As an early (not by choice) riser, I’m a big believer in having a good breakfast to start my day. As much as I would love to have a proper sit down breakfast each morning, I’m usually strapped for time. Once I get up, shower, get dressed, pack my lunch and make sure I have everything ready for the day (such as my gym bag for days I hit the gym after work), I usually only have about 10 minutes to make/eat my breakfast and enjoy a cup of coffee before I catch my 7:03am bus (ugh) to the subway station.
Since my morning time is so limited, I’m also a big believer in getting as much ready as I can the night before. I usually get my lunch ready while I’m making supper and I try to pack my gym bag while I’m brushing my teeth. Now that the weather is starting to warm up, I’ve started to re-introduce yogurt overnight oats into my breakfast routine. This saves even more time because all the prep happens the night before and I get to wake up to ready-made, cold and creamy oats that I can decorate with different nuts, fruit and spices. The great thing is that overnight oats are super portable and on days where I’m really running late, they can be made in a mason jar or portable Tupperware container and thrown in my bag with a spoon. A nice, healthy, and cheaper alternative to waiting in line at Tim Horton’s every morning!
It’s amazing how the weather can affect one’s mood. The off-and-on winter/spring weather has been frustrating enough, but nothing dampens my spirits more than waking up in the morning, looking out the window and seeing nothing but grey skies. No sun, no rain, just bleak, somber skies. Even though it’s Good Friday and we have no intentions of doing a lot today, it’s sort of off putting.
So naturally, after I was greeted by grey skies this morning, I knew I had to bake something special for breakfast and these skor toffee scones were just the answer. I splurged and used cake flour in place of some of the flour and butter in place of my usual margarine. Instead of sugar, I substituted pure maple syrup. Right before I baked the scones though, I brushed them with a bit of milk and sprinkled a little brown sugar. I’m pretty sure that last part is the secret to all scone-making because the result was flaky, savoury scones with a delicious crunchy sugar top. Sometimes I can’t believe that in the three years I’ve been blogging, I only have six scone recipes. Note to self – make scones more often.
Ever since I purchased my new, fancy-pants 11-cup Cuisinart food processor, I’ve been on a chopping, slicing and pureeing crazy spree. In the last two weeks, I’ve made falafels, granola (3 batches), homemade veggie burgers and chopped a variety of vegetables for homemade soup. To say that this upgrade was a well-needed purchase is an understatement and I’m thrilled now to be able to make things that my previous 3-cup little baby processor couldn’t handle. A few of the items on my to-make list include hummus, homemade peanut butter for Trevor and another batch of these quinoa brownies.
Some of you may remember last summer when I made my chocolate espresso quinoa cake and if you compare the ingredients list from that cake to these brownies, they don’t appear to be that different from each other. Where I think these brownies really shine is the crazy addictive chocolate date icing. Rather than using powdered sugar, I used medjool dates, which are naturally sweet and full of potassium and fiber. Ever since I had my first medjool date, I’ve had to keep a package hidden somewhere in my fridge for when I’m craving something sweet.
Every year, without fail, I get the spring cleaning bug and nothing in our apartment is safe. The weather is only just starting to warm up now, but I’ve already completed our bedroom closets, bathroom storage, the DVD/bookshelves and our kitchen cupboards. Recently, I had tackled the fridge and freezer and uncovered about a dozen half-bags of chocolate chips, flavoured baking chips, Hershey chocolates, Skor bar bits and a variety of chopped nuts. At first, I was very tempted to just snack on what little was left in each bag, but as I gradually discovered more and more bags, I realized that I had enough to make a decent “everything” cookie recipe.
“Everything” cookies go by many names. Loaded cookies, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cookies, and even the somewhat questionable “garbage can cookies.” But no matter what you want to call them, everything cookies are a great way to get rid of, well, everything in your pantry. I ended up saving the chopped nuts to make homemade granola (my currently breakfast addiction), but below is what I added to my cookies.
If you take a look through my recipe archive, you’ll notice that I tend to favour certain ingredients more than others. Besides fruit, some of my most common baking ingredients are chocolate, espresso and peanut butter. Baking with chocolate is obvious because chocolate anything is delicious. If chocolate is the main ingredient, I’ll add a quick dash of espresso to enhance the delicious chocolatey flavour. Peanut butter is a common baking staple because we always have some in our kitchen and Trevor is a fan of anything I make with peanut butter. Plus peanut butter and chocolate together rocks.
Speaking of peanut butter and chocolate, I’d been meaning to make this recipe for a while now, but until recently I was so convinced that I had already posted a peanut butter chocolate banana bread recipe. Does this happen to anyone else? A couple months ago, I had planned on making white chocolate cranberry cookies only to realize that I had already posted a recipe back in 2011. Since then, whenever I have a recipe in mind, I panic and search my archives to make sure I’m not accidentally repeating myself.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
