Great Grain Muffins, and Make Ahead Muffin Melts

So I was cleaning out a bunch of jalapenos in order to make jalapeno poppers, and I used this butter knife, which hasn't been used in the 10 years Aaron and I have been married. This knife works great for cleaning out jalapenos, and will be my new jalapeno knife :) Just thought I would share! Anyway, we tried some breakfast food today, and the recipes were only mildly successful.

First, the muffins we had were healthy, relatively low in calories, easy to make, and pretty good. They come out of the Dorie Greenspan, Baking from my home to yours cookbook. They are called great grain muffins, and they are definitely worth making, a not too sweet breakfast muffin. We gave them an 8, and we made 15 muffins from the recipe, and each muffin was 189 calories. Here's the recipe:

Great Grains Muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup yellow cornmeal

1/3 cup old-fashioned oats

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk ( I used milk and vinegar)

1/3 cup pure maple syrup

2 large eggs

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

3/4 cup quartered moist, plump prunes or other dried fruits (cut up as necessary) and/or chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, cornmeal, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda andsalt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, maple syrup, eggs and melted butter. Pour the liquid ingredients over dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough–if the batter is a bit lumpy, that’s fine. Stir in the fruit or nuts, if you’re using them. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes, then carefully lift each muffin out of its mold and onto the rack to cool.

We also had some muffin melts from the Pioneer Woman. I thought that Aaron would really enjoy them, so I tried them, although they are not my favorite.

The recipe is from the Pioneer Woman's second cookbook, and it was a pretty good recipe, especially if you like eggs, which I just really don't, and here is another recipe to prove to me why I really don't like eggs.
Aaron seemed to enjoy it, he gave it a 7, as did the rest of us.  The calories with a slice of bread, which is how we had planned on having it, were 459 for 1/12 of the recipe.  I used a mayo/mustard blend as well as regular mayo to cut down on the calories.
As you can see from the picture, we used crackers instead of bread, because my bread was moldy.  Stinker!  I have to make more bread now, and all that delicious bread had to get thrown away.  I'm pretty disappointed about that, but oh well.  I bet this would taste really good on bread. :)

Tomorrow we're having a fruit tart with pastry cream, and I can't wait, because I could eat pastry cream for the rest of my life and be happy.  Yum :)