Leftover Hot Cereal Muffins -- YUM!

Each day, our 9-year-old daughter makes breakfast for our family of 9.  Today she made frugal use of some leftover hot cereal by baking leftover hot cereal muffins. Since canning season is almost upon us, we decided to serve them with butter and a variety of jams to use up the few 2010 jars we have left before making the 2011 batches.  Breakfast was just delicious.  We felt like we were at a fancy Bed and Breakfast!

If you want to be frugal and use leftover hot cereal, but don’t have the quantity listed here, feel free to substitute an equal amount of flour for the hot cereal and increase the liquid slightly to make good muffin batter consistency.  Alternatively, you can keep a container in the freezer to collect leftover hot cereal until you have a reasonable amount for baking.

Here is the recipe she used.  It is adapted from a muffin recipe in The Tightwad Gazette 2, by Amy Dacyczn.

Leftover Hot Cereal Muffins
makes 2 dozen

2 cups leftover hot cereal
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs

2 cups flour (all whole wheat or half whole wheat and half unbleached)
1 cup sugar
4 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1/2 to 1 cup optional extra additions (craisins, raisins, coconut, nuts, seeds, etc.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease two dozen muffin cups.

Place all the wet ingredients, including hot cereal, in the blender and blend briefly to combine. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the blended wet ingredients and stir to just combine.

Scoop into muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes. Serve warm with jam and butter or eat plain.

Speaking of jam, tomorrow I will be posting my secret to preserving delicious, low-sugar jam.  If you have never done any canning, this is a very simple place to start that requires very little special equipment.  You can make just a few jars if you like or quite easily make a big batch to keep your family supplied with jam all year.

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