Archive for: breakfast
As much as I enjoy pancakes, I have to admit that it is difficult to beat out a stack of freshly made waffles for breakfast. Pancakes always seem so simple and homey, so easy to throw together. Waffles actually don’t take much more time to put together than pancakes, but somehow they seem fancier and more time-intensive. For this reason, I tend to be much more likely to throw together a batch of pancakes for breakfast than a batch of waffles early in the morning. It also makes me appreciate this overnight waffle recipe even more, because it takes all of the effort out of making waffles for breakfast.
These Overnight Buttermilk Waffles are yeast waffles where the batter is prepared the night before you plan to make the waffles. The batter is left to ferment in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours before cooking, which allows the batter plenty of time to rise. In the morning, a small amount of baking soda is stirred into the batter before cooking, which reacts with the dough and aerates it even more. The result is a fluffy waffle that is crisp on the outside with a moist and tender interior that takes only minutes to cook.
The waffle batter is made with butter and buttermilk, and they have a rich, buttery flavor to them. If you have a Belgian waffle maker, you are going to have a slightly lighter waffle than a flatter waffle iron will produce with this recipe, but you can definitely make these with any type of waffle iron.There is only a tiny amount of sugar in the batter, so they’re perfect for serving with maple syrup or with whipped cream and fresh berries.
+Continue Reading
When you think of danish, you probably think of buttery pastries made with many layers of tender dough and filled with anything from sweet cream cheese to fresh fruit to nuts. A danish is definitely a decadent way to start off the day, but it is also fairly time consuming to make the dough from scratch if you want to bake your own. This Quick and Easy Braided Cherry Danish offers a simpler, more streamlined alternative to traditional danishes. The dough is still buttery and rich, but it contains no yeast and can be ready to put into the oven only minutes after getting out your ingredients.
This danish reminds me of the Quick and Easy Cinnamon Bun Bread that I’ve made several times because of the way it translates a usually time-consuming recipe into a much simpler one. This recipe was based on one that I saw on the Smucker’s website that calls for Bisquick as a base for the pastry. My dough doesn’t use any baking mixes and is just as easy to make. The dough is made with butter and cream cheese, both of which are cut into a mixture of flour, salt, leaveners and sugar before milk is added to form a dough. You can get a very flaky dough by leaving the butter and cream cheese in fairly large chunks when you cut them into the flour mixture. The pastry, once baked, will be heavier than a danish dough made in the traditional way and a bit more biscuit-like. That said, it is still a light, very tender and very tasty base for a much-less-time-consuming danish with a great buttery flavor that is a perfect canvas for all kinds of fillings.
I filled my danish dough with all natural cherry preserves that had lots of cherries in them. You can use any kind of preserves you like, but I definitely recommend using something with juicy pieces of whole fruits and being generous when you spread it onto the dough. The more filling you use, the more flavorful your danish will be. Good quality preserves are the easiest choice, but you can make your own filling by cooking fresh fruit with sugar (like making a pie filling) until thick on the stovetop and using that as your filling, too.
This danish is excellent when it is freshly made, when the top of the pastry is slightly crisp and the filling is still slightly warm from the oven. It can be baked a day in advance, but the pastry is at its peak that first day. Fortunately, since it is so easy to make, this is the perfect dish to throw together on a weekend morning for a homemade pastry to enjoy with your coffee.
+Continue Reading
I never need an excuse to break out my ebelskiver pan and cook up some of those delightful spherical pancakes on a weekend morning. You do need a special pan to make them, but ebelskivers are just as easy to make as regular pancakes and might taste just a little bit better due to their shape and size. In fact, the recipe is very much like a more traditional pancake recipe and contains all of the same ingredients. The primary difference is that the eggs added to ebelskiver batter are usually separated and the whites are beaten to stiff peaks and folded in to add extra lightness and to the center of the pancake, creating more of a contrast with the slightly crisp exterior of each ebelskiver.
As you can do with regular pancakes, you can add all kinds of flavorings to ebelskiver. They are often served plain, but other traditional ways to serve them include filling them with jam or pieces of fruit. For this batch, I added some fresh blueberries to the center of each pancake. This is an easy change to make in the original recipe, because I all you need to do is press a couple of berries down into the center of the batter-filled cavity before the pancakes firm up. The trick is to just use 2-4 berries (depending on size) so that you don’t overwhelm the pancake and keep those berries neatly contained.
The result is great, and as much as I like traditional blueberry pancakes, it’s fun to bite into one of these ebelskiver hot off the pan and get a burst of warm, sweet berry flavor. I might mix these up in the future to include other berries, but blueberries seem to be just the right size to easily tuck into these breakfast treats.
+Continue Reading
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.
+Continue Reading
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.
+Continue Reading
