Carrie Cox’s Corner

These are old faithful. They are great fresh. They are great warming up from frozen. They are great when prepping for a crowd. They are great for meal prepping for breakfasts for the week. They are just great.

This is mom’s recipe that she gave to me. She got it from some ladies that cooked for a meeting at their church in Indiana. We went there back in the early 90’s. They used to make these muffins huge. I don’t even know how they were so big. Maybe a large muffin tin filled high, but we’ve always made them in the standard size.

So here’s the recipe:

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Sausage Cheese Muffins

1/2 lb breakfast sausage (1/2 hot and 1/2 mild)

1/3 cup green onions

1 1/2 cups Bisquick

1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1 1/2 tsps packed brown sugar

1/4 tsp ground red pepper (or black)

2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Heat oven to 375 degress. Grease bottoms only of 12 medium muffin cups.
Cook and stir sausage and onions in skillet until brown. Crumble sausage into small bits and drain on a paper towel.
Mix dry ingredients. Add sausage, milk, and cheese until just blended. Batter will be thick. Spoon into muffin cups about 2/3rds full. Bake 20-25 minutes. Yields 12 muffins

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The best part is that it is really adaptable. Those are my favorite types of recipes, ones that don’t have to be followed exactly, but ones that can bend and squeeze and shift to whatever you fancy (and really whatever you have in your pantry). They can also be adjusted to be pretty close to being good and low carb. I mean if you have sausage and cheese, combined, what could go wrong?

So the basic recipe uses bisquick, but I’ve watched my mom make it from scratch (that’s who she is ladies and gentlemen, that is who she is). She uses just a basic muffin recipe and skips the sweet part. The recipe calls for green onions, but I think my entire life of baking these I have used chopped yellow or white onions.

So here’s a few tips for you based on how I bake them:

1. Always double the recipe (you will thank me later)
2. I have never added the dry mustard powder. They are still amazing
3. Add more liquid than what it calls for, they can be dry out frequently
4. Feel free to add garlic or garlic powder, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.
5. Any kind of yellow cheese is fine, but I don’t recommend mozarella. Sharp cheddar goes farther with adding taste with less actual cheese
6. It makes a very wet and sticky batter, that is what you want
7. Brown up your meat in an iron skillet. It adds iron and flavor (and don’t wash it with soap)
8. I’ve used maple sausage before and it was amazing
9. I’ve had some people ask to add onion powder instead of onions. I say reluctantly yes. Reluctantly because when you cook onions they caremalize and that’s when the magic happens (onion podwer doesn’t give the same sweet and full flavor).

Low Carb Adaptions

You can make these with either almond flour or coconut flour. I prefer the coconut as it plays into the tiny bit of sweet flavor that balance these savory muffins, but when I made these last I only had almond flour. Just remember, when you are using nut flours or coconut flour, you will need to add more liquid. Just keep adding it until it is very sticky, but not so much that you have soup. You will also need to add a rising agent, since without the bisquick, the recipe doesn’t have any baking powder or baking soda. For 3 cups of flour, you will use one tablespoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt (that is the amound of flour you need to double the recipe). The other thing to remember with these flours is the density. It works well with this recipe because they are already heavy anyway because of the sausage. I added a little monk fruit sweetener instead of the brown sugar in my lower carb batch.

I made one recipe of the regular for the fam and one recipe of the low carb for me. I took turns with each set of ingredients with two sets of bowls and then I divided up the sausage between them. It worked out well. There were no left overs from the fam’s, but my extra ones I put in a zip lock and kept in the fridge for about a week.

These pair great with scrambled eggs, and we even poured gravy in them one time and almost died and went to heaven.

I found a way to take them to work and eat them for lunch. I made a batch of these and put them in zip lock bags. Then I made some scrambled eggs and put them in a thermos. I popped the muffins in the microwave for about thirty seconds and added my eggs for the last ten. It turned out great, and it really filled me up until supper.

So here you have one of my favorite breakfast recipes. I hope you will make some version of them and let me know how you like them.