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4 "breakfast" Posts

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Sunday's with Macrina: Morning Glory Muffins
by: Renée via Baking Experiments on Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:24:00 -0500

Keywords: Muffins , Breakfast , Macrina

This week's pick from the Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook was Morning Glory Muffins. They sounded hearty and energizing and I thought they would make a great on-the-go breakfast. The recipe is supposed to make 12 muffins, but I made jumbo muffins so it only made 6.

I don't usually start off with a picture of the ingredients but in this case the sheer amount of them is definitely worth the top picture. These muffins contain: raisins, nuts (once again I swapped pecans for the walnuts called for), carrot, apple, pineapple, flour, sugar, raw sugar, salt, canola oil, eggs, baking soda, coconut, cinnamon, and lemon juice, butter and vanilla. And then the prep work....

I soaked the raisins in hot water to make them plumpy...

Toasted and chopped the nuts....

Shredded carrot....

... and apple...

Juiced this amazing lemon...

Don't even get me started on how I forgot to take pictures of my first ever chopping of a fresh pineapple....
Mix it all together in the super secret Macrina way...

Fill the tins to the tippy top....

(and I mean full!)

Then bake!

Ok that picture isn't the best but I really couldn't wait to eat this muffin! They smelled SO good baking! I can't even begin to describe how tasty these muffins are. I thought that all of the different ingredients would be overwhelming, but they weren't. My only complaint is that they were kind of crumbly.... don't get me wrong that didn't stop me from gathering all the crumbs up and squishing them so I could make sure I got all the scraps :P Chris loved them, I loved them, they were absolutely worth all the work that went into them. I will definitely be making these again!
Breakfast Monte Cristo - Cheesecake Factory Style
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:12:00 -0500

Keywords: Chris , Breakfast , French Toast , Eggs

A few weeks ago Chris and I were headed out for the day and decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. I wanted breakfast but since it was Sunday we were in luck because Cheesecake has an awesome brunch, only on Sundays. I decided to get the Breakfast Style Monte Cristo, which was scrambled eggs, bacon, Canadian bacon and Swiss cheese on French Toast. Let me tell you that it was so friggin' good. Their French Toast had corn flakes masterfully integrated onto the outside, forming a delicious crunchy crust on the French Toast. Upon seeing and tasting this, Chris immediately said 'I have to try and make that at home'. Fast forward a few weeks and here were are:

We decided to skip the two kinds of bacon and go for ham instead. Since the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashahna was coming up, we were able to get some beautiful, fresh Challah bread at our local supermarket. Along with your regular French Toast Fixins (a technical term) of vanilla, cinnamon, eggs and milk, we had our new additions of corn flakes, Swiss and ham. Don't forget your favorite tea!
We did the usual method of scrambling some eggs with a little milk, vanilla and lots of cinnamon, dipping in the bread and letting each side soak for a little bit (around 20-25 seconds since our bread was sliced pretty thick). Then it was a quick dip in the crushed up corn flakes and into a buttered, hot pan. We found that crushing up the corn flakes cooked more evenly and gave us a golden brown finish. See below:

Yummy!

It came out so good! Not exactly like the Cheesecake Factory but very close. Molto Bene! Note the finish of powdered sugar that Chris put on. It was VERY filling. I only ate one slice of the bread and most of the stuffing parts and I was absolutely stuffed. I cut up the rest and spread it around my plate so it would look like I ate more than I did. Shh! Don't tell Mom!
Renée & Chris Try Danny's Diner Style Cinnamon French Toast
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:14:00 -0500

Keywords: Renée , Breakfast , lemonade , French Toast

Today, Chris and I tried to make Danny's Diner Style Cinnamon French Toast. It was pretty easy and came out really good. Chris likes his a little darker than Danny suggests so that's why the plate on the left is different than the plate on the right (mine).

All of our ingredients:

Soaking our bread for 15 seconds:

In the pan with some butter:

All stacked up:

We found another brand of sparkling lemonade at the store last night. It's by Simply Enjoy. I'm not sure but I think it may be the store's new quality-type brand (generic but fancy). It was in our regular supermarket, Stop & Shop, and says that it is also from France, just like the other brand we tried, Lorina. This one was really good, just not quite as good as the Lorina, however it is half the price of the Lorina brand. I would definately buy it again.
Two Ways With Poached Eggs
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:01:00 -0500

Keywords: Renée , Breakfast , Poached , Eggs

Ever since Chris and I went to California to visit Danny and Tiffany in the summer of 2005, I have been ordering my eggs poached (in a cup!) when we go out to breakfast. This is because Danny let me have a bite of his Eggs Benedict one morning and explained that poached eggs were just like over easy eggs but without the butter used to fry them. Until this summer, when Danny came to visit us in NY, I had never attempted to make poached eggs at home. There was an episode of Good Eats on our dvr in which Alton Brown makes everything from poached eggs to poached fish and there are explicit instructions in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So one morning, I jumped in with both feet and made some for Danny and myself. They came out great. Here I have two different breakfast choices that I've made recently. The first was made on 8.28.08 and the second was made on 8.31.08.

The trick is to not boil the water. I use a 10 inch sauté pan and heat it over medium high flame until the bottom is covered in little bubbles. Like this:

Both Alton and Julia talked on the use of vinegar if your eggs are not super fresh as a means of holding the whites together. In the first experiment, (which are all of the pictures in the pan) I did use vinegar to see how well this theory works. Another choice would be to crack the egg into a ladle held in the hot water and dipping it a bit to allow some water to come in. Once the eggs has set a little bit you can slip it out into the pan. I prefer to crack the eggs right into the pan, but it must be done slowly and with full attention.

I usually use my slotted spoon to flip the eggs over once in the water. I have no idea if this does anything or not to effect cooking, but it makes sure that they don't stick to the bottom of the pan.

Once the eggs are cooked (which only takes about 2-3 minutes) you can lift them out with your slotted spoon, wait a few seconds for them to drain and then plate. If you used vinegar, you want to rinse the eggs before serving to get off the vinegar. Usually what I do is set everything up first. I take out the toaster, put the bread in (but I don't turn it on yet), if there is any meat to be cooked or anything like that I do that first while the water is heating up. Once I am ready to cook the eggs, I put the toast on, crack the eggs into the water, stand there and watch them, flip them once and then take them out. By then the toast has popped, I grab it, throw it on the plate and top it with the eggs. If I have other ingredients to construct on top of the toast, I put the eggs into a bowl with enough room so that they aren't on top of each other.

The first plate is a buttered English muffin with poached eggs on top and sprinkled with cracked pepper. The eggs did hold together very nicely with the addition of the vinegar, however, I either didn't rinse them enough or I just didn't like the taste of the whites because of the vinegar.

The second plate is an Arnold Sandwich Thin (I really love those) topped with a slice of swiss cheese, ham that was heated for about 30 seconds in a pan, poached eggs with cracked pepper and a side of Potatoes O'Brien. You can find Potatoes O'Brien in the frozen french fry section of the supermarket. It is basically home fries with onions and peppers. I add a little black pepper and thyme to mine for some flavor. This is the batch that I didn't use the vinegar with and the eggs were definately more tasty, although they were smaller.