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!

The recipe comes from the book, Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor and this month’s challenge was hosted by Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell

Cheesecake Pops
Makes 30 – 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream
Boiling water as needed
Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

(Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible)

Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) – Optional

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

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

Now let’s talk about blondies.

For a long time, I had no idea what a blondie was. I thought it was a white chocolate brownie or something, and since I’m not a fan of white chocolate, I never ventured to find a recipe for blondies. But then one day, Bobby Flay opened my eyes.

It was an episode of Throwdown that taught me two very important things:

1) Blondies are closer to cookies than anything. The most important characteristic of a blondie is brown sugar.

2) Bobby Flay sucks at making blondies.

After watching the episode in which Flay lost, I went to FoodNetwork.Com to try to find the recipes from the episode. Since Flay’s recipe didn’t win, and of course the winning batch was a secret known only to the gentlemen running Sugar Daddy’s, I went to plan B.

I needed to find a skeleton recipe that would allow me to recreate the winning blondie. The Sugar Daddy’s had added white and milk chocolate chips and pineapple to their batter, then sprinkled coconut and cashews on top before baking. -Of course I was planning to omit the white chocolate since I’m not a fan.

After poking around the internet, I found a basic, “add your own stuff” kind of recipe at Smitten Kitchen, and it was really delicious. The only problem was that I put so much on top, it just went flat. All the fat was pushed out the bottom by the weight of my toppings, so the blondies were greasy. I was reminded of these giant cookies we used to buy at my high school, that always tasted good, but seemed a little under done. You had to wrap a napkin around them to soak up the extra fat. Since the blondies in the Smitten Kitchen pictures looked nothing like that (they looked delicious!), I figured I had done something wrong. Noticing that Deb’s recipe called for no leavening agent, and that she hadn’t topped them with anything, but had mixed all the extras in, I decided to check around for a recipe that would provide a slightly beefier base product. ( I have tried just mixing in the coconut and cashews and chocolate into her batter, and it worked great! )

So while I was hunting around checking my options, my dad suggested I try a David Lebovitz recipe from The Perfect Scoop. This one was better suited to my choice of toppings. When I was finished, my blondies were the thickness of a good brownie, had no strange pool of fat underneath, and tasted really, really good. I liked the result so much, that I made his brownies too (but I had only Baker’s chocolate in the house so the end result was not really to my liking. Just remember the quality of the chocolate is important!!)

Chocolate Coconut Cashew Blondies
adapted from a recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

Unsalted Butter – 1/2 cup
AP Flour – 1 cup
Baking Powder – 1/2 tsp
Baking Soda – 1/8 tsp
Salt – 1/8 tsp
Light Brown Sugar – 1 cup
Vanilla Extract – 1 tsp
Egg – 1

Shredded Coconut – 1 cup
Cashew Halves – 1/2 cup
Bittersweet Chocolate, chopped – 1/2 cup

Preheat your oven and get your 8×8 dish ready by buttering it up, and laying some parchment on the bottom.

Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan and let it cool while you sift your flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large mixing bowl.

Mix your brown sugar and vanilla into your sauce pan with the butter. Add the egg.

Combine your butter mixture into your dry ingredients until just incorporated, and spread mixture into your pan.

Top first with the chopped chocolate, and follow with the nuts, and then the coconut.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until nice and brown and puffed in the middle. Cool completely.

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.

There are a lot of crust recipes out there, and everyone is always saying that theirs is no fail, but this of course, is a dirty lie. Crust is the worst part of pie. In preparing my pie, I day dreamed about going into business as a pie maker, exclusively. But then I remembered it’s not all bubbly filling and and lattice tops. A few times during the baking process, I said something to effect of: Pie crust is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Which of course is a gross hyperbole. But my point is, I decided to try something different.

I listened to the many, many crust-making tips that virtually everyone I asked had to offer, and I attempted to incorporate them into my recipe. Some of my favorites are listed:

01. “Growing up, my best friend’s mom made the best pie crust! Her secret was orange juice instead of water!” -my mom
02. “I make the best pie crust. Straight out of the Betty Crocker cook book: Lard.” -my best friend’s dad
03. Roll the dough out between pieces of plastic wrap. -Kraft Food and Family Magazine
04. Roll the dough out inside a ziplock bag -Alton Brown
05. Use cold flour – Bon Appetit Magazine
06. Butter is better quality for taste, but you need LITTLE shortening if you want flakyness

I used a few of those, but not all. There was one tip I used that I really don’t think I should have. I just didn’t execute properly. I was hell-bent on doing a lattice top so I poked around the internet looking for instructions, and I found this: CLICK. The instructions say to construct your lattice on floured parchment and then slide it onto your pie. My dough warmed up a bit while I made the lattice and stuck to the parchment. It was rolled too thin and I ended up flipping it onto my pie, which was a big fat mess. My official reccomendation: Build your lattice directly atop your filling. The cold fruit will keep your dough from thawing so quickly and breaking.

Blackberry Raspberry Apple Pie with Cookie Crust
adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe from 1996

Crust

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, chilled
• 1/4 cup butter flavored shortening
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons cold orange juice

Filling

• 2 lbs granny smith apples, peeled, cored, quartered, cut into 1/4″ slices
• 3/4 cup frozen unsweetened blackberries*
• 3/4 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries*
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons ap flour

* Do not thaw. Measure out berries and keep frozen until ready to use.

Wash

• Whole Milk
• Turbinado Sugar

Begin by preparing the crust. Place your flour and sugar directly onto your clean workbench, and use your hands to mix the two dry ingredients. Cut in your butter and shortening by hand or by using a pastry blender. A metal pastry blender will help keep your fat cold. Mix in your egg (yes, with your hands!). Add your orange juice a little at a time until your dough just comes together. Knead slightly (once or twice) and divide your dough in two. Pack the dough into two balls and flatten them slightly. Put them into their very own large ziplock bags and refrigerate. This bit can be done a day in advance. You’ll want to give the dough at least thirty minutes to firm up, but if you touched it a lot you’ll need an hour.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees (F).

Roll out one of your disks to 12 inches. I recommend rolling the dough out between bits of plastic wrap or parchment. Place the dough in your pie dish and refrigerate. Roll out your second disk and use a pizza cutter or bench scraper to slice up 3/4″ strips of dough for your lattice top. Refrigerate strips on parchment until ready to use.

Combine sugar, flour, apples and berries and place the mixture in your pie dish atop your bottom crust. Remove the lattice strips from the fridge and top your pie with a lattice design. Remember that website I was complaining about a few paragraphs ago? They have the best instructions for how to create a lattice top. Just do it on the pie rather than floured parchment. Here’s the link again: CLICK

If you can fancifully crimp the edges and things like that, do it! I honestly am pie-dough challenged so I left my edges a bit rough. Wash your crust with milk and sprinkle some raw sugar on top. Take a ring of foil around the edge to protect your pie from browning too much. Bake for about 55 minutes.

NOW, if you’ve got any more tips for pie crust, let me know!!!

And, finally…
Sound delicious? Make a contribution to a non-profit helping to transform the world of food through pie- Pie Ranch. Please specify “Pie Ranch/Green Oaks Fund” in the “Designation” field of the online donation form (Pie Ranch is fiscally sponsored by the Rudolph Steiner Foundation) at: http://tinyurl.com/3bmn4c

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.