breakfast blogger

Living in the Pacific Northwestern section of the United States has been pretty tough lately. 100 degree temperatures are just not something we’re used to, considering 10 months of the year we’re wishing that the rain would stop just long enough to run and check the mail.

This last week, we’ve been stuck with the heat. Dawn to dusk and back again, the mercury hasn’t gone below 60 Degrees Fahrenheit, at best.

For those of us who live without air conditioning, and rely on the few fans we have to most efficiently cool our living spaces, limiting our heat producing activities basically every hour that the sun is up… This means the oven and stove top are just off limits during the waking hours.
After a week of cold cereal for breakfast, I finally had enough. I needed something warm in the morning. Something fresh. Something that didn’t come from a can, or require the usage of my microwave or toaster, because even they put off a lot of heat, which I normally wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t living on the surface of the sun already this summer.
So I dug through everything in my kitchen. Every cabinet, every drawer. I shuffled through gadgets and gizmos and Pannini Makers and George Forman grills, and then I found it. The perfect, all in one, lowest radiant heat producing, most heat efficient multi tasking cooking device ever created. It was as if the heavens opened and down it came with guilded wings…
The Waffler.

And that is exactly what I used to make today’s breakfast. No other heat producing surfaces needed.

The MacGyver Waffle Sandwich-

I know, I know, they make specialty machines that you can use to do the same thing, but… do you really want to buy a special machine for that? Its just as easy to use your regular waffle iron. I mean, doesn’t everyone have one? I personally have two. I chose to use the belgian style waffler for this project, simply because I wanted more doughy waffle crust. Any waffler will do. For those of us here in the Northwest you can buy a cheap one just about anywhere for under $10 USD.

So first, I set about making the outside of the sandwich. The waffles. I made some cheddar cheese waffles, an idea I got from the brilliant Brillynn of Jumbo Empanadas (she loves waffles too, you should check out her waffle sandwich) I could have eaten these by themselves, but why stop there-

When you’re done with the waffles, just crack an egg (or scramble them in a bowl) directly into the waffle iron pockets, close, and in a matter of no more than a minute, you’ve got a nice waffled egg, perfect for the waffle sandwich.

Last, but not least, you can actually waffle your bacon. This is why I call this the MacGyver waffle sandwich, because where MacGyver can make a bomb with a toothpick, some tin foil and a coconut- I can make an entire breakfast sandwich with one single machine. All from scratch, all fresh, all delicious.

Making breakfast today used minimal energy, required minimal dishes and minimal cleanup, since everything was made using one single device.

Oh yeah, did I mention its delicious?

So here’s a great recipe for cheddar waffles-

1 cup milk
4 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter
2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup shredded cheddar (any cheese will work, depending on your taste)

Whisk together the liquid ingredients. Add the salt and baking powder to the flour, and then stir the flour mixture into the liquid mixture. Lastly, add the cheese a quarter cup at a time, stirring lightly between each addition, so it doesn’t form a big cheesy glob in the center of the batter.

All depending, this should make about 5 bread slice shaped waffles (my iron makes 5 inch square waffles, and it made 5 of them)

You can add whatever you like to the inside of your waffle sandwich, and enjoy it without heating up the whole house, or being at the mercy of whatever “extra” ingredients you’d find in a store bought breakfast sandwich.

Until next time, when I’ll bring you more adventures in waffleing (Can anyone say WaffleOmlettes?)-

ENJOY!

-A.

Being as obsessed with breakfast as I am, I’m always on the lookout for new breakfast ideas. This morning’s inspiration was sitting on the counter in the form of a loaf of banana bread. French toast is a personal favorite and I’ve tried the cinnamon-bun french toast so “why not make a banana bread french toast?” I asked myself.

I quickly whipped up a typical french toast batter of a couple eggs, a snoosh of milk and a little cinnamon and soaked a couple pieces of my homemade banana bread. I then went about cooking it like the usual french toast.

While my toast and a couple slices of turkey bacon where working their magic in the frying pan, I thought about what to top it with. Somehow the usual butter and maple syrup didn’t seem right so I whipped up a little something different.

I happened to have some beautiful local picked Okananga cherries…

…and some plain goat-milk cheese in the fridge still and decided to make something light and fluffy to top it with. I threw the cherries, cheese, a tablespoon of powdered sugar and a little cinnamon in the food processor and sent it for a whirl.

The mixture tasted alright, but because of the dryish crumbly nature of the goat cheese, it wasn’t the consistency I was looking for. I happened to have some cherry yogurt onhand and after a good dolup of that, it was beautiful and smooth.

By the time my topping was done, so was my banana bread french toast so I went to the plate. Topped with a couple of the most perfect cherries I could find and a fresh sprig of mint from my own chocolate mint plant outside, it was done!

I’ll admit that the banana bread was pretty dense and heavy for a summer brekkie, but the light and bright tasting cherry shmoo on top helped to balance the whole thing out. I think it just might become a favorite breakfast in my house.

And for those with a hankering for some divine banana bread:

• 1 Cup butter
• 2 cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 6 mashed bananas
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 3 Cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter and flour 2 loaf pans and set aside.
3. Mash bananas and set aside.
4. Cream butter and sugar together and add eggs and vanilla.
5. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
6. Alternate adding mashed bananas and flour mixture to the butter and sugar mix until combined.
7. Pour batter into loaf pans and bake for 50-60 min or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
8. Allow the bread to sit for a few minutes before removing from pans to cool.

Note: Recipe freezes quite well but is so delicious that it probably won’t last long enough to freeze.

Enjoy!

Oh my. Here’s something our kids don’t need:

And this on the heels of the announcement that Kellogg would phase out advertising to kids 12 and under unless their product is of certain nutritional value. I’m suspicious about that considering that it’s up to food manufacturers to come up with what constitutes a “portion.” Have you ever tried to compare the nutritional value of things while at the store? You might want to bring a calculator because it’s anything but straight forward. And then try convincing your kids to eat just one “portion.” I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I’d eat two huge bowls of Rice Krispies in the morning. The whole thing stinks.

My suggestion? Screw the kids breakfast cereal industry and make some granola at home and serve it with no fat yogurt and berries:

Homemade granola:

6 cups rolled oats (not instant)
2 cups of chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans, cashews, sesame seeds, etc… go nuts!
1 cup of dried unsweetened coconut shreds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A wee bit of salt
1/2 to 1 cup of maple syrup (or honey or a combination of both)

In a large pan, cook the oats, stirring every once in a while until they change colour and start to smell nice. Around 4 or 5 minutes. Use two burners if it helps.

Add the nuts and seeds, stirring often. 2 minutes later add the coconut and stir some more for another 2 minutes. Add the salt, cinnamon and sweet stuff then stir some more.

Throw that into the oven at 300 F for 20 minutes, stirring a couple of times during that period.

Once it cools, store it in a sealed container and put it in the fridge.

Starting your kids off with a breakfast like this is the way to go. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the sugar in commercial breakfast cereal is contributing to the behavioral disorders we hear about…

Link to the Froot Loops Cereal Straws story. Via boingboing.

Here’s a cute little breakfast idea, perfect for the summer months because the bulk of the work can be done ahead of time, keeping you from spending too much time over a hot oven on a hot day.

These can also be served as desserts, though they were originally created as breakfast treats, inspired by danishes and sweetbreads made by my mom every spring and summer.

I call them Strawberry cream cheese breadlets, because the texture of the bun underneath is much closer to bread than a muffin or a biscuit. They’re sweet with a solid base, light but filling. In short, they’re delicious.

So, here’s how you make them!

For the breadlet base, I used a pretty generic white bread recipe similar to this one. I’ll normally use about half of the dough for the breadlets, and freeze the rest before the second rise.
The cream cheese filling is easy to make, just add 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to a full cup of cream cheese. Mix well.

After the second rise, roll the dough out flat (under an inch thick, but not too thin) and use a 3″ round cookie/biscuit cutter for each breadlet. Before the dough begins to rise again, take one tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture and spoon it into the center of the dough, using the back of a greased teaspoon, press an indent into the cream cheese, where you’ll place a teaspoon of strawberry jam or preserves. Allow the dough to sit and rest for about 10 minutes before baking.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the dough is fully cooked and slightly golden.

Allow to cool before serving. You can cover them loosely with cling film and refrigerate them up to 3 days at this point.

To serve-

For an added touch, take a small clean strawberry, slice off the top and place it point side up in the center of the cream cheese once the breadlets have cooled completely. Drizzle a bit of agave nectar over the top and/or sprinkle with a tiny bit of sugar.

Eat, and enjoy!

-A.

p.s. Of course, you could use any seasonal fruit for this. Just make sure you coordinate the flavour of jam to be compatible with the flavour of fruit you use!

Oh my, this recipe looks awesome. Pictured below is step 6 of this hangover cure.

Check it out here. I might even try it if I’m not hungover ;-)

ahem…*sings*

“When your pancakes are dry, give something greasy a try.. Sausage Pancakes! (OOOooooo sausage pancakes)

When your griddle is hot and your batter is not.. Sausage Pancakes! (Oooo sausage pancakes)

With a flip, and a little dip, it’ll be a hit, you’ll never wanna quit….Sausage Pancakes!”

If I could think of how to end that darn tune I would, but Mommy brain has struck again in all it’s maternal glory. Of course this is a blatant rip off of Peaboy’s Bacon Pancakes, the man is a breakfast genius, how can one as humble as me compete.

I simply cut up some cooked turkey sausage, poured my batter on the hot pan, arranged the sausage bit in a nice even manner, flip and voila! *sings* Sausage Pancakes!

burp

Lately, my husband and I have been in a bit of a breakfast rut. I’ve come close to the breaking point with french toast, if only it weren’t so versatile. And while french toast is quite tasty, it’s rather boring to photograph week after week.

So this week, I decided to try something different. Only problem, the weather has gone from temperate and almost enjoyable, to “I’ve just set foot on the sun” hot. Cooking in my house isn’t the most fun thing to do during those days, so I’ve got to make everything at night for the next day, because its much cooler at night.

This is exactly the case when it came to breakfast yesterday. Expecting another hot day, I decided I would make breakfast the night before, store it in the fridge, and just assemble it, heat it up and serve it. I knew this would also be a great time to break our cycle of french toast for breakfast, but since my husband still enjoys nice hearty breakfasts- We ended up with buttermilk biscuit breakfast sandwiches.

They’re simple, they’re easy, and they’re so much better for you than the kind you pick up at the neighbourhood fast food joint.

The night before, I made the biscuits and the bacon, and since I’m not a fan of reheated eggs, I made those just before serving, threw a little slice of cheese on top of it all, and voila- Breakfast on a biscuit!

My recipe for buttermilk biscuits-

2 cups flour
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 Cup butter
1 cup buttermilk

Here’s a little something that my mother suggested I try:

- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup of milk
- Slices of cheese (my choice at the time was a semi-strong cheddar, but try whatever you like! Smoked Gouda would work nicely I think..)
- 1 apple, thinly sliced (try much thinner than what I did below)
- 4 slices cinnamon raisin bread
- 2 tbsp butter for frying these suckers..

We’re gunna make two French toast sandwiches here folks.. mix the eggs and milk in a shallow bowl. Then make the sandwiches:

Press down on those sandwiches and smoosh ‘em a bit. Then bathe them well in the egg-milk mixture one at a time and bring ‘em to the pan:

Fry those suckers up nice and slow to make sure all the eggy goodness soaked up in the bread is cooked through..

Oh my, it was a party in my mouth ;)

Crepes. One of my all time favorite breakfast goodies. They have always held a soft spot in my heart. From before I can even remember, crepes have been a special weekend breakfast treat. I can recall a time from before I could even see over the counters, where I would stand on a chair beside my father and help him makes crepes. I don’t know that there has ever was a actual recipe written down on paper somewhere, only a strange built in knowledge of how to make the perfect batter no matter what size the batch. Even now I’m teaching my son the fine art of crepe making, and he just passed the 2 year mark.

Like I said, there is no recipe I use and I don’t use any special pans or tools. All I need is my batter, a large hot frying pan and a little melted butter.

I’ve even gotten so skilled over the years as to be able to turn my crepes without a flipper. And on those days where I feel like showing off, I can even flip them left handed. I’m so good it hurts some days.

The other morning I woke up and decided it was a crepe morning. There is just something in the air on those mornings, an almost inaudible voice calling out for them to be made and who am I to ignore the voices in my head.

In our home, serving crepes with just butter and sugar inside was the standard. It still remains my favorite way to eat them. Sometimes with a little maple syrup over them. This particular morning called for something a little different though. Bananas.

After cooking up a big stack of crepes, I cut up a couple of not quite ripe bananas, the kind where they are still a little green on the ends and have no sugar spots, and threw them in a frying pan with some brown sugar and butter. Once things got all bubbly and gooey, I threw in a good jigger of one of my favorite spirits, Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.

I would have flambed it, but I didn’t have the tools needed and it just seemed like more work than I was willing to put forth. I ended up serving them with the banana rum sauce over top, with a little fresh whipped cream and cinnamon.

For me, crepes are a sweet affair, but for my partner, the savoury side was more his style. He had his with some black forest ham, scrambled eggs and cheese inside.

I had a bite and had to admit that they are just as tasty with something savoury as they are with something sweet.

Burp.

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!