breakfast blogger

One of my very favourite things in this world, is French toast.
There are plenty of different varieties of French toast. Some coated in cinnamon sugar, some served with ketchup as a savory dish. Some people dip the bread in egg and Corn Flakes, some soak the bread in a custard mixture and bake it in the oven. Those are all great, but when I think of French toast, I think of a nice big slab of some sort of bread, dipped in egg and pan fried to golden deliciousness.. Not necessarily sweet or savory, no frills or bells or whistles, just plain and simple.

I usually just use regular bread. Lately, I’ve been expanding my French toast horizons, and I’ve been trying new breads. Some favourites are French baguettes, day old Challah, Any sort of cinnamon swirl bread (bonus points for raisins!) but today, I think I found my new favourite type of bread to use for French toast…

Danish buttered bread.

Oddly enough, the only place I can find this bread is at an Asian grocery store. Online, the only information I could find was by looking up the name, and it sent me to an Asian grocery store website, where it explained that Danish buttered bread is really popular in Japan. I live in The U.S. so, I guess it just never got as popular here, which explains its limited availability, at least in my region.

Just to illustrate the difference between regular bread and this bread, here is a photo I took of a slice before making it into French toast-

I could speak for hours about how delicious this bread is, plain, or with a variety of toppings, but right now, its all about the French toast.

A detail shot to show those wonderful little nooks and crannies that soak up the egg and make the French toast SO tender..

And a closeup of the top of the bread. Its much like a loaf shaped giant croissant, really.

I had mine with butter, and some strawberry jam with some real maple syrup mixed in.

Paired up with some maple bacon, some yogurt and berries…mmm..berries..

So I suppose if you’re unable to find this delicious bread, you could just slice up a croissant and use that in its stead. I’m sure that would be just as delicious!

Happy eating!

-A.

P.S. I did some research and found that another name for this Danish buttered bread is “Russenzopf” I have since begun the hunt for a recipe, which is proving much more difficult than expected. If you know of one, please leave a comment and let me know!

Muffin, our newest resident Breakfast Blogger, also an awesome story teller and food photographer extraordinaire, has her blog featured in this weeks Live Journal Spotlight!

A visit to A Muffin Story: Fancy Food and Silly Stories leaves my jaw dropped and drooling a ‘lil bit every time :)

First, a little story…

Today I am exhausted and cranky.
All because I was hit by a truck.

It was 1995, at the corner of Cotes-des-neiges and Jean-Talon - an intersection also known as the Five Corners - when a landscape company pick-up truck driver ran a yellow light and hit me, after staining the asphalt with over eighty feet of skidmarks.

I bounced a few times and then came to a stop in the middle of the road, at which point I felt that if I did not get out of the road as-soon-as-possible, I would probably be run over. I stood up and immediately crumpled to the ground like a rag doll. Next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance being asked which hospital I wanted to be taken to. I am pretty sure my answer was “drugs . . . DRUGS . . . DRUGS!!!”

After twelve years of physiotherapy, massotherapy, chiropractry, acupuncture, osteopathty, yoga, getting in shape, and a fair share of kvetching, one of my original injuries came back to get me. If I’m lucky, the modern miracle of arthroscopy stopped it in its tracks yesterday at St. Mary’s hospital.

I will be typing with my left thumb and index finger for the next few weeks. Good wishes and chocolate are perfectly acceptable.

Now, back to Peabody.
Back in August, he posted about some new cool “smart” eggs that were hitting the market.

Well, Gourmet magazine has finally caught up with us and have discovered these “smart” eggs .

Good going Peabody. The dilaudid and Cannabrex are keeping me from writing any more than that.

Deux œufs bacon, pain blanc :

Phase IV, Hull ;)

I apologize - if anyone has even noticed - that I have been negligent in regards to my Breakfast Blogging commitment. You don’t have to tell me: Breakfast is THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY!

Shall I rattle off some petty excuses? For one thing, my parents confiscated my camera (okay, it’s actually their camera) to take their grandchildren (my neice and nephew) to Disney World. Also, I have started writing for another blog whose subject matter is important to me. It is called the Ethicurean and you can read it here. I write about food that is “good”. I almost typed “healthy, but then decided to type “local” or “sustainable” or “clean”, but all those words will soon be trademarks owned by McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. I think you get the point . . .

Just so you’ll know, I haven’t been skipping breakfast. In fact, I’ve eaten quite a few very good breakfasts that I should have written about but felt I could not do them justice without a photo or two. Many have been things that I have already blogged about, like the bagelettes we made last week and the Tropicanas we also enjoyed, plus the multitude of scrambles and over-easy’s and smoothies and sometimes just a small bowl of cottage cheese with banana slices in it. I even went for Dim Sum on the south shore, which I will post about very soon . . . once I download the photos taken by a friend who has his own camera.

A few days ago we had cereal, with blackberries that were leftover from a dinner party we had the night before. I usually only buy berries in the summer, and then I freeze a lot of them, but this week they looked so good and we were having friends over and I just grabbed them and threw them into my little basket, wishing at the same time that my Eastern European great granparents immigrated to a warmer climate where berries are grown locally all year round. This is what we Jews do: complain.

The cereal was blend of 2 Kashi cereals. Kashi is a company that makes organic breakfast products that seem to be healthy as well. I have been scouring the shelves of grocery stores for the lasy few years for cereals where sugars are not listed in the first 3 ingredients, and especially where there are not too many types of sugars in my cereal. If there are sugars in my cereal, they should be natutral sugars and not derived from genetically-modified corn.

Then we found Kashi.

These cereals are amazing! The ingredient list isn’t full of words from a level-3 university chemistry class - they are actually foods. The only weird thing with Kashi cereals are their names. What marketing genius came up with “GO LEAN Crunch!”? It sounds like it was named by the same group of people who translate Japanese snack food names into English.

Then we found “Good Friends” cereal, aslo by Kashi, but not as easy to find. The name isn’t so bad, but the photos on the box and the “Good Friends” story is so horribly sacharine that it actually makes up for the lack of sugar in the product.

As a note, I am almost sure that Kashi has since changed the name of “Good friends” to something like “trio of Flakes, Twigs and Granola”. I am not certain, because their website still calls it “Good Friends” but the boxes we saw in the grocery store have changed. Either way, we love these cereals.

We’ll be in Florida for the next week or so and I will definitely report on my sun-baked breakfast from down south. I may even have brunch with a fellow food-blogger…

I’m not a big fan of coffee. I know this is blasphemous, considering I’m from the Pacific Northwest, just a few hours down the road from the birthplace of Starbucks Coffee. I just never acquired the taste for it.

This isnt to say, that I havent acquired the taste for all the delicious treats that people sometimes eat with their coffee.

Biscotti, muffins, coffeecake.. I love it all. Especially coffeecake.

My first introduction to coffeecake came when I was in highschool. I lived off coffeecake and Coca-Cola for just about an entire year of my life. It was my breakfast of champions. Most people would probably abandon something that they consumed with such regularity. Not I. I’m addicted.

I started making my own coffeecake soon thereafter. I found a recipe for it in one of my mom’s ancient cookbooks, wrote it down and soon committed it to memory.

This is the recipe I bring to you today-

A simple recipe for coffeecake with cinnamon streusel topping and orange sugar glaze.

1 Cup milk
1 Egg
2 Cups flour
1 Cup sugar
1/3 Cup Butter, softened (not melted)
1 Teaspoon vanilla
3 Tablespoons baking powder
Dash of salt

Take all of the ingredients and mix them together. The butter shouldnt be completely incorporated, and small lumps of butter should be scattered throughout the batter. Set to the side.

For the streusel topping-

1 Cup brown sugar
2 Teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 Cup butter, melted
Mix all of the streusel ingredients together until crumbly. Add a pinch more cinnamon if desired. Set aside.

Pour the coffee cake batter into a greased 9×13″ pan. Sprinkle Streusel topping evenly over top the batter. Bake at 350 for about 20-30 minutes, or until the top is light golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Orange sugar glaze-

3 Tablespoons orange juice
2 Cups Powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon milk
Mix orange juice and milk together. Pour powdered sugar into another bowl. Drizzle orange juice/milk over top powdered sugar and mix until you have a thin icing consistancy.

When the coffee cake is still hot, spread the icing on top of the cake. Let cool slightly, serve warm with coffee *cringe* or milk, or hot cocoa, Which is how I had mine. mmm.. cocoa.

This makes a perfect quick breakfast for a group of people, or unexpected guests. Or, you can freeze the pieces if wrapped in cellowrap and just microwave them for a few seconds to bring them back to life.

Mmm.. Delicious.

-A.

This entry is dedicated to our UK readers :-)

This is a limited edition toast spread.

More info here via coolhunting.

Marmite and Vegemite are not common here in North America and I’ve tried neither myself.. yet.

I plan on doing some research and trying both *mites out and report back.

All I know is that they say “you either hate it or love it.”