Muffin Tin Chronicles: Part 2

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Ok, I know I just posted several recipes last week, but I have a few more for you to try and they're straight from my muffin tin! Today's post includes a bruschetta appetizer, queso wontons and BEC hash brown cups (aka bacon, egg & cheese). These are all super fun, super simple recipes that can be made in very little time. So, lets cut to the chase:

Bruschetta Cups:

Prep: 5 minutes, Bake: 8 minutes 

Ingredients: square wontons, tomato, onion, minced garlic, mozzarella shredded cheese, basil, EVOO, s&p

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Dice up a tomato and some onion (red or white preferred). Combine in bowl with <1 teaspoon of EVOO, minced garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss until well mixed creating a bruschetta mix. Spray each cup of a mini muffin tin. Line the cups with the wontons. Spray the wontons. Bake in the oven for 4 minutes, this will start to toast the wontons. Fill each wonton cup with a good amount of mozzarella cheese (as much as will fit). Put back in the oven for 4 minutes to melt the cheese. Pull out, and fill each cup with bruschetta mixture. Top with sliced basil. Viola! Yummy little bruschetta cups.

You won't believe how easy and delicious these are :)

Queso Cups:

Prep time: 10 minutes, Bake time: 5 minutes

Ingredients: block of queso cheese, can of rotel, can of chili (no beans), wontons

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, melt queso cheese in microwave. Add entire can of rotel and can of chili (no beans). Mix well and microwave again until well blended. Spray mini muffin tin and line with wontons. Spray wontons once lined. Put in oven for 4-5 minutes, or until toasted. Pull out, and fill each cup with queso mix. It's like having the chip and queso already made and put together in little servings.

I know this recipe is super easy and obvious, but when you put it in a mini cup it really adds the unique factor to it. Don't add as much queso to each cup either, as I did. It was really good, but messy.

BEC Hash brown Cups:

Prep time: 10 minutes, Bake time: 30 minutes

Ingredients: Shredded hash browns, bacon or sausage, shredded cheddar cheese, eggs, parsley (optional), s&p, butter

**This recipe makes 12 cups/breakfasts**

Heat oven to 425 degrees. In a large mixing bowl combine hash browns and 1/2 cup of melted butter. Add s&p to taste. Spray a regular size muffin tin, and line each cup with the hash brown and butter mixture. Mold it to the sides and base of each cup creating a "nest." Bake for 15 minutes or until hash browns are golden. Add shredded cheddar cheese to each cup and bake for another 4 minutes or until cheese is melted. While that is baking, cook half a pack of bacon (you can also use real bacon bits or sausage). Tear into smaller pieces. Once the hash browns are done, pull out muffin tin. Put small pieces of bacon in cups. Crack a single egg per cup into each hash brown nest. Bake for another 15 minutes (depending on if you want sunny side up eggs, or more cooked increase baking time). Top with diced parsley for decoration. Viola!

Hash browns are toasting :)

All ingredients baking in the oven. Note: some of my eggs did bust, but all the flavors combine anyway, so no worries there.

Finished product and SUPER delish!

Thanks for reading about my muffin tin chronicles this week! Hope you get around to trying some of these delights, and let me know how they turn out!

Muffin Tin Chronicles

Welcome to the first blog post about my muffin tin recipes, which I will now deem the Muffin Tin Chronicles! I've recently become obsessed with baking everything and anything possible from a muffin tin. What made me oooo and ahhhh over such a simplistic, no-brainer idea? Well, it began with Pinterest, of course! I went to a Pinterest party and we all had to create a dish we had found on the website. I chose the first recipe below, and it was a great success! Along the way, I found more online and then purchased The Muffin Tin Chef book. I'm outta control now! I love it because it makes individual, little, easy-to-grab and eat bite size servings in a short amount of time. I haven't found one recipe I'd label a failure, and so I'll continue to post about my muffin tin experiments. Here's a few to get your mouths watering...


The Holy Grail of muffin tin recipes

The first recipe I attempted was Lasagna cupcakes. To simplify the preperation and ingredients list making it an easy-to-throw-together type meal, I have changed the directions somewhat. I like meals that are quick and easy without alot of prep time, so if you feel the need and have the time use fresh products.

LASAGNA CUPCAKES

Prep time: 15 minutes, Bake time: 18-20 minutes, Serving Size: ALOT

Ingredients:

1lb of ground beef, Wonton wrappers (round or square), jar of Emeril's roasted gaaarlic sauce, ricotta cheese, mozzarella shredded cheese, grated three cheese mixture (includes Romano, Parmesan and asiago) and fresh basil.

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Brown meat in saucepan, adding Emeril's sauce once cooked. Spray muffin to keep from sticking. Line cups with wonton wrappers. Spoon in meat/sauce mix on top of wonton, and sprinkle with mozzarella, three cheese mix, and spoon in ricotta. Put another wonton over this, trapping the mixture in between two wonton layers. Repeat step with meat, sauce and all cheeses on top. Continue doing this till all cups are filled or desired number is created. Bake 18-20 minutes at 375 degrees. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, and garnish with fresh basil.

The wontons soften to a pasta-like texture while it bakes, and the final product tastes just like lasagna without having the huge portion sizes. Viola!

Yummy lasagna cupcakes are always a hit!!

The next muffin tin recipe I attempted was a brunch tailgate for a football game. Everyone was in charge of bringing some kind of breakfast food to share, and I decided on a side hashbrown type dish. 

CHEESY POTATO BACON CUPS
Prep time: 20 minutes, Bake time: 25 minutes, Serving Size: 12-14
Ingredients:
1 pack of bacon (flavor doesn't matter), package of frozen shredded hashbrowns, shredded cheddar cheese, Emeril's Four Cheese Alfredo sauce, one egg, real bacon bits, salt, pepper.
Directions:
Lightly cook all of bacon in saucepan. Line sides of muffin tin with strips of lightly cooked bacon. Cut small pieces of bacon to line the bottom. It will be semi-difficult for it to stay, but it all comes out looking and tasting great. In bowl, combine 2.5 cups of hashbrowns, one beaten egg, 1/2 cup of alfredo sauce, 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese, real bacon bits (as much as you'd like), and salt and pepper to taste. Spoon in portions of hashbrown mix into bacon cups. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

These cheesy potato bacon cups are perfect for breakfast or dinner, and are sure to catch some noses! For vegetarian version, substitute bacon for Morningstar Soy Bacon. YUM!

Best made muffin tin recipe yet!

I attempted this most recent muffin tin recipe last night for a sorority Thanksgiving potluck. I was the host of last nights party, so I wanted to be the person providing the "main dish" of Thanksgiving, which is turkey. I actually mixed two different recipes, one I found online for chicken pot pies (I substituted with turkey) and the other from my muffin tin cookbook. 

MINI TURKEY POT PIES

Prep Time: 20 minutes, Bake Time, 20 minutes, Serving size: 16

Ingredients:

1 can of Grand's Flaky biscuits, 1 slice of oven roasted turkey 1/4 inch thick (3/4lb), 1 package of frozen veggies (with corn, peas, carrots and green beans), 1 can of cream of chicken, 1 can of chicken broth, 1 stalk of diced celery, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Directions:

Cut up turkey into small cubes. Coat tin with non-stick spray. Cut flaky buscuits horizontally in half. Flatten out on cutting board. Line each cup with biscuit. In bowl, mix frozen veggies, diced celery, cubed turkey, 1 can of cream of chicken, 3/4 can of chicken broth, and all seasonings to taste. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

The mini turkey pot pies were alittle messy, but tasted wonderful. Keep in mind that biscuits rise as they bake, and don't overfill the cups with too much of the filling.

I may try using more biscuits to cover the top of the pies next time

Thanks for reading all about my muffin tin ventures. I know I'll have more recipes to share in the future, including mini fish tacos and bruscetta. Do you have any muffin tin recipes to share? I'd love to hear all about it!

Honeymoon in Europe

Honeymoons are always memorable occasions. Duh, its EPIC,whether you have a good time or not. You're newly married, and everything supposed to be lovey dovey as your share your first official trip as husband and wife. Our honeymoon was an 11-night cruise in the Mediterranean with stops in Italy, Turkey and Greece. This was Rob's first trip, technically, out of the country, because I don't really count the Caribbean with it being so close to the states. We traveled over a great, big ocean (the Atlantic, for those who don't know geography) to get to our port city of Civitavecchia near Rome, Italy.

Itinerary: eleven day cruise to the Mediterranean Sea, including ports to Italy (Rome, Naples), Turkey (Istanbul, Ephesus) and Greece (Santorini, Mykonos and Athens)

Cruise Specifics: Celebrity Equinox, Celebrity Cruises

Weather: high 70s/low 80s during the day, high 60s at night

Planned Excursions: guided tours in Rome, Naples (Pompeii), Istanbul, Ephesus, and Athens

Most Anticipated Activity: seeing the ruins in Pompeii and Ephesus

Cruise Highlight: getting lost in Istanbul for hours, making friends with semi-nonspeaking English good Samaritans and traveling by taxi, metro bus, subway and water taxi just to get back safely to our cruise ship. We only spent $6 to do all of this lol.

Cruise Downer: catching the norovirus and throwing up for 24 hours, getting mud-butt, followed by fever, chills, headache, and joint aches and pains. It basically felt like I had food poisoning and on the way to in the bathroom I got hit by a bus. Most terrible 24-hour sickness of my life, but thank God it only lasted a day. Because of this sickness, I couldn't get off the boat in Mykonos, Greece :(

Best Souvenir Bought: Glass Turkish lamps handcrafted with colorful beads and designs from the Grand Bazaar in Turkey

Scariest Moment: I did get nervous being lost for so long in Istanbul, and there was a definite communication barrier. At one point, Rob asked our good Samaritan how we were going to get to our ship. She replied, "Boat tomorrow." Rob flipped out and exclaimed, "TOMORROW?! Boat TODAY!" Needless to say, she thought we were talking about the water taxis, not a cruise ship. She gave us directions in Turkish and we somehow made it back unharmed. This experience was both the highlight and scariest moment of our trip lol.
Best Moment: There were too many awesome experiences to only pick one as my favorite. We got a relaxing couples massage, robbed the casino of thousands of dollars which ended up paying for all our expenses onboard, we had dinner at a specialty restaurant on the ship where they cooked us lobster right at our table, we saw an entire city made of marble at Ephesus, we had a romantic dinner while watching the sun set in Santorini, and we got to bask in a two week vacation with just ourselves and the open sea.
Worst Moment(s): It's always us missing our kitties at home. Especially this time, as we were gone for almost two whole weeks. The norovirus was also pretty bad.
New Things?: I loved arriving in Istanbul to see that we weren't in Kansas anymore. It was a completely new country with new sights, sounds, smells, and culture. Mosques were everywhere and five times a day you would hear the call to prayer. The Turkish people were so friendly, I'd definitely visit again.
Most Disappointing: It was super disappointing to visit Athens, Greece. I was really excited from the start to see the Parthenon, travel around the city of Athens, and to taste the fabulous cuisine. But, Athens was a super dirty place, the majority of the people we met were very rude, and after seeing Ephesus, Athens wasn't very cool at all. It wasn't preserved as well, they were reconstructing everything so it didn't seem very original, our tour guide was monotone, boring, and at times extremely rude to other fellow cruisers, and the food was just ok. I expected more Athens! Not a place I have to see again before I die...
Worst Money Spent: The $110 we had to spend to buy a new camera when we dropped ours at Ephesus :( 
Best Money Spent: the entire trip :)

The Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Pompeii at the base of Mt. Vesuvius in Naples, Italy

The Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Turkey

The Colloseum in Rome, Italy

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey

The town of Oia in Santorini, Greece

The legendary Amalfi coast in Italy (this is actually Positano, a town about twenty minutes north of Amalfi)

All in all, it was a remarkable honeymoon and I can now mark several items off my bucket list. I'm not sure when we'll travel to Europe again, but this cruise has allowed us to figure out which places we like (Amalfi!) and those which we don't have to visit again (Athens!).