I’ve had a run of bad luck with recipes lately. We tried these Banana Bran Muffins from Barefoot Contessa, but found the molasses flavor too strong and the bran texture overwhelming. If anyone has a bran muffin recipe they’d recommend, please let me know!
The muffins were so unpleasant, that I didn’t even keep them around long enough to take a photo of the finished product, but just got a photo of the muffins, before baking. They looked promising, at this stage:
Category: Breakfast
Buttermilk French Toast
This recipe from November 2008 Gourmet magazine was straight-up fabulous. There’s nothing more to say. It was phenomenal. The preparation instructions are VERY specific and include the exact bread-to-soaking liquid ratio, plus exact soaking times. Preparing this french toast and seeing how crusty-delicious it turned out made me realize that I’ve been over-soaking my french toast in the past. I’ll definitely be using a lighter hand in the future.
Chilaquiles
Chilaquiles with beans and avocado, topped with a fried egg
Sorry for the over-exposed photo. Click the “Simply Recipes” link all the way down at the bottom of this page for a more picturesque version of chilaquiles.
Chilaquiles
Makes 4 smallish servings or 2 very large ones
8 leftover (stale is actually better!) corn tortillas, each cut into 6 wedges
about 1 cup cooking oil
1/4 cup queso fresco, crumbled
4 eggs (or 1 egg per person that you’re planning to serve)
butter for frying the eggs
1 avocado, sliced, optional
1 1/2 to 2 cups of leftover red chile enchilada sauce (we LOVE the sauce in this recipe)
1 can beans, optional
(pinto, black or refried – any kind is fine, but these are yummy)
Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the tortillas, in batches if necessary, until browned and crispy. Remove from oil and set aside to drain on paper towels.
Pour the oil out of the skillet. Heat the enchilada sauce over medium heat in the (now empty) skillet until warm.
In a separate skillet, fry the eggs in butter to your desired level of doneness.
While the eggs are cooking, toss in the fried tortilla wedges into the sauce and gently fold until they are lightly coated in sauce.
Portion the chilaquiles out onto serving plates (or bowls) and garnish with cheese and avocado. Place a fried egg (or two, if you’re making two servings) on top of each portion. Serve with beans alongside.
You can adapt this recipe to just about anything that you like. Feel free to incorporate cilantro, sour cream, onions, different kinds of cheese, etc. Chilaquiles are wonderful for breakfast, but are also great anytime of day or as a snack after a late night out.
Here are two other great recipes for chilaquiles variations:
Chilaquiles from Simply Recipes
Chilaquiles from Gourmet Sleuth
Amish Friendship Snack Cake
A friend recently gave me some Amish Friendship Bread starter*. I had some a long time ago, but it got tossed in one of our many moves. I was excited about the possibility of getting some sourdough going again, but I didn’t care for the cloyingly sweet recipe version that calls for instant pudding mix (ewww!) and decided to look for alternatives.
I adapted a less-sweet, lower-fat version that I found online into this tasty snack. It has a nice, yeasty, cinnamon-y flavor, without being too sweet. It would be nice for breakfast, too
Amish Friendship Snack Cake
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon or (cinnamon spice blend)
1 cup Amish Friendship starter
1/3 cup applesauce
1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla or 1 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp McCormick Vanilla Butter & Nut extract)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour a 13 X 9 inch baking pan (or spray with nonstick spray.)
In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a smaller mixing bowl, stir together the starter, applesauce, oil, eggs and vanilla.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and gently stir until just combined. Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. The cake will just barely be beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan and the top of the cake will be firm and evenly browned.
Allow the cake to cool completely before cutting into pieces for serving.
Great after-school snack with some fruit and a glass of milk!
*If you’re not familiar with Amish Friendship Bread starter, it’s a version of sourdough (to be honest, I’m not sure what, if anything, distinguishes it from “regular” sourdough.) The sourdough can be used to make a variety of baked goods and is ready to use every 10 days. The sourdough starter needs to be “fed” during the 10 day period prior to use (my version recommends that this be done on Day 6) by stirring in a mixture of sugar, flour and milk. Each time that you use the starter, it will grow and multiply, providing extra starter that you can pass along to your friends (with, in my experience, mixed receptions.)
Amish Friendship Bread (Sourdough) Pancakes
This is a GREAT Amish Friendship Bread recipe because it actually uses *2* cups of your starter (most recipes only use 1 cup), meaning that you have less leftover starter to find “homes” for at the end of your 10-day cycle. Yummy recipe AND your friends won’t run when you see them coming at you with a Ziploc bag full of a suspicious-looking substance and a sheaf of instructions detailing daily (!) babysitting instructions. Ummm….by the way, if you live in Austin and would like some starter, let me know. I would be THRILLED to share some with you!
The pancakes themselves are cakey and delicious; they smell like doughnuts as they’re cooking (because of the yeast), though they are definitely NOT overly sweet.
Amish Friendship Pancakes
Combine in a large bowl:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Combine in a smaller bowl:
2 Tbsp oil
2 cups Amish Friendship starter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
(or McCormick’s Vanilla Butter & Nut extract, if you can find it)
1/2 tsp Cinnamon Spice blend
Add ingredients of the smaller bowl to the ingredients of the larger bowl and whisk very gently just until blended (it’s OK if it’s still a little lumpy). Spoon batter onto a greased, preheated griddle and cook until large bubbles have completely covered the surface, then turn them over and cook until the other side is evenly browned and the pancakes are not doughy in the middle.
I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to drop the batter onto the griddle. Made that way, this recipe will make 16 – 18 pancakes. You can add more milk to thin the batter a little if you like your pancakes thinner, but we tend to like them on the thick and fluffy side.
Smoked Salmon and Vegetable Cream Cheese Bagels
This recipe from Barefoot Contessa has gotten my last two mornings off to a lovely start. This recipe has it all: crunchy bagel (I lightly toasted mine before spreading), creamy cheese, zesty veggies, briny, chewy, smoky salmon. Seriously, this is heaven. If you like green onions, I would suggest adding a bit more than the recipe calls for. You should use the cream cheese within two days, but that shouldn’t be a problem. It would also make a great cracker spread for a snack. Don’t be scared off by the salmon, if you’re not a fan – this spread is great by itself on a bagel, too.
And…ummm…did I mention my borderline unhealthy relationship with orange supremes?
Alton Brown’s “Orange Delicious”
We made this tasty drink from Alton Brown’s “Orange Delicious” recipe. It is “inspired by” Orange Julius. Click here for the recipe. I used Cara Cara oranges to make ours. Yummy.
Buttered Rye Toast and Orange Supremes
Cara Cara orange supremes In my absence from this blog, I’ve also been developing what might be an unhealthy obsession with buttered rye toast (seriously, I could have that for breakfast EVERY DAY) and making orange supremes (perfect little citrus sections, free from pith and membrane). They’re just so much fun to cut up and … Continue reading “Buttered Rye Toast and Orange Supremes”
Cara Cara orange supremes
In my absence from this blog, I’ve also been developing what might be an unhealthy obsession with buttered rye toast (seriously, I could have that for breakfast EVERY DAY) and making orange supremes (perfect little citrus sections, free from pith and membrane). They’re just so much fun to cut up and the kids are having a hard time these days (because of their braces) eating orange pulp from the rind, so these are perfect. They are BEAUTIFUL in a salad. A word of warning: if you serve these to your children, they may not ever eat citrus any other way.
Also, the word “supreme” is supposed to have a little caret symbol (like a small upside down “v”) over the first “e”, but I can’t figure out how to make my keyboard do that! FYI – it is pronounced as if it rhymes with “them”, not like “cream.”
Here’s a video so that you can learn how:
http://www.expertvillage.com/video/16535_orange-supreme.htm
Sweet Potato Hash with Bacon
Hubby and I LOVED this, but the kids weren’t wild about it. This would be great for a brunch buffet or even as a savory alternative to marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes (ick!) for Thanksgiving.
Hubby and I LOVED this, but the kids weren’t wild about it. This would be great for a brunch buffet or even as a savory alternative to marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes (ick!) for Thanksgiving.
Breakfast of Champions
Mmmmm… Tamales from Central Market, with OJ. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
