My dad taught me a lot about cooking when I was very young. I learned to make pizza dough and pancake batter from scratch before I was ten. Dad usually made dinner and Mom only really cooked for my sisters and me when he was away. She’d almost always make french toast for dinner and often, my dad would complain that he felt terrible about the way we had to eat when he was on the road. Maybe my sisters missed his fancy steaks and sweet potato fries and grilled salmon, but I was always more than happy to sit in the living room, eating my absolute favorite breakfast while I watched some weeknight sitcom lineup.

Perhaps ironically, I didn’t learn to make my mom’s french toast until I was nearly out of the house. Maybe it was more magical not to know, but enlightenment has made this simple breakfast an absolute staple. For my first several attempts I would repeatedly ask my mom, how much sugar? or how much milk? It took a while to feel out the ratios and get it just right. These days, it’s second nature. I can light the burners and have my custard ready before the pan’s heated.

More than easy, this french toast in unpretentious and inexpensive. You probably have everything you need and if you don’t, just leave it out. Unless it’s eggs or bread… It’s also really generous. You’ll get a ton of food for each person. If you aren’t as hungry as I am when I make this, save the custard for the next time you are hungry (Maybe later that day? I wouldn’t keep it too long.) Make this in the mornings for the one who nudges you awake and reads your silly blog or the one who coughs up half the rent. Make it in the evenings and enjoy it while you catch up on your stories.

deb’s working class french toast
serves two

for the custard
4 eggs
1/2ish cup milk or heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (the real stuff, of course)
cinnamon

In a shallow baking dish or pie dish, use a fork to go to town on the eggs. You can also use a whisk, but I find that a fork is really the best tool for this job, since we’re working in a shallow dish and really just combining stuff.

Add the milk, sugar, and vanilla and make sure you work it in really well with the eggs, which can be a little resistant their additions but should come around. I like to put a lot of cinnamon in my french toast, but put in as much as you think you’d like. You really won’t taste it that much, which is why I go kind of heavy. You can alternately sprinkle cinnamon on your finished french toast but that’s not what Deb did…

Dip slices of bread into your custard, being sure to saturate both sides, and cook them on a griddle or saute pan that’s been preheated over a medium flame and greased. I use cheap white loaf bread (bimbo or saralee if I just got paid or I’m celebrating something. wink.) which I keep in the freezer. You can actually get awesome french toast using the still frozen slices. I have yet to find a white bread that doesn’t work. I have also never found a wheat bread that does work. That’s a warning to you. I like wheat bread, but not in my french toast.

Occasionally, I get bread from the bakery where I work, or use bread I’ve made for the french toast. When I do this, I still tend to go with simple white breads, as I feel they yield optimum nostalgia and flavor. However, anyone who is a fan of this dish will already be aware that you can get amazing french toast from fruity breads such as panettone, or fancy high fat breads such as challah and broiche. I maintain that the custard is where it’s at, and that my mom’s working class french toast is the best that I have ever had. And I can’t remember ever seeing a name brand or artisan loaf of bread in the house.

I’m not a proponent of putting butter on your french toast. Strictly syrup for me, but do what makes you happy. Thanksgiving morning, I made myself this french toast and served it with some chantilly and bits of pecan.

Okay so if there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s follow a recipe. If I don’t have an ingredient on hand, I know an easy substitution. If I think I can one-up the writer of the recipe by tweaking the technique, I do it. But that’s not how the Daring Bakers thing works. There’s approximately 46 million of us, and we all have to do the same exact recipe. And we all have to follow it to the letter. So here goes nothing.

So basically, this is a recipe in which you bake a cheesecake, and then you dig your hands into that beautiful cheesecake and you roll up a bunch of 2 oz balls and put them on lollipop sticks and decorate them. It was a really simple recipe (Except for following the rules. That part was rough.), but it did require a lot of time, and rolling the pops was not easy. Even though I let the cheesecake firm up over night in the fridge, it immediately melted in my hands, making it really difficult to form good looking spheres. Other than that, no problems.

As much as I’m going on about having the follow the recipe, this one was actually pretty lenient. We were allowed to garnish the pops any way we wanted, as long as we covered them in chocolate. I used bittersweet chocolate and graham cracker crumbs. It was pretty yummy.

recipe after the cut!

 

But I did take this nice picture of a brownie. :]

Now let’s talk about blondies.

Mixed Berries and Blood Orange with Créme Chantilly
serves two
1/2 cup blackberries*
1/2 cup raspberries*
2-3 blood oranges, supremed
prepared créme chantilly

* If your berries are frozen, put them into a cast iron pan for a bit. They’ll thaw in no time.

Layer everything into four wine glasses and you’re good to go. This is a really awesome dessert for when you’re entertaining, and you want something that looks good, without going all out. It’s also excellent when you need to practice chantilly for midterms (my case). ;]

Créme Chantilly
8 oz heavy whipping creme or créme fraîche
1.25 oz powdered sugar
.5 oz – .9 oz vanilla extract

Chill your bowl and whip in the freezer prior to beginning, and keep your creme very cold. When your utensils are nice and chilled, whip your creme in an electric mixer until it forms soft peaks. Do this by slowly bringing the mixer up to medium speed. It’ll take a bit for soft peaks to form, but once they’re there, things move pretty quick so keep an eye on things.

Next, add your powdered sugar a little at a time, waiting for the first bit to be incorporated before adding the next. Adding everything at once will overwhelm the mixture, curdling the creme. Add your vanilla. Mix until you have semi-firm peaks and refrigerate until ready to use.

Lolo at VeganYumYum.Com made some gorgeous vegan mini bundt cakes, using coconut creme and blood oranges to create a really wonderful cake with an excellent texture. I couldn’t get to Whole Foods to pick up any more blood oranges (I had some when she posted the recipe, but used them to make another dessert before I got any soy milk in the house…), so I used plain old orange oranges.

I gave these cakes to a friend whose pet died, and she really liked them. It was my first short at vegan baking! Try it out! It was incredibly easy, and you can even lick the batter without any worries about raw eggs.

My frist Sugar High Friday! I’m still very new to food blogging, and even though I’d love to show off photogaphy and food styling like Bea at La Tartine Gourmande, or Matt at Mattbites, all I can do so far is make something taste good. But I’m working on it! And the pie I made for this event was very special to me.Pies That Evoke Your Dreams! This event is being hosted by Rachel at Vampituity, who drew inspiration from two really neat sources:

(1) The AMAZING movie Waitress, which stars Keri Russel and a very talented woman named Adrienne Shelly who wrote and directed the film, but who was senselessly murdered before the film was released. If you haven’t, WATCH this movie. It’s genius, and my word the PIES! The pies are the Ancient Greek Chorus of the movie. They give you insight to what’s really going on. If you bake, you cannot watch this film and not be inspired to bake a pie that is an expression of your self or your situation.

(2) The Pie Ranch of California. The Pie Ranch teaches young people about the full cycle of their food. From the earth to the kitchen and back to the earth. These youngsters are harvesting their pie ingredients locally, learning their way around a bakeshop, and selling the pies at Mission Pie in San Fransisco. This is a really important movement for social change. This program is teaching young people to appreciate not only the food they eat, but the waste that results from food production and the quality vs. price factor when it comes to buying groceries. Learn more about it at PieRanch.Org and MissionPie.Com

On to the pie! This isn’t an “I’m having an affair with my prenatal specialist” pie, or an “I don’t want no damn baby” pie. This is a pie about a dream that I have, in which I own a bakery that is flooded with sunlight, where guests are free to spend all day in a fluffy chair enjoying comforting foods and company. This is a dream that I revisit every day, when I’m driving around scouting buildings I’d like to buy, or when I’m at school getting lost in the kneading of whatever dough I’m working on. This is a dream about Apple Berry Pie.

This is the best bread to make when you want something kind of impressive, that isn’t too difficult to make. You can make the brioche à tête like this formula makes, or you can simply bake your brioche in a loaf pan (great for french toast!). Enjoy!

for the Brioche
1.75 oz milk
.25 oz yeast (instant)
2.25 oz pastry flour (or cake flour)
12 oz bread flour
.25 oz salt
1.5 oz sugar
7.75 oz whole eggs
7 oz butter, softened

for the french wash

3 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

Create a French sponge by combining milk and yeast, and sprinkling pastry flour over the mixture to cover everything (do not mix in pastry flour!!). Set aside for about twenty minutes, until the flour on top cracks.

Combine sugar, salt, eggs, bread flour and sponge. Using a stand mixer, mix with the dough hook on low speed for a minute or two. When everything comes together, increase speed and wait for the dough to wrap itself around the dough hook. It will make a slapping sound as the dough hits the bowl. Mix for 5-10 minutes. Scrape down sides of mixing bowl as needed. Slowly add the butter and beat for about five more minute. It should start slapping again! (It’s called baker’s music and when you have a great mixer, it’s beautiful)

Roll the super sticky dough into a ball and put it in a large oiled mixing bowl. Allow the dough to rise until it doubles in size. You can do this by setting it out at room temperature, or by putting it in the laundry room when the dryer is on, or by setting the bowl in a ray of sunshine that’s falling on the kitchen table. Or you can fake your own proofer by putting your oven the lowest setting (probably around 130[f]) and then turning it off once it’s heated. Using heat to proof the dough will cut the time it takes in half, but it won’t affect the final product so do whatever is easiest.

Punch the air out of the dough (don’t go nuts with this, just get the bubbles out) and shape into an equal amount of 1oz pieces and 2oz pieces. Roll everything into little balls and pop them on top of one another in a fluted pan, like this one .

Preheat your oven to 350(f) and let your brioches proof until they’re almost doubled in size. Brush them with your french wash and bake them until the internal temperature is about 195. Just watching them for browning won’t do it because the french wash will make them very dark, pretty quickly.

I never celebrated Three Kings Day (or Epiphany) until my boyfriend introduced me to the holiday in 2006. Lots of countries celebrate by taking part in different traditions. In Mexico, before bed, little ones leave shoes filled with hay for the camels of the wise men, and in the morning they have been given small presents. I don’t know if this is how F celebrated when he was a little one in Mexico, but these days, we just eat Rosca de Reyes, which is a delicious ring of rich, sweet bread, flavored with orange blossom and topped with colored sugar and candied fruit.

The secret ingredient to the Rosca de Reyes is of course a tiny baby Jesus. Whoever finds the little plastic baby has been specially blessed, but must now throw a party for everyone in February. It’s a fun game to play while you’re dipping this awesome dessert bread into hot chocolate. I don’t have a recipe for the Rosca, but I can tell you how to make excellent Mexican hot chocolate. We like to buy a loaf of warm bread and dip it into the chocolate when it’s cold.

Fill up a sauce pan with about 16oz of whole milk and start it simmering. Drop in a half block of Mexican chocolate, like Ibarra or Nestle Abuelita. Stir until the chocolate is melted into the milk and let it simmer until it gets nice and foamy over the top of the sauce pan. Put the liquid into a blender and blend to make sure everything is incorporated.

(Since you have to dirty up the blender anyway, you may as well make 4 times that amount :] )

 

For now I’m just reading the blogs. Give me a momentito.