From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I thought Mother’s Day weekend would be a good time to visit some breakfast recipes. I love French Toast – deliciously captured in still life above by JeffreyW – second only to German pancakes, with Walnut Syrup (recipes here). So perfect French Toast is tonight’s featured recipe.
If pancakes are your favorite, don’t worry, got those recipes, too. A local breakfast spot makes the fluffiest pancakes I’ve ever had and I played around with ingredients until I made a comparable batch of Perfectly Fluffy Pancakes, recipe here. A Whole Wheat version can be found here, and yes, they’re surprisingly fluffy, too.
You want bacon, of course, because what’s breakfast without bacon? Here are some interesting takes on it: Candied Bacon here, Cayenne Candied Bacon (photo above by JeffreyW) here, and Oven Baked Bacon here. (And of course we covered waffle iron bacon last week)
What’s on your breakfast menu this Mother’s Day? We’ve got a prediction of SNOW! Say it isn’t so. Share your favorite breakfast recipes in the comments, I can always use new ideas for when company arrives. And because it’s Mother’s Day weekend, here’s a flower for you:
My friend grows specialty Iris and this is called the Star Trek Enterprise Iris from her garden..
Now for the french toast. The key for really good french toast is using a hearty bread, flavoring the batter and letting the bread soak for at least 30 seconds to soak up all the good flavor. Yum.French Toast
1 cup milk or half and half
3 eggs
dash of salt
dash of cinnamon
tbsp of honey or tsp of sugar
Day old bread such as a country, brioche or challah loaf, sliced into eight, 1/2 inch slices (stale bread soaks up the batter nicely without getting soggy)
butter
toppings of choice – maple syrup, powdered sugar, blueberry preserves, strawberries, whipped cream – you get the idea
8×8 glass baking dish, 2 baking sheets, cooling rack, skillet or griddlePlace cooling rack onto the first baking sheet (to catch batter drips). Pre-heat oven 375 degrees, then turn down to 300 degrees.
Whisk together milk, eggs, salt, cinnamon and honey (or sugar) in 8×8 baking dish. Soak bread, two slices at a time, for about 30 seconds and then remove to cooling rack and let sit for a minute or so.
Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a skillet or griddle over medium heat. Place both slices of bread into the melted butter. At this point you can put another two slices in the batter for 30 seconds and then move them to the cooling rack.
Flip the slices in the pan once they’re golden brown, about 2-3 minutes per side. (I know I’m asking you to multi-task, but you can do it, I have faith. Set a timer, it’ll help). Once both sides are golden, remove to the second baking sheet and place it in the warm oven. Repeat until all slices are cooked.
Serve hot with favorite toppings.
Have a great weekend – TaMara
satby
I once had a French toast casserole at a brunch, as I remember it was like a baked French toast and delicious. Anyone else ever hear of anything like that?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@satby:
It may be called creme brûlée French Toast — Whole Foods has a good recipe for it.
I don’t cook for Mother’s Day, but I made a really good chocolate chip Dutch baby at Xmas. Recipe from MyRecipes.com, Cooking Light.
Debbie
i want that iris!
Corner Stone
Wow. Bulls.
Steeplejack
@TaMara:
No recipe link for oven baked bacon.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, that was a textbook buzzer-beater.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
So educate me on the B-ball moderne. Is traveling even a thing any more? Or should I just enjoy the rich pageantry of the game and quit practicing my underhand free throws on the peach basket hung on the garage?
I won’t even mention “palming.”
HRA
I opted for brunch at my house rather than going out for Mothers Day. I am making some of the food for the brunch. My menu is what I found on the internet so if possible I’ll give you name of the site with the name of the recipe.
Baked French Toast with Fruit at Food.com
Apple Roses at Cooking with Manuel
Cheese and Sausage Breakfast Casserole at Epicurious.com
Easy Arugula Salad at allrecipes.com
Cannoli Icebox Cake at lifeloveandsugar.com
I have been managing a cooking site called Food and Recipes of Western New York now. If interested, you are welcome to take
a look at the site.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
And I thought it was just me. You’re not old and crotchety, by any chance, are you?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack:
You must be new around these parts.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
*coughs gently*
Mike J
I’ve got brioche fermenting in the fridge right now. Will bake it off tomorrow night, then French toast for Sunday Morning..
Steeplejack
I’m noticing a lot of ads for the movie Ex Machina on TV tonight. I saw it a couple of weeks ago. Just wanted to mention that, while it’s a very good movie, it’s a little less action-packed than the ads make it seem (IMO). It’s more cerebral.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
I’m not a huge hockey fan—didn’t play it as a kid—but the playoff games I have watched have been very good. Definitely a cut above the regular season.
NotMax
Hm. Mother’s Day?
Howzabout a festive and refreshing fruit pizza? (Bigger pic)
Mike J
@Mike J: And as Tamara points out above, dried bread works better for pain perdu than fresh. If you don’t have day old laying around because you started a day too late, slice the loaf and put ém in the oven on warm for 20 minutes.
Dr. Omed
No flavoring in the egg batter. No sugar or sweetening. Fried in butter. Served with soy sauce or fish sauce, not syrup. No whipped cream or fruit; bacon or link sausage on the side. That’s how I make my pain perdu.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Also, until HDTV, hockey didn’t show well on TV, and for most of my life I lived places where you couldn’t see live hockey. Didn’t get to Atlanta until about a year before the Flames left town. The Thrashers? Meh.
Cckids
One of my best Mother’s Days was when my kids gave me (a day ahead) the cookbook : The Art of Breakfast (my phone won’t let me link). I’d gotten it from the library more than once; apparently they’d paid attention.
They let me choose recipes, they got ingredients & a couple of nifty gadgets, and I got to cook Mother’s Day brunch with two great sous-chefs to do the dirty work & cleanup.
No-one said “When are we going to eat? “, ” How much food are you going to cook?”, “you’re using WHAT?”
It was so much fun, and so perfectly me. Beautiful to find out that my kids know me so well.
Eta: It has a very good baked French Toast recipe. Also stuffed French Toast, which is fab.
Steeplejack
@Cckids:
Here you go: The Art of Breakfast: How to Bring B&B Entertaining Home, by Dana Moos.
Wag
Springtime in Denver is crazy. Snow in Morhers Say sucks. I would like it to stop raining ang warm up. Hopefully this year’s Mothers Day will be better for my wife than last year. I was amnestic following a severe concussion. I think I’ve recovered pretty wel. I’m going to try and make it up to her with my breakfast specialty, omelets.
Cckids
@Steeplejack: thank you!! When I tried to link, the phone kept booting me out. ?? So, thanx!
Juju
My mom always used nutmeg in French toast. To this day I’m not crazy about cinnamon in French toast. I’ll always prefer nutmeg. I made my mom her annual chocolate croissants. This takes a day to do and hours of rolling and waiting and rolling and waiting, but I get to use chocolate batons, so there’s that. The croissants turned out perfectly , and now we have croissants in the freezer and all we have to do is thaw, rise, egg wash and bake. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack: Transcriber’s error — fixed, thanks!
Yatsuno
@Mike J: Oh hey I’m in town! Mind another for brekkies?
@Juju:
I don’t care that I’m French. You couldn’t pay me enough to make croissants from scratch.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Anne Laurie:
Thank you! Wanted to see if it jibed with my experiments. I cook big batches so infrequently that I get hazy on what I did last time.
Mike J
@Yatsuno:
And I’m with you. I’ll bake challah, I’ll even make brioche, but I draw the line at croissants. I’m too lazy to do them right and too much of a snob to eat substandard.
moderateindy
The baked bacon pic shows them doing it on a mesh rack. Don’t bother, it makes clean up a hassle. I don’t really care that more fat renders off, I’m eating bacon for FSM’s sake. Much easier to set foil down, and bake it while sitting in it’s own juices. I usually do it at a high temp, 400-425 depending on how close I can monitor it. There’s no real time table, because the thickness of bacon varies, so you do have to keep a close eye on it as it turns quickly, but the bacon comes out nice and crisp, and doesn’t shrink much. I find that you should start checking about 12 minutes in, when starting with a cold oven.
Oh, and for the laziest chocolate croissants ever, try wrapping a mini tootsie roll into a crescent roll (it helps if you split them lengthwise) and bake according to directions on label. I thought it was a joke when an old girlfriend made them for me, but they were surprisingly good.
Bonnie
That is an absolutely gorgeous iris! I am very partial to irises because my Mom’s name was Iris. Wish she were here so I could tell what a great Mom she was.
karen marie
@moderateindy: A recipe at food.com recommended putting the bacon on a foil/parchment covered sheet pan, then topping with foil/parchment, and a second sheet pan of the same size pressed in on top to keep the bacon flat. I would expect it to be more candied because of the stewing of rendered fat and brown sugar around the bacon. Thank FSM I have thick-cut deli bacon in the fridge because now I really have to finally make this.
ThresherK
@moderateindy: I’m also sheet-pan-only kinda guy when it comes to oven bacon. Nearing the end I wedge a bit of foil under one side to let the grease flow to one side, and move the bacon “uphill” for final crisping.
Plus it makes for less blotting at the end, and saves some of the “keep the bacony paper towels away from the cats” effort.
Juju
@Yatsuno: Well, I usually only make them once a year. My mom loves them and they are really delicious. I think well worth the effort. I also have a special croissant cutting tool that is a whole lot easier than cutting them by hand.
Wow, I would never have guessed you’re French. Yatsuno doesn’t sound French.
maurinsky
My favorite pancakes are made with ricotta cheese. My other tip for pancakes is to separate the eggs, whip up the egg whites and fold them into the batter for super light, fluffy pancakes.
Hillary Rettig
This Mother’s Day, please remember the *other* mothers:
*the mother cows, forced to give birth year after year, only to have their newborn babies stolen from them so we can have dairy.
*the mother pigs, forced to live their entire lives in coffin-like gestation crates, so we can have pork and bacon.*
*the mother hens, living lives of utter torment in factory farms.
Here are kind substitutes for dairy, bacon, and eggs:
Dairy
(or soy or almond or other milk; I use soy milk for coffee; almond for everything else).
Bacon
(or, store-bought, of course)
Eggs (for baking):
Or, in some cases, you can leave the egg out entirely (works for pancakes!)
If anyone has questions on any of the above, or veganism, post them or email me at [email protected], and I’ll do my best to answer.
*bonus Governor Bridge-Shutter defying the will of his voters to ban gestation crates so he can suck up to Iowa.
Jane2
I made the pancakes today, and they are indeed fluffy and delicious.
Fred
Enough cholesterol on that page to stop your heart just looking at it. But it all does look gooood!
I’m inspired to try the french toast. The tips sound great. My Mom didn’t do it like that. She couldn’t cook for beans but I still love her anyway. She did teach me how to make pie dough but her french toast was white bread, dunked in egg & milk, slap it in the hot pan and serve with artificial maple surple. But I liked it and I still love her.
Mart
I made the whole wheat pancakes and think the tablespoon of baking powder in that resipe and three teaspoons of baking powder in the regular recipe was meant to be one teaspoon. Seemed to taste the baking powder in the cakes. Other than that very nice and easy to mix.