Tag Archives: breakfast

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Chocolate Babka

We have a little saying in our house that goes like this: Whatever Jack wants, Jack gets. Jack wanted Chocolate Babka, so that’s what I made for FBF last week. The good news is that I used this recipe, from Smitten Kitchen, which was 1000 times easier than the one I used last time.  However, it was only 90% as good.  So now I am wondering if I should try to take the best parts from each and combine them.  Seems risky and complicated.

I shouldn’t even post that picture of the bread because it makes it look a little under done on the inside.  The judges on The British Baking Show (or whatever its called) would not fully approve.

I thought it was very good and very easy to make, and Jack felt like he didn’t get a fair amount of servings, so I will probably make it again soon.  I’m in the midst of a baking signup perfect storm where I had to make FBF this morning, followed by muffins for a bake sale tomorrow, and cookies for a mountain bike race on Sunday.  Hopefully I won’t burn out and going into another Fancy Breakfast Friday dry spell that’s just full of waffles.  Fall FBF is the best FBF.

 

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Fancy Breakfast Friday: Granola Bars

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I made granola bars again.  I’m not sure why I am so into granola bars, but I am.  I wish I could tell you how to make these, but they are 95% this recipe (but with peanut butter) and 5% this recipe (millet).  I served them with bacon and eggs and the boys seemed to love them.  I think I planned to take them camping, but I forgot to pack them (along with the butter, coffee and various snacks). They did come in handy as an afternoon snack mid-week when we were completely out of food.  In other news, there are 4 left and it’s been a week.  I can’t tell if this means they aren’t that great or, since I am storing them in the fridge, it’s an out of sight out of mind situation.   Luke seems to love them when they are offered. He doesn’t seek them out.

Granola bars aren’t super photogenic, and the lighting in my house is not ideal, especially after dinner on a Thursday night.  I decided to photograph them with a stack of books because it’s been a while since I did that and… I am about to reach an exciting book milestone.  The Boulder Library does an optional reading history which I LOVE. It’s a list of all the books I have checked out since October 1, 2005.  I looked at it this morning and I was at 988.  Then I checked out two more books and I am still at 988 so I am not 100% sure how it works, maybe there is some batch process that runs at night?  Regardless, I think something exciting should happen when I hit 1000.  Maybe I could plan an entire day of drinking coffee while lying in the couch, reading.  Or, I could read at a fancy coffee shop, or maybe even at a bar.  Obviously reading would have to be a part of it.  Maybe I’ll also pay off my fine.  I know, it sounds so exciting!!  The real question is – should I plan to check out a special book for my 1000th book? Or just let it be random? What book should I check out?  10 or 12 books to go, will I reach 1000 before the end of the year? That picture up there doesn’t even show all the books I have currently checked out, so I think I’ll make it.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Pop…under

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Should you be able to stack your bacon higher than your popover? No. These were too short and under cooked.  Fail.  I tried to remake this recipe that Luke made, and his were so tall!  Also undercooked, but TALL!  Fancy Breakfast Friday was kind of a disaster, because at some point I realized the popovers weren’t even going to be done before kids are usually finished with breakfast and on to brushing their teeth. So I had to also make eggs and bacon, and they had to cram a popover on their mouth while they rushed around getting ready.  This is all part of my new FBF phase where I hope a menu will come to me while I am sleeping.  I’m having mixed results.

This morning I woke up five minutes before my alarm with this thought in mind, “chocolate banana waffles.”  Fingers crossed!

 

 

 

 

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Granola Bars

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Ok, I am way behind.  I’ll admit that I flirted with the idea of giving up on Fancy Breakfast Friday.  Fancy has started to feel like a strong word.  Here we are, two years in, and I skipped two Fridays this summer. What is the world coming to?  (To what is the world coming? Don’t want to end a sentence with a preposition.)

But I have muffins in the oven now, and it’s Friday, so I think I am back in business. A few weeks ago, I made the chocolate peanut butter granola bars because I was so excited to find a recipe that doesn’t have something disgusting in it like dates or coconut. It seemed to have a million ingredients, and I had a tiny bit of each ingredient stored in a bulk bag in my pantry.  It was going to be an amazing way to get rid of a bunch of leftover ingredients and also make granola bars for breakfast.  Jack asked what I was making the night before when I put him to bed and I said, “granola bars.”  He said, “Oh, what if you melted some chocolate and drizzled it over the top, and then, would it be too much to ask for some sprinkles on top?”  I said, “We’ll see.”  But, you know what they say, “whatever Jack wants, Jack gets.”  It’s not so much “they” that say that as “Luke” but you get the idea.

Long story short, Jack and Dave and I liked these, and Luke thought they were just OK.  The sunflower seeds either made them taste a little weird, or else the sunflower seeds were stale.  If I made them again, I might leave those out. (Because I no longer have any in my pantry and the nice thing about this recipe was that I had all the ingredients.)

I sort of followed this recipe and they turned out great!  I obviously put the chocolate on the bars instead of in, and added the sprinkles.  I also ground the nuts in the blender to hide them a little.

As you can see, I forgot to take a fancy picture, but I was eating a bar while watching the eclipse, so you can see the affect of the eclipse on the light coming through the trees in our yard.  So, in the end, pretty fancy after all!

 

 

 

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Peach Hand Pies

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I made these a couple weeks ago, so I can now look back on them lovingly and fondly.  They were beautiful and delicious.  Here is the recipe from Smitten Kitchen – I used vanilla instead of bourbon because I was feeding it to children… for breakfast.  Breakfast pie is decadent enough.

It was just too hot to be working with a buttery dough.  It was very hard to roll out, and I plan to never make them again.  I wanted to make these because I had ordered 8 pounds of peaches and I didn’t want any to go to waste.  However, Dave had plans to eat 8 pounds of peaches, so he had to go buy me some sub-par grocery store peaches that I was allowed to cook.

Unfortunately, I was too conservative with the filling, so I had a ton leftover. (Not to mention my dough to peach ration was off.) Fortunately, I had a puff pastry in the freezer and I baked it with a layer of crème fraîche and the rest of the filling.  Not as pretty, but still delish.  And the boys seem to like crème fraîche which is odd for them.

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Meanwhile, in peach news, I ordered 20 pounds which should be coming in two weeks, and I don’t know if I will be allowed to cook them or not!  If I do, I am going to stick with my famous peach cobbler.

Here is one more picture of the never to be made again, delicious peach pies.

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Fancy Breakfast Friday: Pancakes

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We were on vacation in Washington D.C. last week to sight-see and see the baaaaaaaby. We had an 8:30 tour at the White House on Friday morning so I offered to make a Fancy Breakfast Saturday.  (And I forgot to do my FBF post last week!  That means I have a peach hand pie breakfast that hasn’t been shared yet!)

After our 8:30 am White House tour, we walked to the Washington Monument, met Uncle John for lunch and then we went to the spy museum.  It was universally agreed that we’d sleep in and be lazy and only do one thing on Saturday.  That meant I had plenty of time to make a stack of pancakes, and hold the baby and make dough for pizza dinner that night. (I did more than one thing on Saturday.)  I didn’t check the pantry before I went to the grocery store so I didn’t have any baking powder.  My solution was to add a little extra baking soda and an extra egg. My general ratio is 1:1:1:1:1:1:1/2  – (1 cup of flour, 1 cup of milk, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder.)

I doubled the recipe, and I went with 2 teaspoons of baking soda and 4 eggs.  Since I had the extra liquid from the eggs I added about a cup of oats.

They were good! I put blueberries in some, chocolate chips in others, and I put some toppings out for people who wanted more of one or the other.  I think Jack ate all the chocolate chips before the other half of the family was up.

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I served the pancakes with fruit, syrup, and sausage.  There really wasn’t enough, everyone had to FHB. (Family hold back.) But it was a long and lazy morning with plenty of opportunity to have other food to go with it. I wish we could spend more Saturdays like that!  I miss that sweet baby and her parents.

 

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Corn Cakes

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I re-made these skillet corn cakes last Friday because I was still boycotting the oven.    They are so yummy, but the leftovers were very dry.  I am looking at the recipe now, and wondering if I made a little math error when I doubled the recipe.  Luke was at a mountain bike camp in Winter Park so he didn’t dine with us, and this is a photo of the leftovers. Note to self – no need to double the recipe when Luke is out of town.

Saturday morning we went to pick Luke up and watch his 20 mile mountain bike race.  Jack and Dave rode 17 miles, and I am finally in bad enough shape to go on a short hike with the dog and take pictures of flowers.  (That’s me looking on the bright side about my back/hip issue.)  Yay!  I love hiking.

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Fancy Breakfast Friday: Carrot Waffles

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Jack woke up hungry one day last week and so we reviewed what he had eaten the day before.  Breakfast was pancakes at Dot’s Diner.  Lunch – leftover pancakes.  Dinner consisted of just one barbecued chicken leg at about 9:00 pm after baseball.  He probably had a Z-bar and a gatorade at the baseball game.  No fruits or vegetables to be found in one 24 hour period.  (He is reading over my shoulder as I type and he said, “Hey that’s not true I had watermelon.” – pronounced watermeLONE.)

Regardless, I decided I needed to make a fancy breakfast that contained a vegetable.  This recipe is adapted from Feed Zone Portables, but it requires a juicer, which I don’t have.  So I made a few changes.

Carrot Waffles

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk (I only used this because I had it in the fridge.  Next time I will try with regular milk)
4 eggs
1 cup diced carrots
4 tablespoons melted butter
water

Put the diced carrots in a shallow microwave proof dish and add some water.  (2 tablespoons?) Microwave until the carrots are soft – a couple minutes)

Put the carrots in a food processor and pulse till they are very chopped.  (You could shred the carrots instead of dicing them and probably skip this step.)

Mix the dry ingredients and stir with a fork.  Whisk the eggs and butter into the buttermilk.  Mix the wet and dry ingredients and the carrots and stir until everything is just wet.  Do not over mix.

Cook in a waffle iron until the outside is crispy.  When eaten immediately, this were deliciously crispy.  When eaten later, they were nicely soft.

These were enjoyed by all, but there was a lot of crying and crabbiness shortly after breakfast, because I only ended up with 6 waffles.  And, due to the fact that it’s too hot to turn on the oven, and because I am out of practice with FBF, I didn’t make anything else to go along with it.  People were left hungry, even though these are very hearty waffles.  Some bacon and a side of fruit would have gone a long way.  I guess if people are going to be sad about breakfast, at least it’s because it was so good they wanted more.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Apple Galette

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On Friday mornings when I am making Fancy Breakfast Friday and writing my blog post for the week prior, I like to play a little game called, “What did I make last week?”  I usually assume it was a dud if I can’t remember it.  So it came as quite a surprise when I looked at the photos on my camera and saw this delicious Apple Pie Galette.

Last week I was improvising, and I had an idea to make hand pies.  I cut up 4 apples and sautéed them in the cast iron skillet with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.  Then I made the dough and put it in the fridge to set while the apples cooked and the oven preheated.  Then I pulled the dough out and cut out the shape of the tiny pie I was going to make and I realized that I had way too many apples and no where near enough pie dough.  So I made a galette instead!  It was very delicious and everyone loved it.  Normally I would have served it with a scoop of vanilla yogurt, but we were all out, so we had bacon instead.

Apple Galette

Filling

4 apples, cored and diced
2 T butter
2 T sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Sauté until apples are softened and a little caramelized, and the butter and sugar have become syrupy.

Dough

1 cup all purpose flour (120 grams of King Arthur)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into pieces
1/4 cup cold milk

Preheat Oven to 350.

Add flour and salt to food processor and pulse to combine.  Add butter and pulse until butter and flour look kind of sandy.  Add milk and pulse until the dough looks like dippin’ dots. Put dough between wax and parchment paper and roll out into a circle.  Chill it in the refrigerator for 15 or so minutes.

Assemble

Take the dough out of fridge and place it on a parchment lined baking sheet. Add the apples to the center.  Fold the sides of the dough in.  Brush the dough with egg, and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake until crust is golden. I have no memory of how long this took, but let’s say set the timer for 30 minutes and then keep an eye on it.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Cinnamon Rolls

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Grandma was visiting for Luke’s 8th grade graduation last week, so she got the honor of choosing a menu for Fancy Breakfast Friday.  She chose cinnamon rolls.  I don’t have my “perfect” cinnamon rolls recipe yet, so I went for the easiest one I could find.  I used this dough and method from Smitten Kitchen.  I made the dough the night before and due to the Little League schedule I had the option of letting it rise on the counter for 45 minutes, or 3 hours.  I went for three house.  I rolled it out filled it, rolled it up, cut into pieces and filled the muffin tin before bed and then baked them in the morning. For the filling I mixed a cup of brown sugar, a dash of nutmeg and a couple teaspoons of cinnamon.  I didn’t end up using the entire filling because it was way too much, so I have been topping Jack’s oatmeal with it all week.  Half a cup would have sufficed.

A nice thing about this recipe is that theoretically, I could have baked half for the family that woke up early, and the other half for those on a summer sleeping in schedule.  I didn’t though.

Jack was helping my photograph, and he really wanted to have Lucy pose cutely in the background, but I didn’t want the dog that close to my breakfast.  So he had to stand in for her.

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