Breakfast

With a leftover baguette from dinner the night before, I decided to make a skillet strata.

A strata is a layered casserole of day-old bread, eggs, cheese and milk. It’s similar to a fritata or quiche. This is from More Best Recipes by Cook’s Illustrated. Instead of a usual strata where you leave everything mixed up for a few hours up to overnight before baking, you can bake this immediately after putting everything together. This recipe reminds me of a quiche that is light and fluffy. R says that this is meal you could make when you invite people over for brunch.

If you don’t have day-old bread, you can just toast the bread in a pan for a little bit.

Skillet Strata with Cheddar and Thyme for 2 (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

Ingredients

3 eggs
3/4 milk
1/2 teaspoon thyme
2 ounces of grated cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion
day-old baguette or any white bread cut into 1″ cubes*
salt and pepper
*Note: cut as many as will fit nicely on the bottom of the pan

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425F. Whisk eggs, milk, thyme, salt and pepper.
2. Melt butter in an 8″ oven-proof skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until softened and lightly browned.
3. Add bread and mix until the bread is nicely toasted and is evenly coated in the mixture.
4. Take the pan off the heat and add the egg mixture. Make sure you press on the bread cubes so it absorbs the mixture.
5. Pop it into the oven and bake for 12 minutes. It should puff up and the edges will have pulled away slightly when it’s done.
6. Let it rest for 5 minutes. This is so the eggs cook perfectly from the residual heat. If you don’t let it rest, you run the risk of runny eggs.

This recipe comes from…Coolio. Yes, the rapper of hits like Gangster’s Paradise and Fantastic Voyage. I wasn’t expecting a lot from this cookbook, but these muffins are really good and fall into my repeat worthy list.

You can see the full run down of what I thought over at sweethome as I’m now a contributer over there. In the test kitchen I’ll try out a recipe, photograph the results and review it. Recipes will also be posted there so you can try your hand at it too.

Check it out.

I love brunches. On the weekends we roll out of bed late and usually R will make a big breakfast. I’ll make the occasional breakfast if I want something other than the traditional weekend eggs. The blueberry pancakes from Stonewall Kitchen Breakfast has been in my head for so long I had to make them.

These pancakes are labelled “good for you” because of the whole wheat flour in them. Usually whole wheat pancakes turn out heavy unless the egg whites are whipped separately. This recipe uses a mix of whole wheat and all-purpose to make them fluffy.

Confession: I have a hard time making pancakes. Not the actual mixing of it, but any recipe that involves the slightest co-ordination will usually be a big fail for me. I tried to flip the first two pancakes and accidentally flipped one onto the other. After that I was banned from any pancake flipping.

Even though these have whole wheat in them, they don’t have that “healthy” taste to it and the pancakes weren’t leaden, but fluffy and light. I always have whole wheat flour in the house so these are sure to be a brunch staple for us.

Good-For-You Whole-Grain Blueberry Pancakes (from Stonewall Kitchen Breakfast)

Ingredients

1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 cup unbleaced white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk*
2 large eggs, lightly whisked
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 1/2 cups of blueberries or other fruit

*substitution: 2 tablespoons of white vinegar or lemon juice with 2 cups milk. Let it sit for 5 mins

1. Set aside the fruit. In a large bowl, whisk together together the dry ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until just blended. If you go too crazy with the mixing you will have hockey pucks instead of pancakes.

2. Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat. Add a bit of butter to lightly grease the griddle (you can also throw in a bit of oil so the butter doesn’t burn so quickly). Pour about 1/4 cup of batter into the skillet and sprinkle the blueberries on top.

3. Cook for about 2 1/2 – 3 minutes on each side or until lightly golden brown and cooked through.

4. Serve immediately or keep it warm in a 300 degree oven.

Sometimes I like to experiment a bit in my recipes. I usually follow recipes exactly because I’m afraid that they just won’t turn out.

My cinnamon roll/scone is one of those things that didn’t turn out. It tasted great, but I ran into structure issues trying to roll the scones up like a cinnamon roll. The just kind of rose and fell over.

Back to the drawing board.

I had some spelt flour on hand and for some inexplicable reason wanted to make muffins specifically using this flour. I’ve never baked anything with spelt except for some dog treats so I really don’t know why I had the sudden urge to make muffins with this.

I used a banana chocolate chip muffin recipe from Jae Steele’s book Get It Ripe. It’s a great recipe and it’s vegan to boot. No dairy means I can serve these up to my niece who is among the growing population of kidlets that seem to be allergic to something. There’s also no granulated sugar that’s used, just some maple syrup to sweeten the batter up. I used 70% Lindt chocolate chopped up and gave the muffin lovely big chunks of chocolate. If you really want something to stand out, ditch the chocolate chips and chop the chocolate yourself. It’s much much better.

This muffin is definitely a winner and gives me a reason to keep spelt flour in stock.

Recipe here.

With a sudden urge to make muffins I flipped through my books to find something appealing. I eventually ended up at the Allspice Crumb muffins recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Even though I have made several recipes from her book, I feel that I’m not using the book enough. It’s a huge book and I’ve mentally bookmarked many recipes, I just haven’t gotten around to making them yet.

These muffins come out of the oven perfectly moist (is it all that melted butter in them?), but I don’t think there was a strong enough all spice flavour so the muffins turned out pretty bland. My spice is pretty old so that’s probably a factor, but I would double the amount next time. I think this is a good base recipe and I’ll be using this recipe substituting cinnamon for all spice. Or maybe add in some chopped apples and some cardamom in it.

Recipe can be found here.

Confession: I like to collect cookie cutters. I have my mom’s vintage copper cookie cutters and I always have to resist the urge to pick up more cookie cutters. I love the all the cute shapes. Here’s the thing: I dislike cutting cookies out and I’m too lazy to decorate them.

For the last couple of years I’ve wanted to make gingerbread cookies. But I never get around to it. So I thought gingerbread waffles would be a good compromise. These are from the Bon Apetite cookbook. The recipe gives these waffles an extra kick using chopped candied ginger which I really liked. I had a hard time getting them crispy on the outside and soft on the inside in my waffle maker. If I set it too high, the outside would get crispy but also partially burnt.

Overall, I don’t think this will make it to my list of repeat worthy recipes, but it was a nice change from the regular waffles I usually make.

When I made my first turnovers from The Pie and Pastry Bible, they were good but being a puff pastry fan, they didn’t satisfy me as much as I would have liked. With leftover apples that needed to be used up as well as some sour cream, I turned to Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours cookbook.

This cookbook was on my wishlist for years before I got it as a Christmas present. Then it sat on the shelf for months. I’ve made a handful of these recipes and I’m not too sure why it gets neglected so much, most of the recipes I have made are “repeat worthy”.

If you’re interested in the cookbook, the Tuesdays with Dorie blog has a long list of recipes that you can find in the book. It’s a quick (maybe not so quick with all the delicious photos?) way of seeing if the book is for you.

These Flaky Apple Turnovers caught my eye because it didn’t require me making puff pastry (a somewhat lengthy process) but still claimed to be like puff pastry. The turnovers turned out so well that this recipe will be my “go to”. I even managed to save a few to be baked later. Even though there’s only 2 of us in this household, these turnovers disappeared very quickly.

Tip: Make sure you don’t get any filling on the edges. You won’t be able to pinch the dough closed properly and they will open up in the oven and you will be very sad.

Recipe here.

Celebrating my friend’s birthday early as I will be in Paris, we did brunch on my balcony with the nice summer weather (finally!).

These waffles are Marion Cunningham’s from The Cake Bible. They’re crisp and very very light. It’s a yeasted waffle so you make them the night before and let it rise. Works well for me because that means I do less work and more sleeping in.

If you want light and crisp waffles, definitely go with this one. For a slightly crisp and fluffy waffle, the buttermilk waffles in the book is the recipe you should use.

Recipe here.

This is it! I ended up burning my arm to make this (I had the hot pan on the stove and my arm grazed the handle), so I hope someone out there tries this recipe. It’s a fun thing to make for the long weekend.

Here is the recipe:

Vienesse Oven Pancakes (Kaiser Schmarrn) Adapted from New York Times Dessert Cookbook

Ingredients:

1 oz butter
1 tablespoon (14g) butter for the pan
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons milk
1/4 Cup + 2Tablespoons flour
2 eggs, separated
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
Confectioner’s sugar for garnish

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt the 1oz of butter and let cool.
2. Whisk milk, flour, and salt together. Beat yolks and add to batter. Add melted butter.
3. Beat egg whites with sugar (you can use a handmixer to save time). Fold into the batter.
4. Put the other tablespoon of butter in the pan and pop it in the oven for about 3 mins until bubbly. Then remove the pan and use a pastry brush to ensure the butter is coated on the bottom and sides of the pan.
5. Pour batter in pan and put it in the oven for about 20 minutes. It should be brown on top. Take the pan out and using two forks tear it into pieces. You can be more methodical and cut them into little squares if that’s more your style. I also like to flip the pieces that were on the bottom to be on top. But that’s a personal preference. Put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes.

Garnish with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar and whatever else you want to top it. I used blueberries and they were great. The original recipe calls for vanilla sugar and apricot preserves.