Category Archives: food

Fancy Breakfast Friday: The Force Awakens Edition

We went to Steamboat Springs for New Years eve, and I knew that the motel continental breakfast wasn’t for everyone.  I mean, the boys love a good toaster waffle, and I secretly love taking a break from making breakfast, but a continental breakfast can only take you so far.  When you are headed up to snowboard for hours in sub-zero temps you need a little something extra.  So I made banana bread to take with us.  I mostly follow this Cooking Light recipe – sub full fat vanilla yogurt for lowfat yogurt, and since the yogurt is sweetened, I put in 75% of the sugar.  It’s so good.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Happy New Year!

I’m vacationing for New Years and I decided that I don’t want to leave my fancy camera in various parking lots at 10 or fewer degrees while I shred the mountain on my snowboard.  (I use the term shred loosely.)  So I don’t have access to the photos I took on Christmas morning of the fabulous breakfast that I made.  (Reminder, #FBF is one week delayed.) Earlier in the week though, I did make this gingerbread dutch baby.  It was pretty, but nothing to write a blog post about.

For Christmas morning, I made the same scones I make every year.  I make the scones ahead of time and freeze them, then they go straight in the oven at 375 and cook until browned and perfect.   So yummy.  Click here for the recipe.  

I also made a fritatta.  On Christmas eve I microwaved some spinach (my recipe calls for “all the spinach that is about to go bad in your fridge.)  I also sliced some onions and shredded some chedder cheese.  In the morning, I sauteed the onions in olive oil, while I whisked about 6-8 eggs.  I whisked in the cheese, spinach and some leftover choppped bacon.  Once the skillet was heated up and the onions were softening, I poured the egg mixture in.  i left the eggs on top of the stove until they no longer wiggled when I shook the pan, and the scones were done.  Then I put them in the hot oven with the broiler on low.  Presents were on the verge of being opened so I had to keep a close eye on everything.  Scones, frittata, sausages, and bacon were served with milk, juice, coffee, and presents.

Happy New Year Everyone!  Here’s to some delicious breakfasts in 2016!

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Gingerbread Waffles

 Merry Christmas everybody!  Fancy Breakfast Friday is always a week behind so while you are reading this I am probably preparing the ultimate Fancy Breakfast Friday Christmas Breakfast.  (Spoiler alert: I try to take it easy on Christmas morning.)   But as Christmas approached, I had to dig out the Martha Stewart Gingerbread Waffle recipe.  Its not to late to eat these this year, but be sure they are on the menu for next year for sure.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Frittata and Cinnamon Rolls

I have to say I nailed the spinach and zucchini fritatta that I made for Fancy Breakfast Friday. These are from the book Feed Zone Portables: A Cookbook of on the Go Food for Athletes.  The recipe warns that they may be hard to get out of the muffin tins, which was a massive understatement.  These were good, according to everyone but Jack, but if I need an on the go fritatta, next time I would make one in the cast iron skillet and then cut them into smaller slices.  Because that muffin tin wasn’t going to clean itself.

But look how yummy they looked – hot out of the oven.


I forgot that Jack hates fritatta, but fortunately I also made pumpkin rolls.  Luke brought the recipe home from school because someone made them for their how-to speech.  The recipe calls for half a cup of pumpkin which I happened to have.  These were delish.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: French Toast Casserole

My food photography isn’t quite there, but I can’t go wrong with nature photography in my neighborhood.  Enjoy this mountain view and use your other senses to imagine french toast casserole.   This was a multi-day multi-recipe effort that turned out “OK”.   I had read a recipe for Granola Bread in The Breakfast Book that sounded amazing.  Day one was to make the unsweetened granola for the bread.  This recipe made the world’s saltiest granola.  It was unbelievable.  Dave said if we added worsteshire it would taste like chex mix “in a good way”.  I put the granola away because even though it was salty and weird, “people” were eating it out of the pan.  Step two was to make the granola bread.  It turned out OK.  Nothing to write a cookbook about.  It never browned, so I may have over cooked it.  It was sort of a beigey gray.  The first loaf was eaten quicly, with butter, as toast, and as grilled cheese.  But there was the problem of the second loaf.  I had planned to make it into french toast casserole from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, but it seemed a little risky to use so-so bread in fancy recipe.  But then what to do with the bread?  Well, I think french toast was invented to use up old bread so I went with it.

This recipe was one that I should have read and started the night before, but I didn’t.  First you toast the bread in the oven with butter and cinnamon and sugar.  That was amazing.  Then you arrange the bread beautifully in the pan and pour the custard over it and let it sit for some long period of time.  I skipped that because I didn’t have time.  I did try to arrange it beautifully, but the bread refused.  And, I have to say, I halved the custard.  I wasn’t emotionally and intellectually committed to this recipe enough to use 6 eggs in it.  Long story short, reviews ranged from “yum” to “it was OK.”    But it was a big step forward for me because I found myself starting to make another loaf of bread for the French toast so it would be perfect and then I thought, “No, that’s crazy.”    I’m sane now, people.

Ok, here is a picture.

Fancy Breakfast Friday:  Thanksgiving Cranberry Scones

I don’t know if all grocery stores do this, but at our grocery store the cranberries are “buy one get one free” during the holidays.  And I don’t think it’s one of those situations where you can say, can I have one for half off?  King Soopers would say, “No, we sell these once a year and we are getting rid of them all, now take them and go.”  Side note – I could start a weekly column about what terrible or annoying thing happened to me at the grocery store last week.  I could have guest columnist talk about how they had 4 employees searching for the wasabi powder and when it was finally found she got it for free due to the hassle.  Or how the deli guy didn’t seal my bag of pepperoni, so when I grabbed it, pepperoni was flung to all regions of the deli and cheese section, and even a little into produce.  Actually, something happened last week that was so funny/horrifying that I was thinking of starting a regular Monday blog post about the embarrassing thing that I did last week.  I can think of three things off the top of my head.  And they didn’t all happen at the grocery store.  One was at Target.

But I digress.  For the second year in a row, I thought, “I’ll just make some pastry with the other bag of cranberries.” And for the second year in a row I found that the recipe calls for craisins.  This year I was like, “NBD, I don’t have a job.  I can make my own craisins!?”   I found a recipe that seemed pretty simple, but when I got to the part where you leave the cranberries in the oven for 8 hours at 135 I thought, “Nah.  This sounds like one of those stupid things I would do and then blog about later.”

So why did I buy cranberries anyway? We have been making Cranberry Orange Relish on Thanksgiving ever since Grandmom introduced us to in in 2007 or so. (Click here for the recipe)  It’s very good, and bright, and delicious.  A tablespoon on your plate with the rest of Thanksgiving is completes the meal. But even with 18 people eating a tablespoon each, you have some leftover, not to mention that entire second bag.  (Guess who’s having cranberry relish for Christmas dinner!)  Long story short, I decided to invent a recipe to use up the leftovers.  I combined a bunch of scone recipes and I need to revisit and refine, but basically I made the dough, split it in two and put a layer of crabberry relish in the middle.  I was a little stingy because I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but next time I would  use more.  The scones were very pretty and delish.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Swedish Pancakes aka Crepes


I was thinking about going to Ikea to get lamps for our living room, and I thought, “I should get some lingonberry jam while I am there for my Swedish friend who serves it with Swedish pancakes…” Then I decided it was too far to drive and I had lingonberry jam from the last time I went to Ikea.  And thus the #fancybreakfastfriday idea was born.  I combined a bunch of online recipes and served the crepes with jam, blueberries, bananas, and chocolate sauce.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Coffee Cake Redemption

 

I made “Aunt Patty’s Coffee Cake” from my cookbook Mad Hungry – Feeding Men and Boys.  I bought that cookook or maybe asked for it for Christmas because the author writes recipes for Martha Stewart, and Martha Stewart recipes always turn out.  (Except for that one time.)  However, I do think the title is weird and sexist, and an obvious marketing ploy, but whatever, it worked on me.  I like thinking of myself as this “mom” who cooks for her “boys”.  But there is a chapter titlled Boy Salad.  Come on.  i have made a lot of recipes out of this book and they are all pretty good though.

I can’t complain about the coffee cake, it was amazing.  The filling was cocoa/sugar/instant coffee – I used instant esspresso.  I thought it might be too bitter for the boys but they loved it.  The only weird thing about it was that it said to pour 1/3 of the batter into the pan then do the filling, repeat etc.  I didn’t find the batter to be pourable.  I had to glop the batter into the pan.  And by the time I had the bottom of the bundt pan covered, I had used more than half the batter.  I didn’t get perfect swirls of filling for that reason.

Click here for the recipe.

In addition to the coffee cake, last week I baked cookies, a birthday cake, and made another round of the chocolate chip brioche pretzels.  I had just said, “Maybe we should take a break from baked goods for bit, at least until Thanksgiving.  But then my neighbor called and said. “I have a lot of eggs, can I bring you 30?”  I said, “SURE”.  So the break is over before it started.

Fancy BreakfastFriday: Fluffy Caramel Coffee Cake

I think what sold me on this recipe was the name.  It sounds so good.  Fluffy. Caramel.  But the theme of my life last week was “cooking things in the wrong size pan” and consequently I made some delcious things that were not pretty enough for a photograph.

Fluffy Caramel Coffee Cake was from the book The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham, which was a gift from my friend Laura, and I love it.  It’s one of the only cook books that I like to read just for kicks.  In fact the very first FBF recipe for waffles 11 weeks ago was from the book.  I like that Marion says what to do the night before and how to handle the rest of the steps in the morning.  Exactly what I was wondering about two weeks ago.  I also like that this is a yeast bread which gives it a cool flavor and creates the fluffiness.

Alas – the recipe called for a 10 inch pan, and I made it in an 8 inch pan.  This caused some spill over and also too high of a topping to cake ratio that made it way too sweet.  This is partially my fault and also the fault of the universe cursing me for making fun of my midwest upbringing.  See, I went to a “hot dish party” on Halloween and I made cheesy pototoes, which I thought was gross as a child and now see as “midwest”.  I’d link to a recipe, but I didn’t follow one, and when I went to the source (Mom) for info it was too late and my casserole was gross.  (Undercooked with no buttery corn flake topping.)  I will say that during the party the hostess tried to unmold the jello and was heard to moan, “Oh noooooooooo” from the kitchen.  That made me homesick and was straight out of an family holiday party.  Ironically, I just read the book Kitchens of the Great Midwest, and there is an amazing chapter making fun of today’s locally sourced, dairy free, wheat free, blahbity blah foodies, and honoring the midwest bakers of peanut butter bars. (I will be making those.)

The problem is, I brought a 9×9 dish to the party and I left with an 8×8.  So I thought my pan was a little too small but it was a lot too small.  I woke in a cold sweat, worried about the size of my pan and the bread overflowing.  I told myself, “Self.  Measure the pan.  If its 9×9, just go with it.  If it’s 8×8, move the whole thing to a 10 inch spring form pan.”  Well, it was 8×8 but I could clearly see that trying to move the dough would cause a massive deflation and would not be worth the effort.

Long story short, it was good, but too sweet.  Jack said it was the perfect amount of sweetness and that the cake had a sourness to balance it.  He was sort of right because of the yeast flavor, and the sour cream in the topping. But I had to eat mine with bacon and black coffee to balance the sweetness.  I made a note “too sweet” and I probably won’t make it again.

I’ve already staged my comeback with another coffee cake for next week.  I had planned croissants at Laura’s request, but all the birthday baking I have going on got in the way.  What else do I need to make?  Scones? French toast?  Frittata?

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Halloween Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

When pinterest was invented, I pinned these muffins and then never made them or looked at pinterest ever again.  But I did eventually make them 3 years later and they are delicious!  The recipe says it makes 12, but for me it made 15.  I was in sort of a rush and I didnt want them to cook too long.  Did you read about all those people who did the apple update on their phone during the night and it turned off their alarms and they were all late for work or missed class?  Well that didn’t happen to me because I never update my phone, but coincidentally, my alarm didn’t go off.  So after all my blustering about only spending an hour on Fancy Breakfast Friday, I only ended up with half an hour the next week.  I made an egg for Luke and muesli for Jack to eat while they waited for their muffins.  Jack said it was the best Fancy Breakfast Friday ever, for the third week in a row.

The rest of the muffins were eaten during our hundred activites over the weekend.  They even got left in the car over night in a tupperware and were still delcious and moist on Sunday.

I feel the need to step up my game for next week because I am not sure these are really “fancy” so we’ll see what I come up with next.