Bacon Breakfast

When I make muffins they almost always have a little sweetness to them. I like fruit in them — apples, berries, bananas, whatever is on hand, as long as it is sweet. I have made savory muffins, generally to go with soup or some other lunch or dinner entree, but not for breakfast fare.

When the men at our church announced they were having an all day retreat this coming Saturday, I volunteered to make them some snackages. It’s a reflexive reaction for me — someone mentions a gathering and I volunteer to make food! I made them a few sweet muffins and then I saw this recipe for Bacon Cheese Muffins and decided that would definitely suit the manly tastebuds. And let me tell you they suit the feminine ones too! Oh, YUM! What’s not to love about bacon in your muffins?

These are not low-fat diet muffins; they use 1/3 c. of bacon drippings for the fat, but that adds to the flavor. I momentarily thought about lightening these muffins. I think it would be easy enough to do — substitute turkey bacon for pork, canola oil for the bacon grease, use skim milk, use a reduced fat cheese, and the muffin would probably still be tasty and not contribute to a heart attack. But I wanted to try it with the full flavor for the first time, just to see how they were. I have another package of bacon in the fridge so I might have to make more of these, but at some future date I’d like to try them in a lighter version and see if they still seem like an awesome breakfast.

I doubled the recipe and rather than fry the bacon in strips and then crumble, I chopped the bacon first and then fried it. Also, the recipe calls for ‘crunchy nugget-like cereal’, which I assume would be like Grape-nuts, but I had some Fiber One that looks like Purina Rabbit Chow and put it in a bag and crushed it a little with a rolling pin so it wasn’t in such long strings. It worked just fine.

Bacon Cheese Muffins (from The Muffin Cookbook, 1989)

1/2 pound bacon vegetable oil 1 egg, beaten 3/4 c. milk 1 3/4 c. flour 1/4 c. sugar 1 Tbsp. baking powder 1 c. (4 oz.) shredded cheddar cheese 1/2 c. crunchy nugget-like cereal

Preheat oven to 400 F.

In large skillet, cook bacon over medium-high heat until crisp. Drain, reserving drippings. If necessary, add oil to drippings to measure 1/3 c. In small bowl, combine dripping mixture, egg and milk; set aside. Crumble bacon; set aside.

In large bowl, combine flour, sugar and baking powder. Make well in center. Add dripping-egg mixutre all at once to flour mixture, stirring just until moistened. Batter should be lumpy.

Fold in bacon, cheese and cereal. Spoon into greased or paper-lined muffin cups, filling about 3/4 full. Bake 15 – 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from pan. Cool on wire rack.

Makes 12 muffins.