk

Check out this easy Cinnamon Dulce Syrup from My Frugal Adventures.