Breakfast Cereal Tarts

So – with all of those guests coming, I thought I’d try out a few new breakfast recipes.  I’m loving this one – I do all of the work ahead of time and the presentation looks fantastic!!

Cereal Tarts

5 cups of corn flakes (or something similar – Wheaties, whatever)

1 cup of nuts (something breakfasty – almonds, pecans etc)

4 TBS melted butter

6TBS maple syrup (use the real thing, please)

16 oz carton of plain yogurt

16 oz carton of vanilla yogurt

2-3 cups of fresh fruit (berries, peaches, plums, whatever)

Preheat the oven to 350. 

Start by making tart shells:

Place the cornflakes and nuts in the bowl of your food processor and process until combined (just a few short pulses)

Pour the cereal and nut mix into a mixing bowl and drizzle with the melted butter.  Mix to form a mix like for a graham cracker crust.   Stir in the maple syrup

Press into tart pan (I loved this in mini tart pans so that everyone had an individual tart)

Bake for 10-20 minutes (depending on which size tart pans you use)

Cool

Now make the filling:

Remove the shells from the tart pans

Mix the yogurts together

Top the tart shell with the yogurt mixture and top with the fruit

Summer House Guests

We’re having house guests  a lot this summer (one of the “benefits” of living in a tourist town).    So I’m trying to get things organized so that I can move between house guests easily (we have a couple of weekends where someone leaves and someone comes on the same day!)

I’m getting a spare house key cut.  I don’t want to be tethered to a guest’s schedule.  It will be easier for everyone if folks can come and go as they like.

I’m getting one more set of sheets for the guest bed.  One of mine are getting threadbare, and I really want to have 2 sets.  One for the bed, and one for the wash.  That way no scrambling to get the bedding washed and back on the bed quickly.   I also need to pick up a second set for the air mattress.  Several of our guests are coming with children who will be sleeping on our famous air mattress – I don’t want to have a scramble with those sheets either. 

I need to sort out the linen closet on the towel shelf too.  We have two sets of towels that are a different color that were originally set up as guest towels.  Somehow they’ve gotten mixed in with our towel sets and rotated into daily use.  I want to make sure that we have enough towels (nothing missing or damaged) for guests to be comfortable.

And last of all, I need to clear out the top two drawers of the dresser in the guest room.  We try to keep them empty for guests to use, but you know how it is --- junk happens.  And then we tuck it into empty drawers to hide the clutter. 

Lavender Cookies

The lavender is still blooming strong.  So I thought I’d make some lavender cookeies. These turned out extra good and they traveled well (picnics, you know)

Lavender Cookies

1 stick butter softened

1 ½ tsp lavender leaves chopped finely

½ cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup flour

¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350

Cream together the butter, sugar and lavender – Add the egg yolk and vanilla

Combine the flour and salt in a separate small bowl.  Add it to the creamed butter mixture

Beat together until the dough forms

Roll the dough to make a log (Use a lightly floured surface, so it won’t stick)

Chill for an hour or more (I forgot about mine for the afternoon)

Slice the log into rounds and bake 10-12 minutes (they’ll brown a little bit around the edges when they’re done)