Curried Honey Mustard Chicken

This is one of my basic "go to" quick recipes when I want something tasty and fast. It isn't gourmet or even fine dining but it IS packed with flavour, fairly low in calories and better yet my guys seem to like it. The thing is while the recipe below is the way I choose to make and serve this MOST of the time, I also switch things up from time to time making this with vegetables included as sort of a stir fry as well. I can see all sorts of potential variations on this recipe to make it much more complex flavourful and even fancy ( you could sautee an onion and maybe a little garlic first .... you could add a dash of cream or even coconut milk ...) and some day I'll even try them, but as written it's a pretty simple no fuss recipe that fills that sometime hard to fill hole when you don't feel like cooking and you don't feel like going out ... I almost feel silly posting this here, it's that simple ... but it is in my recipe file, so here goes ....

One note before I start. The original recipe called for 1/3 cup butter in the sauce. Since this is baked I could see no reason why so much butter would be needed so I reduce the amount dramatically to only 1 Tbsp added strictly as a flavour component and sometimes I even leave it out altogether.... As far as I can tell it was not missed.

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp Butter, melted  (you can up this if you want but I don't bother)
• 1/3 cup Honey
• 1/4 cup Dijon Mustard
• 4 tsp curry powder (regular curry powder is fine but I also like Madras Curry powder)
• 1 pinch Cayenne pepper (to taste, you control the heat in this)
• 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375' F (190'C)
2. In a medium bowl mix the melted butter, honey, mustard, curry powder and cayenne.  Add chicken breasts a turn to coat thoroughly in the sauce. ( if you have time you can cover and marinate these for 4 hours or overnight but it isn't strictly necessary, I rarely have the time but sometimes I do like to like to prepare this ahead of time and marinating a dish like this can be a plus)
3. Put chicken in a lightly buttered oven safe casserole dish just large enough to hold the chicken breasts in a single layer and pour the sauce over.
4. Bake covered for 10 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 10 minutes or until done. and juices run clear. Baking time will depend on the thickness of your chicken breasts
5. Serve with rice

NOTE: I've been known to not bother with the whole cover/uncover part and cook this from start to finish uncovered ... not sure it impacts the recipe but that's the way the original recipe described the baking process ... Instead of baking this I've also lightly browned the chicken (unsauced) in a sautee pan and poured the sauce over as a finishing touch. Quite nice done that way as well .. this doesn't actually brown up much when in the oven and I miss that sometimes)

Cheers!