Walnut Avenue Cafe - Santa Cruz, CA

Awesome mocha - especially after the 5 hour flight delay!

Our first day in the Bay Area we stopped by Santa Cruz to look around and have some breakfast. Walnut Avenue Cafe was just what we needed after a flight delay the night before and not a lot of sleep. Strangely enough, we saw our seatmate from the airplane on the street just before we entered the restaurant! Small world sometimes.

Can't remember the exact composition of this egg dish but it was tasty!







Special shrimp scramble with potatoes and a delicious muffin.







The outdoor scene. So cute.







We walked over to the beach after breakfast and noticed that the famous carousel is 100! Cake after breakfast = yum.







The beach in Santa Cruz with boardwalk and rides to boot!

Friendship Muffins

This is a wonderful muffin recipe that I've dubbed the "friendship muffin" because I made it a few weeks ago with my daughter and one of her very best friends.

The girls are crazy about each other but being both strong willed 3 year-olds can sometimes cause for a bumpy play-date. So, last time they had a play-date, I had this muffin recipe ready to go. The girls loved making these and worked so well taking turns adding ingredients and stirring the batter.


The muffins also served as their snack and they both devoured these!!

It really was so cute to see these two little munchkins working cooperatively. They were so proud of themselves too :) I know my daughter is really going to miss her good friend when she moves to Alabama this summer (and I'm really going to miss her mommy- boo).


This wholesome muffin recipe is loaded with fruit (apple), vegetable (carrot) and healthy grains (whole wheat flour and rain bran cereal), a perfect "kid" muffin but tasty enough for grown-ups to enjoy (as I did with a big cup of coffee!!).



Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups raisin bran cereal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup finely chopped peeled tart apple
3/4 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:

In a bowl, combine the first six ingredients. In a small bowl, beat the egg, buttermilk and oil. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in apple, carrots and walnuts. Fill paper-lined muffin cups or cups coated with nonstick cooking spray three-fourths full. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-23 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm.

Source: Adapted from AllRecipes.com

French Breadfast Puffs

I found these French breakfast puffs on another blog this week and was immediately drawn in by the beauty and simplicity of this recipe.

This is basically a very simple muffin that is topped off with a wonderful cinnamon sugar. We have had a couple of snow days here on the east coast and no school, so these were perfect for a relaxed morning breakfast. The best part is that you have all the ingredients in your pantry right now...so go make some!!

This was a wonderful way to start the morning for me. A fresh, out of the oven breakfast puff and a cup of my favorite coffee. Bring on the day!


Ingredients:

204 g flour (1 1/2 c)
95 g sugar (1/2 c)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
121 g milk (1/2 c)
76 g melted butter (1/3 c)
51 g sugar (1/4 c)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
76 g melted butter (1/3 c)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour, 95 g sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl combine vanilla, egg, milk and melted butter. Add egg mixture to flour mixture and mix just until blended.

Lightly grease muffin cups or line with muffin papers. Fill 2/3 full with batter. Bake 20-25 minutes.

In the meantime, melt butter. In a separate bowl combine sugar and cinnamon.

Allow muffins to cool for at least 10 minutes. Roll muffin tops in butter, then sugar.

Source: Fresh

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

I love making homemade muffins. They are so easy and my kids can't get enough of them. Plus, I can easily adapted most recipes to make them a bit healthier without sacrificing taste and that is what I did with this one.

I traded out some of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat and the vegetable oil for canola. Next time, I might also substitute some of the oil with applesauce.

Make sure to reserve a few of the chocolate chips, so you can place them on top of the batter once in the muffin pan. It will make for a nice presentation once they are baked.


My kids couldn't get enough of these! They ate them for breakfast, snack and I packed them for school too.



Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
1/2 cup plain, vanilla or banana yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (3 bananas)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (reserve a few to sprinkle on top)

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Place the remaining chocolate chips on top of the muffin batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

Source: adapted from AllRecipes

High Cotton Bakery

Blueberry Muffin, Chocolate Chip Cookie and Oatmeal Raisin Cookie from High Cotton Bakery.

Recently entrepreneur Virginia Abell, operator of High Cotton Bakery, invited me to try her home baked goodies, currently being sold at the Irwin Street Market. I arrived on a Sunday morning, hungry for something to go with my morning coffee. The blueberry muffin is truly outstanding - very moist, with just the right amount of texture on the top and juicy blueberries throughout. It didn't hurt that is came out of the oven minutes earlier. I also enjoyed the cookies, especially the chocolate chip. If you're a raisin lover you'll love Virginia's oatmeal cookies, too. High Cotton Bakery is currently interested in selling baked goods to businesses and at other retail locations, including a Muffin Luvin' combo, including a muffin, fruit or yogurt delivered to your office. If you are interested please contact Virginia at virginia.abell@gmail.com, visit the Muffin Luvin' blog or look for her on Twitter as HighCotton_ATL.

Blueberry Muffins

The grocery store had really beautiful, plump blueberries on sale this week, so I bought 3 cartons. The kids and I both love blueberries, well berries of any sort really and these little beauties were gobbled up pretty quickly. I did however manage to save about one cup to use for baking.

I decided muffins would be good to make b/c the kids could have them for breakfast and for an after school snack. Plus, my daughter would think they were cupcakes (which she pronounces as "k-cups") and really love them. So, I started looking up recipes and ran across this one from FakeGinger (via Tastespotting *). I liked that these muffins were easy to make and that they yielded a small batch. I got 9 muffins out of this batter which was perfect for my small family.

In Amanda's post (FakeGinger), she said the muffins were a bit dense and thought that swapping out some of the all-purpose flour for cake flour might lighten them up a bit. I took her recoomendation and swapped out half a cup and this seemed to fix the problem. My muffins came out the perfect texture. They are light but substantial and not overly sweet. The crumb/struesal topping is great on these and I made half a batch with it and half with out. The recipe below, includes the changes that I made.

*You can check me out on Tastespotting by clicking HERE.

With and without crumb topping...yummy both ways.


Ingredients:

Blueberry Muffin
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup + 2 Tbsp. milk
1 cup fresh blueberries

Crumb Topping
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon


Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.

Combine all purpose and cake flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. In another bowl combine vegetable oil, egg and milk. Add oil mixture to the flour and stir till combined. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups 2/3 of the way, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture if using.

To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup butter, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

Source: Adapted from FakeGinger, originally from Allrecipes

Blackberry Yogurt Muffins

I needed to get in the kitchen and bake something this morning.  Baking is very therapeutic for me.  It calms my soul and allows me to create.  I used to scrapbook and make cards as my creative outlet, but I haven't done that in quite a while.  Now, I create in the kitchen.  What can be better than creating something yummy that you can eat? 

These muffins were delicious minus the terrible batch of blackberries I used.  YUCK!  I used some frozen blackberries I had and they were sour and had a yucky flavor.  I plucked out the berries and loved the muffin!  They were moist and very flavorful due to the vanilla yogurt I added.  I used half AP flour and half white WW flour in order to make it a little more nutritional.   I will make these again, but will probably use blueberries instead of blackberries.

I found this recipe at The Bad Girl's Kitchen. She adapted the recipe from The Pioneer Woman.

Blackberry Yogurt Muffins

3 cups minus 2 tablespoons flour (I used 1/2 AP flour and 1/2 white WW flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup Splenda)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 generous, heaping cup plain yogurt (I used vanilla yogurt)
2 cups blackberries
1 teaspoon vanilla
Softened butter, for muffin pan
Raw sugar


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Generously butter muffin pan.

In a large bowl stir together flour, baking soda, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In another large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla, egg, and yogurt. Add the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Be careful not to over-mix.

Add blackberries, reserving 1/2 cup, to mixture and gently fold in.

Add mixture to well-buttered muffin pans. Top each muffin with 2 or so berries. Sprinkle raw sugar over top.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes and allow to cool completely.