Brunch Fare

I love brunch. I love brunch foods like muffins and scones and quiches. I love the mix of sweet and savory dishes.

I had some great ladies over for brunch this morning. Despite the flies that invited themselves to the party, we had a great time.


My brunch menu consisted of two quiches (spinach/tomato and apple/cheddar), blackberry scones, mini muffin cinnamon donuts, salad with blackberry vinaigrette dressing, fruit, coffee and friendship tea. I'll share them all eventually, but today I'll share the recipe for the friendship tea.

I'm not sure where this recipe came from. It was on a card in my recipe box. I found it while poking through, looking for something else. It sounded good, and I had everything I needed, so I thought I'd make up a batch.  I'm glad I did! It was great. I kept it hot, but it would have been great iced, especially for summer. It would be great in the winter for a nice holiday drink, too.

Friendship Tea:

2 1/2 cups cranberry juice

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup orange juice

1/4 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

4 whole cloves

6 black tea bags

Combine all ingredients except tea bags in a medium sized saucepan and brink to a boil.  Remove from heat and add the tea bags. Steep for 5 minutes. Remove the tea bags and spices. Pour into a carafe or serve straight from the stove.

This tea made my kitchen smell SO good and it tasted amazing. I will definitely be making this again. And probably soon, because I still have all the ingredients to make another batch. Enjoy!

Orange-Honey Muffins

Cheesecake tomorrow, muffins today! I have a playgroup coming over tomorrow and I'm making the cheesecake for the moms, these muffins are for the kiddos.  This is another recipe that has been sitting in my "I cut it out of a magazine" file for I don't even know how long.  The original recipe seems to have come from Florida's Natural Orange Juice.  This particular recipe doesn't seem to be on their site, although I did find a few others I'd like to try!  For this recipe, I made a few modifications.  I used raw Ukrainian honey, butter instead of margarine and 2 eggs instead of egg substitute.

Orange-Honey Muffins
1/2 cup Orange Juice
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup margarine, melted
1/2 cup egg substitute
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.  In a small bowl, combine the honey, juice, margarine, egg and vanilla.  Whisk until smooth and stir into dry ingredients.
Line a muffin pan (mine is stoneware from Pampered Chef) with paper liners and fill each cup 2/3 full with batter (I actually filled them a little more that that).  Bake at 375F for 20 minutes.

The flavor of the raw honey definitely shone through in these muffins, but in a good way.  If you don't like raw honey, you'd probably want to use regular, store-bought honey.  But they came out very moist, buttery and light.  My little helper and I split one to test them out and we agreed that they were yummy! I think they'll be perfect for the kiddos tomorrow!