I suspect that vampires aren’t big breakfast-eaters. They’re probably more of the midnight snack type. This is precisely why I was inspired, as I was looking for a late-night snack during an evening of pre-Halloween scary movie watching, to make these vampire pancakes. These are buttermilk pancakes made with a red, raspberry jam filling that oozes out when you cut in for a bite.

The pancakes are quite easy to make. You start with a fairly standard pancake batter with a little bit of vanilla extract thrown in and pour some onto a preheated griddle. Next, you add a dollop of raspberry (or other red-colored) jam to the center of the pancake as it cooks. It’s a good idea to try and spread out the jam as you place it on the pancake, even putting several little dollops. At this stage, the pancake batter is too delicate to stand up to being spread with jam, and it’s really nice if the jam fills up as much of the pancake as possible. Top the jam with some more batter to cover it completely and cook as you would a regular pancake.

When the pancakes were fresh off the griddle and the jam was still warm, they were moist and tender, with a nice ooze to the filling.  You can taste the vanilla and buttermilk in the pancakes alongside the jam. These pancakes were sweet enough that they didn’t need any additional syrup or toppings before serving, but whipped cream might be a nice touch if you want to serve a little on the side.

I used the same technique that I’ve used on my Vampire Cupcakes and Vampire Cookies to add bite marks to these pancakes before serving. I’m sure that any vampires out there would approve, even if they might prefer a different flavor of filling for their portion.

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I got an interesting tip from a guy at my local Trader Joe’s this week about adding nuts to pancakes. He suggested that I grate the nuts using a microplane or other very fine grater instead of chopping them up. This technique has plusses and minuses. The plus is that you really disperse the nut flavor throughout the pancake, so you can taste it in every bite. The downside is that you don’t get any of the crunch that you get from adding in chopped nuts. I’ll probably use both methods from time to time. This time, I used the grating method to make macadamia nut pancakes.

I simply used my microplane to grate some toasted, lightly salted macadamia nuts directly into some buttermilk pancake batter. You need to watch your fingers a bit as you do this, but the nuts grate down so smoothly and easily that it’s not difficult to handle them at all. I grated the nuts right into the bowl and whisked them into the batter. I could taste macadamia nut in every single bite of the pancake - and it didn’t take very many nuts to let the buttery, nutty flavor come through! I topped the pancakes off with some freshly sliced banana and some maple syrup.

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A toaster strudel is a ready-made, frozen breakfast pastry sold by Pillsbury that was introduced in the 1980s as a rival to the popular toaster treat, Pop Tarts, made by Kelloggs. While the Pop Tart has a firm crust somewhere between a cookie and pie dough in texture, a toaster strudel has a flaky outer layer, more like puff pastry dough or a croissant dough. It toasts up soft, with a gooey, hot filling, and you are supplied with a little packet of icing to drizzle on top of the pastries.

With puff pastry already in my freezer, it seemed like it would be easy to put together a similar version of the packaged product that could be made entirely at home. The puff pastry dough should be rolled out fairly thin before beginning, since the toaster strudels are not thick and you don’t really want them to puff up too much; the pastries should be softer, rather than crunchier. The trick to having these turn out well was in the filling. I used jam, but jam by itself will run out of the pastry and not leave a pocket of filling. To solve the problem, I added some cornstarch to the jam, which thickened it up and helped to hold it in place. Now, if you have a particularly runny jam, you might want to add a little extra cornstarch than the amount I give below, but otherwise you can use any flavor of jam you like.

The pastries should be assembled and baked in advance, then frozen so that they can be reheated on-demand, as snacks or breakfast treats. The packaged toaster strudels come with some kind of “sweet cream” glaze, which tastes a bit like cream cheese. This is probably the one instance where storebought has an advantage, as it is a lot of trouble to make a cream cheese frosting for just one single breakfast pastry. I used a simple vanilla glaze for mine, which was delicious. If I were serving a crowd, I might think about making a thin cream cheese frosting, but then again that’s really not what the freezer-to-oven (or toaster oven) pastries are intended for.

You’ll notice that my baking instructions are for the oven. The pastries will reheat nicely in a toaster oven, as well. While you should be able to put them into a regular toaster, only do so if you are absolutely sure that your pastries haven’t leaked any filling during their initial baking. If they have, that filling might still ooze out and burn in the toaster. I decided to stick with the oven instructions for the recipe below because it is an option for all of the pastries, even those that have sprung a little leak during the initial baking, and since not everyone has a toaster oven sitting on the kitchen counter.

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Chocolate is not one of the normal breakfast “food groups,” the way things like bacon, eggs, toast and hash browns (among other things, of course) are, so I don’t usually take it into account when I am starting to prepare breakfast in the morning. But that doesn’t mean that chocolate shouldn’t be a breakfast option on occasion, right? Chocolate chip pancakes are one of my favorite chocolate-laced breakfast options, not only because they’re tasty, but because it is easy to throw some chocolate chips into some pancake batter. That same trick doesn’t work for something like french toast, but it’s not difficult to turn that breakfast favorite into something chocolatey, either.

I added some cocoa powder to the custard mixture - the milk and egg combination - that I use to dip my french toast bread before frying it. I also added a little bit of maple syrup to the mix to take the edge off of the unsweetened cocoa powder, even though french toast is served with enough syrup that it wouldn’t make too much of a difference if you left it out.

The finished french toast tasted like bread pudding with a hint of chocolate to it: custardy in the center and firm on the outside. It’s not too sweet and has a hint of egginess to it, just as a good french toast should. I used some chocolate sauce as my “syrup” to make this even more indulgent, but it goes well with regular maple syrup, too.
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English muffins don’t come in with too many flavor options beyond plain and sourdough, although whole wheat do seem to pop up more and more often these days. The one real flavor that english muffins come in is cinnamon raisin - and it’s a good one. When the spicy muffins toast up, the cinnamon scent and flavor is released from the bread and the raisins become hot and sweet. They’re not as versatile as the go-with-anything plain variety of english muffin, but when they’re spread with butter, cinnamon raisin is a fantastic breakfast treat.

These are very easy to make at home. The english muffin dough is a no-knead batter that is mixed up and allowed to rise for just a short period of time. Once it has risen, the dough is dropped in big spoonfuls and cooked on a skillet or griddle. This allows both the top and the bottom of the muffin to take on a golden color, while the center cooks through and still remains chewy and soft, the perfect texture for toasting.

This recipe calls for nonfat milk because it tends to produce slightly holier muffins. The higher the fat content in the english muffin, the tighter the crumb. Low fat milk works pretty well, but if you compared a whole milk muffin and a nonfat muffin, you’d notice a difference. All that said, both will taste good. If you want to experiment a little, try using other dried fruits in place of the raisins, like currants, cranberries or blueberries.

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Custardy, soft french toast is a classic breakfast option. You can do so much with the basic recipe just by using different types of bread. White bread makes the most basic french toast, while cinnamon raisin bread makes the dish taste almost like a cinnamon bun. Unlike pancakes, where you can just toss in some berries, it can be difficult to add additional flavors or textures to french toast, but if you can manage it, you’ve just taken a good breakfast dish to a great one.

This is one of my favorite french toast variations: Cereal-Crusted French Toast. The concept is the same as breading chicken or pork, but instead of dipping the egg-soaked bread into breadcrumbs, you dip it into cereal. I like to use Rice Krispies for this, as they are easy to stick onto the toast and cook up nicely. Crushed cornflakes work very well, too, but there are many other cereals that should work. Kids might even like to see colorful crushed Fruit Loops coating their toast. I would just avoid using cereals that have add-ins, like dried fruits or marshmallows, both of which might burn as the french toast cooks and won’t contribute to the crunchy crust on the toast. I would also recommend using a thicker, or firmer, bread for this recipe because the bread will be a little easier to handle when you go to dip it in the crushed cereal mixture.

The crusted french toast doesn’t take any longer to cook than regular french toast, but should be served immediately to preserve the crispiness of the cereal coating. The number of pieces of french toast you get from this recipe will vary based on your bread selection, but the recipe can easily be doubled if you need to serve a crowd.

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