New Christmas Tradition- Breakfast Recipes

We've been considering what sorts of Christmas Traditions we want to set for our little family. As a huge fan of special breakfasts and celebrations with food, I knew a stellar breakfast line up was in order. With a freezer full of hand-picked wild blueberries and the need for a meal to tide us through Christmas Cookie temptations until the Christmas Dinner at 4pm, we needed to use blueberries and have a substantial meal. Here's what we found (and will probably incorporate into Christmas next year):

Christmas Morning Egg Bake
1 bag tater tots
salt and pepper to taste
1 onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 lb bacon or sausage
8 eggs
2 cups milk
3 cups Cheddar or Colby Jack cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large casserole dish, lay out frozen tater tots in a single layer. Add salt and pepper to taste, then bake according to packaging. (Tots should be golden brown.) Remove dish and set aside.

Lower oven temp to 350. In large mixing bowl, mix 8 eggs, milk, and cheese and set aside.

In frying pan, cook bacon or sausage until done. Remove from pan and crumble or chop and set aside. Drain pan of grease, but do not clean out completely. Add onions and peppers to pan, return to medium heat, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

Add onion and peppers to top of tater tots. Add bacon or sausage to pan on top of onions and peppers.

Carefully pour the egg mixture evenly over the top.

Bake covered for 45 minutes then uncovered for 30 minutes.  Allow to sit for 10 minutes outside of oven before slicing to serve.

Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 tsp lemon zest
7/8 cup sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups fresh blueberries (we used 3 cups of defrosted frozen berries)
1/2 cup buttermilk*

Preheat oven to 350 and grease 9x9 baking pan. Cream butter, lemon zest, and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined.

Toss blueberries with 1/4 cup flour. Combine remaining flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the dry flour mixture to the batter, a little at a time, alternating with buttermilk. Carefully fold in the blueberries, avoid overmixing.

Spread batter gently into pan. Bake for 35-45 minutes or until an inserted toothpick in center comes out dry. Let cool 10-15 minutes before slicing and serving.

*Homemade buttermilk by Jake. We put the remainder of our heavy whipping cream from holiday baking in an empty mason jar which Jake shook for about 15-20 minutes to form whipping cream, and then a solid glob of homemade butter and 1/2 cup of homemade butter milk.  While an exhausting process, the resulting buttermilk was delicious in this cake and we served the resulting fresh butter with Christmas dinner. Another new tradition!

Christmas 2011- Rest and New Recipes

I think Christmas 2011 will go down in the books as one of the most "unChristmas" feeling Christmases of them all.  Between the unusually warm temperatures, lack of snow, and Christmas-on-the-weekend, Christmas this year just never quite settled in.  We made the most of it and managed to have a meaningful and restful season together, but hope to have a more Christmassy Christmas when we're both through school, more settled into our home, and without Sunday/Christmas Day morning worship.

Here's a taste of the Christmas we were able to enjoy:

Quiet Journal Time

Warm light from a sunrise to greet the day

A beautiful tree

A new tradition for Christmas Breakfast - recipes to follow

Cookies, of course 

And plenty of them...

How we do frosting in my family

I feel lucky to have shared Christmas celebrations with a variety of wonderful family and friends-- wonderful company, quirky traditions, and always delicious food.  It seems like every family has a specific style of sugar cookie frosting...and I haven't found any that I enjoy as much as the glaze-frosting I grew up with!

It's not exactly Christmas time; we were in a July heat wave with an 110 degree heat index when I whipped these up.  I found the perfect cookie cutters for a summer weekend at the cabin and couldn't resist.

Ingredients:
Powdered sugar
Half and Half
Vanilla
Food coloring
Sprinkles/cookie decorations

I opted for cookie decorating at my parents house: central air AND a big, sunny kitchen. Perfect! (I'll post another picture soon with our cute, galley kitchen that accommodates 1 1/2 people at a time.)

Instructions:
In a medium mixing bowl, pour a mountain of powdered sugar. Slowly add half and half, starting very conservatively in adding less liquid than you need.  I've always been amazed at how little liquid it takes to cut through powdered sugar!

 Stir in the half and half completely.

 Too runny?  Add more powdered sugar.  Too thick? Add (a little) more half and half.

 You'll want the glaze-frosting to flow off the spoon, not glob off in chunks, but at the same time it needs to be thick enough to leave the spoon well coated.  If the frosting is too thin, it will run right off your cookies.

 Once you've got the consistency down, add a drop or two of vanilla and stir well. (Warning: vanilla will slightly color your white frosting-- if you want the pure-white color, don't bother with the frosting flavoring.)

 Next, pour your white frosting into separate bowls, one for each color you want to frost with. Keep in mind you may want to keep some in your mixing bowl so that you can frost with white frosting.

 Drop 2-3 drops of food coloring in each of your separate bowls...

 ...Mix well, and you're ready to go!  (When I was growing up, we always had popsicle sticks around the house. Frosting with popsicle sticks works very well in that the sticks are light enough the frosting holds them in the bowls, where as with heavy table knives...well, let's just say it gets messy.)

 Turns boring sugar cookies into...colorful, delicious treats!

 Loons and bears...forgot to get pictures of the moose shape, too.  Thanks to my husband for the surprise extra birthday gift of summer time shapes cookie cutters!