After having made sticky buns recenly, I found myself with brioche dough handy. I’ve finally come to terms with a fundamental part of the breakfast food pyramid missing from my repetoire of go-to day-starters: the morning-time cousin of bread pudding, yes, French Toast.
French Toast, like many “common” breakfast items, might seem less than exciting to many given how many sad, sorry versions are so readily available out there. This is meant to change that in a big way. Heck, this borders on dessert given how incredibly rich this is.
The secret here is simple: the key behind a good French toast is good bread. For this, I baked a loaf of brioche–a dense, rich, buttery bread that is delicious in it’s own right (which is why I had to eat some just with a dab of jam). You want a bread that can absorb a respectable amount of custard, has a lot of flavor, and can hold it’s shape reasonably well (translated: not
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Posted by mike on May 24th, 2009 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit
Sticky buns are an odd thing for me. Are they breakfast or dessert? I could swing either way and be happy. I remember eating them as a treat after dinner when I was younger or as an on-the-go breakfast when heading out on a boat in the wee hours of the morning. Granted, I’ve always said that some of the best breakfasts are essentially desserts, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
The core behind any sticky bun recipe is simple: awesome, sweet, sticky buns. The variety then comes in two fashions: how to make the dough and what to dress the buns up with (e.g. glaze, cream cheese frosting, nuts, etc). In making these, I chose to follow the sage approach from one of my favorite baking-oriented books: Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. The buns themselves are made of brioche, a dense, rich, buttery, yeast-based bread. The topping: a simple but delicious, guilty pleasure: a dark, honeyed
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Posted by mike on May 20th, 2009 in Breakfast, Dessert
Unfortunately, year-round pumpkin bread isn’t a possibility for most of us. Very fortunately though, there are some other awesome quickbreads that work beautifully as either breakfast or dessert. One of my all-time favorites: banana bread.
Just about everybody out there has had banana bread before–its a favorite for so many people for good reason. One of the problems with such popularity though is that there’s also many a banana bread recipe out there that kind of give banana bread a bad name. You know the kind–those fruit breads where, that, no matter what the fruit is, all taste exactly the same? All you taste is semi-moist bread and a bunch of spice, usually stale nutmeg? Kind of a downer. Apples don’t taste like bananas–why should they in bread?
This banana bread is nothing of the sort. I derived my recipe from this one and fell in love. Aside from the beautiful look and texture of this bread, the final result succeeded beautifully in the
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Posted by mike on April 6th, 2009 in Breakfast, Cake, Dessert, Fruit
Even though I’m not the biggest breakfast person, there’s two classes of breakfast food that are essential building blocks in the breakfast food pyramid in my mind: pancakes (and its cousin the crepe) and waffles. Guess what the focus is today? Up until now though, waffles weren’t really an option for me since I didn’t have a waffle maker. It never seemed that pressing since a waffle maker is kind of a one-task item, so I always just convinced myself pancakes would do just fine. Well once my birthday rolled around, I caved and asked for a waffle maker. So now I can scratch that itch when I crave belgian waffles.
First, one thing worth mentioning in case you’re also in need of a waffle maker–this is the one I got: VillaWare V2002 UNO Belgian Waffler. I love it!
Now back to the food. These waffles were delicious and all that belgian waffles should be–crisp, tender, not too sweet, and just what you
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Posted by mike on February 19th, 2009 in Breakfast, Dessert
I’m not a big breakfast person, and probably in keeping with my sweet tooth, more often than not, you’ll catch me reaching for a pastry over an omelette. This was my nod at being seasonal and keeping my weekday breakfast interesting: a loaf of pumpkin bread with cream cheese swirled in the middle.
This was a delicious bread, kind of like a banana bread (which I’m sure we’ve all had before), but well, pumpkinny instead of banana-y, and richer in color. I included some of the usual suspects as far as pumpkin-friendly spices and a mix of nuts (walnuts, pecans) and chocolate chips. I’ve had images of deliciously frosted pumpkin cupcakes in my head for a while, so I also thought a swirl of cream cheese throughout the loaf would go nicely while still making a decent claim at this being breakfast friendly and not all out dessert. 
I’m also submitting this autumny bread to Art You Eat – Autumn Edition.
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Posted by mike on October 28th, 2008 in Breakfast, Cake, Dessert, Fruit, Snacks
As blueberry season comes to an end, you realize you can only squeeze in some many blueberry-centric recipes before you need a long-term plan. How will you cope without them in the coming months? 
The answer is simple: get out a clean jar or few and preserve some blueberry jam.
I’ve come to appreciate how easy it is to make preserves and that you can make some pretty neat things that you might not find in the grocery store, so why not make home canning and preserving a regular occurrence? If you haven’t tried it yet, go out, buy yourself some mason jars and give this one a try–it is so easy and so enjoyable to have jars of your own home-made jam to dip into throughout the year. Plus, if you ever use jelly or jam at all (usually goes on a bagel on a Saturday morning for me), home-made just tastes so much better, especially using sweet, fresh blueberries.
- 3 pints blueberries
- 4 cups
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Posted by mike on August 17th, 2008 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit, Sauce
