With the December holidays behind me, I'm trying to be a little more heart healthy. This doesn't mean I'm dieting -- as I'm a miserable failure at all diets. Tell me I can't eat butter and I'll day dream incessantly about buttered toast. No, in my world, being healthier means trying to eat more whole grains and vegetables, which usually isn't a problem as I love both.

So to start off my new year, I vowed to make and eat more steel-cut oats. Steel-cut oats are the actual oat grain buds (or groats) that have been cut into two or three pieces by steel blades. Unlike their flat rolled oat cousins, they plump up when you cook them, much like rice or wheat berries. And although they can take 30-40 minutes to cook, the earthy nutty flavors and satisfying chewy texture are worth the wait. But waiting a half hour or more for your breakfast to cook can cramp your weekday morning routine. This is why I try to make a large batch of steel-cut oats on the weekend. You can also purchase precooked steel-cut oats at Trader Joe's (in the freezer section).

So what do you do with the oats once they're cooked? Eating them with brown sugar or honey plus a handful of nuts and/or dried fruit is a great and simple breakfast. If you're avoiding sugar, just use cooked apples or pears, which add deep fruity undertones. But if you want something really special, try baking with your precooked steel-cut oats. For years I've made Nut and Fruit Oatcakes and Strawberry Oat Squares. This week, however, I tried something slightly different and loved it.

In the mood for something a little lighter and airier, I decided to make steel-cut oat muffins. Much like my oatcakes and oat squares, I started with a base of steel-cut oats, flour and butter. Yet unlike those baked treats, I used a little less butter and instead added in some buttermilk (which is naturally lowfat) for added tangy flavor and to moisten things up a bit. For a burst of sweetness, I nestled some cherry jam into each muffin (being sure to include at least one cherry in each). Hot out of the oven, the muffins smelled and tasted a bit like cherry pie.

So if you're looking for a heart-healthy breakfast that tastes like an indulgence, or simply another way to use your leftover steel cut oats, try some jammy oat muffins. Served warm, they are the ultimate morning treat.

Note: these muffins taste best when warm, so be sure to either eat them all soon after baking, or just reheat in the microwave the next day.

Low-fat Steel-Cut Oat Muffins with Cherry Jam Inside

Makes: 1 dozen muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
½ cup bran or oat flour
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup cooked steel cut oats
1 egg
¼ cup brown or regular sugar
4 Tbsp cold butter cut into small pieces
½ tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
½ cup cherry jam (or another fruit preserve)
½ cup dried cherries (optional)
¼ cup slivered or chopped almonds (optional)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, mix flour, bran or oat flour, cinnamon, sugar and salt.

3. Cut in your butter (you can do this in a food processor, with a pastry cutter, or just squeeze the butter between your fingers and into the flour until you have something resembling small floury butter pebbles).

4. Mix in your steel-cut oat (do not do this in the food processor) with either a wooden spoon or using your fingers, mixing until fully incorporated.

5. In a separate bowl, beat your egg into your buttermilk and then add to the flour and oat mixture, stirring until combined. If adding dried cherries and nuts, mix in now.

6. In a prepared muffin pan (either sprayed with oil or with muffin liners inserted) divide your batter evenly for 12 muffins.

7. Using a teaspoon, indent a hole into the middle of each muffin and then spoon in about 1 tsp of jam plus at least one or two cherries.

8. Set in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.

9. Serve warm and enjoy.

I received Janie Hibler's book, The Berry Bible, in the mail recently. I was excited to check out a book that focused on preserving, putting up, baking and cooking with the dozens and dozens of different kinds of berries in the markets these days. Plus, Hibler's work is rock-solid. She's a contributing writer for Gourmet, Food and Wine and Bon Appetit and grew up in my neck of the woods (Arcata, CA) which immediately gives her a little clout in my book.

So I sat down with a glass of iced tea and started reading. To be fair, The Berry Bible isn't really a book that you'd sit down with a glass of iced tea and read from front to back. It's more of a reference with an A-Z Berry Enclyopedia that profiles berries and berrylike fruits--many of which I guarantee you've never heard of (mountain ash berry, anyone?). Then the book moves on to discuss Berry Basics, a section devoted to information such as freezing berries and making your own purees. Hibler raises the important point that so many berries are available year round now, but they're often not the best quality. She advises buying up good berries when they're in season or from the farmer's market and freezing them to preserve them throughout the year. The easiest way? Rinse, pour onto a baking sheet lined with a paper towel, pat dry, freeze on the sheet and then bag up in plastic bags or airtight containers. And then, of course, there are the 175 recipes spanning everything from spicy blackberry brandy to almond gooseberry cream pie. Many of the recipes are adapted from some of Hibler's favorites that she's gathered from friends, bakeries, and cookbooks spanning the country.

Prepping for one of Hibler's recipes: Buttermilk Berry Muffins

Hibler's obsession with berries began early. In the Introduction, she details growing up in Northern California and picking berries along the trails there. I can relate. I have vivid memories of wild berries growing in schoolyards, along major highways, and by the beach. I didn't realize how lucky we were. As a young adult, Hibler moved to Portland, OR where her love for berries turned more towards obsession. She made a point to learn all about the berries of the Pacific Northwest. She ran a cooking school and when visiting chefs would come to teach, she'd most look forward to some down time so she could drive them out to the berry fields. Her passion for cooking and baking with berries shines through each page, and the little tidbits of berry history and quotes about berries are usually endearing (some of the literary berry quotes start to feel a bit onerous at times).

For me, the highlight of the book is the Bread chapter. This is obviously because I'm much more of a baker than a cook. And I'm an occasional canner at best. But even for non-bakers, the Bread chapter is exciting in its variety and approach to baking with berries. From Dutch Pancakes with Cranberry Butter and Mrs. Roger's Bucket Dumpling to Ginger Scones with Lemon Blueberry Filling, Hibler includes old fashioned and contemporary recipes alike. I decided to try the Raspberry Buttermilk Biscuits. They're quick to put together and are a great way to use up leftover buttermilk.

Muffins ready to go into the oven!

I found them to be incredibly light and not too sweet--they're quite low on sugar; much of the sweetness comes from the berries themselves. They're a simple muffin without any complex spice profiles or long list of ingredients, but they're beautifully studded with warm oozing berries and bits of oats. A pretty and healthy celebration of the season.

25 Minutes later...they're ready

Berry Buttermilk Muffins
I adapted Jane's recipe by using 1/2 whole wheat flour and sprinkling oats on top.

Makes: 12 3-inch muffins or 9 jumbo muffins

Ingredients:
Ground cinnamon for sprinkling
1/2 cups sugar, plus sugar for sprinkling
oats for sprinkling
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. coarse salt
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 pint (1 cup) frozen raspberries, blueberries, and/or blackberries

Preparation:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Grease a muffin tin.
2. Sift together 1 3/4 cups of the flour, the sugar, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the butter with 2 knives or a pastry blender.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and buttermilk and pour into the dry ingredients. Stir together until just combined. It will be lumpy.
4. Toss the berries in the remaining 1/4 cup flour and fold very gently into the batter. Fill the muffin cup to the top and sprinkle generously with sugar, cinnamon, and oats.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Serve warm.

Bernalites sure eat well there up on the hill. Dawdling along a rolling 8-block strip of commerce, you could go from Avedano's killer Cuban sandwich (and impressive local/sustainable meat selection) to Moki's sushi or Vino Rosso's salume. Or you could nibble Peruvian bolitas de yuca at Piqueo's or momo at Little Nepal, then finish up with ice cream at Maggie Mudd (including non-dairy versions made with soy or coconut milk). There's coffee and bagels at Martha's, eggs and toast at Moonshine, iced tea and wraps on the shady back deck at Progressive Grounds.

All good, but where, where were our Paris-perfect pains au chocolat? Our savory swirls of fluffy bread filled with miso, scallion, and sesame seeds? The Ritual Roasters coffee painstakingly dripped cup by cup? We Hill dwellers may be very busy walking our dogs or itsy-bitsy-spidering our charming offspring, but we have our standards, and our needs. (As well as no patience for schlepping down to the Mission to make our antsy toddlers wait in that endless Tartine line.)

Which makes the arrival of Sandbox Bakery, after months of window-peering, a reason for rejoicing up here. Chowhound buzz promised a summer opening; permit processes being what they are, the bakery opened on Cortland on December 7. Charcoal-walled without, white-tiled within, the bakery is sleek, almost a little stark for now, with no seating. But all the better to focus on the pastries, arranged in a glass-fronted case facing the whooshing automatic doors.

Prices, for now, are very reasonable: croissants $2 to $2.50, scones $2, filled buns $2.25 to $3, cookies .75 cents, muffins $2. Warm pastries come out of the oven in waves. Longing for something flaky and croissant-ish mid-morning, we were sorry to see only rolls, muffins, and scones on offer. But no worries: a few minutes later, owner/pastry chef Mutsumi Takehara emerged from the back with a platter of oven-hot raisin swirls and sweet cheese croissants.

It's worth hanging around for these; the raisin swirl we tried was ethereally light and barely sweet, shards of a dream that disappeared like snowflakes. A strawberry scone was more earthbound but still light and easy to crumble into mouthfuls, and well larded with sweet fruit.

Beyond croissants, scones, and muffins, Takehara's workhorse is a light, eggy yeast dough, like an airy challah, that she uses to make her version of kashi-pan, the filled buns popular in Japanese bakeries. On the savory side, the dough is rounded into a fat doughnut shape and filled with corn kernels and a splash of creamy bechamel, creating a perfect accompaniment to tomato soup. (You'll have to make your own soup, though, since Sandbox does only pastries for now.) It's braided around an unexpected but rewarding (for you savory-breakfast types) smear of miso and sesame. It's flattened and topped with a tangy, bittersweet gloss of yuzu marmalade.

Takehara has the deft touch of a pro, one who's happy to being doing her own thing at last after years of working around town. Her impressive pastry resume includes stints at La Farine, Chez Panisse, Rubicon, and, for the past 10 years, Slanted Door. These are pastries of delicacy and light, subtle rather than sweet. And for all you groggy new parents starting the day at dawn (they don't call this Maternal Hill for nothing), Sandbox opens at 6am on weekdays, 7am on Saturdays.

Sandbox Bakery, 833 Cortland Ave., San Francisco, CA. (415) 642-8580. Mon-Fri, 6am-3pm; Sat 7am-3pm.
Follow on Twitter: @SandboxBakery

Photos copyright Sandbox Bakery

When I was growing up, Happy Days was my favorite show on TV. In addition to thinking The Fonz was the coolest and Potsie was funny, I loved when Richie Cunningham would sing “I found my thrill, on blueberry hill…” Whenever he would start to croon, I would day dream about walking on a big hill full of blueberries, picking fruit and eating all along the way. I was a kid and so didn’t realize the Fats Domino song was being played to show that Ritchie was feeling “frisky.” All I knew was that I desperately wanted to live near a blueberry hill.

When I see blueberries, I still sometimes hum Mr. Domino’s song. I’ve been doing this a lot lately as we are now in the height of blueberry season. In addition to stuffing those plump, round, bluish-purple balls of juicy delight into tarts and pies, I have been making fresh blueberry muffins for breakfast.

Although you can easily use frozen blueberries for muffins, there’s no reason to do that now, when berries are fresh, in season, and moderately inexpensive. Frozen berries are for the winter, when you have to pay little buckets of gold for a half pint of fresh ones. Plus, fresh berries exude bursts of sweetness that are unmatched by their frozen cousins.

Although I sometimes like streusel toppings, when I have the luxury of fresh seasonal blueberries, I don’t want to overshadow the berry flavor with a thick lid of butter and sugar. Crowning each muffin with just a sprinkle of brown sugar is a more simple and straightforward way to get the crunchy muffin top I want, while still highlighting all that blueberry goodness inside.

Here’s my recipe for fresh blueberry muffins. It’s fast and easy enough that you can whip it up in the morning for breakfast. It’s also a great way to enjoy blueberries in the height of the season. I imagine Mrs. Cunningham served these to Ritchie all the time.

Fresh Blueberry Muffins

Makes: 12 medium muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 Tbsp milk
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup brown sugar

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Oil your muffin pan or set in paper muffin liners.
3. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the sugar into the eggs and mix in the sour cream, vegetable oil and milk.
5. Add in the blueberries.
6. Incorporate the dry mixture into the wet ingredients and gently stir, being sure not to over mix the flour.
7. Divide the batter into the muffin pan. I like to spoon out the batter using an ice cream scoop.
8. Sprinkle brown sugar on top of each muffin.
9. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes (depending on whether or not you have a convection oven and how hot your oven runs).
10. When you can cleanly run a toothpick through the middle muffin, pull them out and left them cool for few minutes before diving in.