The perfect summer Sunday morning breakfast.....

Two of the biggest hits at the morning-after-the-wedding breakfast Rob and I hosted for the bride and groom's families were the blueberry coffeecake and the fruit coolers. I bought enough ingredients to make four batches of the coolers, which makes 6 servings each, and ran out.

Of course, when I caught my sister-in-law Nancy having her third while her Starbucks concoction was cleverly hidden behind my microwave, I realized I should have bought at least twice as many ingredients as I did. :-)

I made two of the blueberry coffeecakes. Bev walked over and saw what I was making and said, "Oh! Monkey bread!" Excuse me. Monkey bread? MONKEY bread? I think not. Try Granite Steps Country Blueberry Coffee Cake, a Paula Deen recipe, which BooMama told me about for heavens sake. Monkey bread indeed.

These two recipes were a huge hit. They're so easy, I hopped out of bed yesterday morning and whipped them up for me and Rob. In my opinion, this is a perfect breakfast to have on a Sunday morning, on the patio, with the Sunday paper.




GRANITE STEPS COUNTRY BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE
(a Paula Deen recipe highly recommended by BooMama)

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 12-ounce can buttermilk biscuits
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375*

Generously grease a 9-inch square baking dish. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon and mix well with a fork.

Separate biscuit dough into ten biscuits. Cut each biscuit into quarters and dip each piece in melted butter and coat with brown sugar mixture. Arrange in a single layer in baking dish. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of the oats.

Combine blueberries and sugar in a bowl and toss to coat. Spoon over oats and biscuits and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup of oats. Drizzle remaining melted butter on top.

Bake for 20 minutes or until cake is golden brown and center is done. Cool for 20 minutes and serve warm.



So here's what you need. That's a 12-ounce package of frozen blueberries available at Walmart. That's exactly one and one-half cups. Perfect for this recipe!




I use my kitchen shears to cut the biscuits into quarters. It's a pretty simple little assembly line, dipping them in the butter, rolling them in the brown sugar and putting them in the glass dish.




One can of biscuits works out to be a nice single layer in your dish.




This is ready to go into the oven.




This is seriously delicious. I love blueberries. But you know, I'd think you could use almost any fruit that bakes well in this recipe. Imagine how good this would be with rhubarb.
Or tart apples. Or fresh peaches.



ORANGE BANANA STRAWBERRY COOLER
(I can't begin to remember where I got this recipe.
I've had it for years.)

2 bananas
2 cups orange juice
1 cup frozen whole unsweetened stawberries
1 cup half-and-half

Cut bananas into large chunks and freeze at least 2 hours or overnight. Place bananas and all remaining ingredients in a 5-cup blender. Cover and blend until smooth.

Pour into glasses. Garnish with fresh fruit such as strawberries, orange slices, pineapple wedges or maraschino cherries. Or a banana slice. duh




This is all you need. These are the kinds of things I always had on hand, with the exception of the half-and-half, when my girls were little. I made slushies and coolers for them all summer long. You can see this is actually a diet cooler because I use fat free half-and-half. :-)




I just put the bananas in a ziplock and toss it into the freezer. This is a great thing to do with bananas that are getting too ripe on your counter, by the way. They keep for ages in the freezer.




The great thing about using frozen fruit is there's no need for ice to make this come out all slushie. Ice waters it all down. The thing I love about this cooler is that the only sweetness is the natural flavor of the fruit.




A perfect and simple summer morning breakfast.