Weekend Cooking: Basic Breakfast Muffins and Mix-Ins!

Happy Sunday! Greyson is at Chuck's house until later this afternoon, so I made a trip to the grocery store this morning, grabbed a few pumpkins for the front porch, and spent a couple of hours cooking some goodies for this week.

Speaking of food...I kinda started a new project! It's really simple and straightforward if you'd like to join in. I'm encouraging folks to share their dinner ideas nightly on Twitter (follow @NomsNightly), Instagram, or elsewhere with the tag #NomsNightly. I don't know about you, but I can always use inspiration, so pics, recipes, and conversation are welcome! Visit the #NomsNightly tab up top for more info!

With Halloween on the horizon, we will indulge in a few tasty treats 'round here. I'm planning to make a batch of smores-themed cake balls (chocolate cake, marshmallow creme, chocolate coating, rolled in graham crackers). Most of those will go to Greyson's school because we DO NOT NEED them all. One each for his classmates -- don't want to sugar them up too much -- and the rest to the staff.

Image Cred -- Borrowed from Dash

Today I have to thank my mom for sharing a recipe she found in the weekly Dash newspaper insert. It's a recipe for a basic muffin batter with ideas for mix-ins! I love the idea of tailoring the batter to whatever we like and whatever we have on hand.  I was also able to find it on their website if you want to check it out there directly.

Basic Muffin Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

•  2 cups flour 
• 1 Tbsp baking powder 
• 1/4 cup sugar 
• 3/4 tsp salt 
• 2 eggs 
• 1 cup milk 
• 1/2 cup canola oil 
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS: 
1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray or line muffin cups with paper liners.

 2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. In a large bowl, beat eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla for 1 minute on medium. Add flour mixture. Beat just until no streaks of flour remain—do not overmix!

 3. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until tops of muffins spring back when pressed lightly. Transfer muffins to a rack to cool slightly.

Makes 1 dozen.

What I really like about this batter is that it's not very sweet at all. It's a great canvas for whatever you want to add. With so little sugar included, I might try sweetening with honey or some other alternative next time  Today I chose to make my muffins into Banana Chocolate Chip! I simply mushed up one banana and added it to the batter along with 1/2 a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Greyson will looooove these, and it'd be super simple to make a double-batch and freeze them for later. I'm also looking forward to trying Raspberry Almond and Oatmeal Raisin (except I don't like raisins, so I'll probably used dried cranberries!).

What are you cooking this weekend? 

And don't forget to join us with your #NomsNightly!