Pancakes/French Toast/Waffles Archives

Marion Cunningham’s Raised Waffles

In the food section of my brain, there are two major filing cabinets: (1) New York City restaurants organized by location, allowing me to choose the perfect spot to nosh no matter where we are in the city; and (2) a recipe file.

My recipe file is mostly organized by ingredient (chicken, peas, bacon), though occasionally it’s organized by equipment. There are the recipes I make with my ice cream maker, the recipes I make with my new wok, and, filed away in there, was the recipe I wanted to make if I ever received a waffle maker.

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Challah Bread French Toast

This is a highly unnecessary post, especially if you’ve seen my post “Easy French Toast.” That’s my go-to French Toast recipe and the only difference between that recipe and this recipe is the bread. So why write this post at all? Because the difference between making French Toast with white sandwich bread (as I did in that old post) and making it with challah bread (as I do in this post) is like the difference between building a fort with pillows and blankets vs. building a fort with bricks, mortar and cannons. This French Toast blasts the other French Toast apart.

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Hot Dog Bun French Toast

On a drowsy Saturday morning, you stumble out of bed and look at what you have in the kitchen. You don’t have much. There are hot dog buns, there’s cream, there are eggs (hopefully untainted by salmonella) and slivered almonds. You scratch your chin, you lift your eyebrow, you hold your monocle closer to your eye. Might you? Might it be possible? Why perhaps it might!

A dish is born: Hot Dog Bun French Toast.

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Caramelized Apple Pancakes

People who live in warm climates aren’t allowed to eat pancakes.

It’s true: pancakes are for cold winter mornings, still in your pajamas, curled around a space heater and holding your coffee mug close to your face. Pancake batter is basically cake batter and the only way you can justify eating cake at the start of your day is to keep warm; so Floridians, stay away. This recipe is for those of us who saw our breath this morning.

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Easy French Toast

There are three kinds of people in this world: pancake people, waffle people, and people who like French toast. I’d put myself in the middle category: I’m a waffle person. I like the texture of waffles, I like the little holes that catch the syrup, and I love the way they smell when they’re being cooked.

But I don’t own a waffle iron so I only get waffles when I eat out; which leaves only two options for Sunday morning breakfast: pancakes or French toast. And for some reason, until last week, it was only ever pancakes–buttermilk pancakes, strawberry pancakes–but just pancakes, never anything else. “Why don’t you make French toast?” Craig asked last Sunday when we both said we didn’t want pancakes; I scratched my head and couldn’t come up with a good reason not to. “Ok,” I said. “Let’s have French toast.”

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Strawberry Pancakes

I never liked pancakes growing up (the syrup made them too soggy, I preferred waffles) but I like them now mostly because they’re easy to whip up on a Sunday morning, especially if you have one of the following dairy items on hand: buttermilk (most preferable), regular milk (also preferable) or, as I learned today, sour cream and half and half (not preferable, but certainly good).

Yes, to make pancakes you just mix a bunch of dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) and then a bunch of wet ingredients (milk or buttermilk or sour cream, eggs, melted butter), and then you add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, heat some butter in a nonstick skillet and fry up the pancakes a few at a time. Only, as I discovered today, you can also add a mystery ingredient. Sometimes the mystery ingredient is chocolate chips, other times the mystery ingredient is coconut. Today the mystery ingredient was strawberries!

Funny how when you have an impulse to do something, like add strawberries to pancakes, you look for validation that your idea is ok online (at least I do). I Googled “strawberry pancakes” and saw several recipes and I knew it was ok. And sure enough, after making them and eating them, it was more than ok: it’s a terrific way to use up seasonal strawberries that you bring home from the farmer’s market and don’t know how to use.

I figure at this point in the post you’re probably wondering: “are you going to give us a recipe?” And normally, I’d say: “No, just do any pancake recipe you like and add sliced up strawberries at the end” but instead I AM going to give you a recipe in the style of Star Wars opening credits. Enjoy!

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Don’t Be A Creep, Make A Crêpe

Two very strange things happened the night before I left for San Francisco: (1) I decided to make crepes; and (2) After making crepes–with lemon juice and sugar (a standard treatment, as far as I could discern)–I sat down with Craig, who was watching “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and, I kid you not, the characters on the screen started talking about crepes (including “Crepes Suzette” with lemon juice and powdered sugar). Don’t believe me? You can watch the scene (illegally, I guess) on YouTube. Now you know I’m not a liar!

Isn’t that weird? How often do you cook something, sit down to watch a movie and have the characters in the movie talk about what you just made? It’s like eating venison while your kids watch Bambi. It’s freaky.

Freakiness aside, though, it’s time you made crepes. Have you never made a crepe? You are a fool! Crepes are a cinch, especially if you have a non-stick skillet. I used the Joy of Cooking recipe and it took no time (except the 30 minutes the batter rests). It’s a simple, fun dessert and once you start making crepes you’ll never stop. (Though you may stop spelling them “Crêpes” because you’ll get tired of that accented e.) Here’s what you do…

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Ooh La La, Fancy French Toast

What to do with the leftover peasant bread you bought for the Eggs in Purgatory I championed in a video last week? After all, you had the bread sliced at the store and fresh bread like that goes stale pretty quick. Let’s see there’s eggs in the fridge, vanilla, milk… hmmm… why, could we make french toast? Why, yes we can!

Using this recipe from Epicurious it couldn’t have been easier. And now for a Flickr slide show to explain the rest (I stole this idea from Sam of Becks & Posh: thanks Sam!) Click a picture to read a clever little quip and then curse yourself for wasting your time. Enjoy!