Coconut Pecan.......WAFFLES!!!!!

Todays creation came about from having left over filling from a german chocolate cake that I made last week. I made the filling from scratch and had about two cups left that I did not want to throw away. So I had a genius idea while whipping up some waffle batter the next day. I put my leftover filling into the batter, and they turned out amazing.  So I thought I would share the recipe with you this week. The filling recipe makes enough for a 3 layer 10 inch cake, so you may want to consider pairing it down if you are just using it for the waffles or you can make the full batch and use any excess for topping your waffles instead of using syrup. That makes them even better. You could also make them as pancakes if you wanted to, it works either way. I mixed my filling in with Bisquick mix to make it a little easier. It was leftover filling after all.  I hope you all get a chance to try these, they are amazing.

Ingredients

• 3 large egg yolks
• 1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
• 1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and brought to room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 2/3 cups (7 ounces) sweetened flaked coconut
• 1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped
• 
  
• Directions
• Combine egg yolks, evaporated milk, and brown sugar in a saucepan. Add butter, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick, about 10 minutes. Pour through a fine sieve into a bowl.
• Stir in vanilla, salt, coconut, and pecans. Let cool completely. Frosting can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 day; bring to room temperature before using.

If you are going to mix into waffle batter, mix about 1 1/2 cup of filling to 4 cups of batter, or to your liking, just be sure not to add too much or your waffles will be to heavy. You still want light waffles.


Enjoy everyone and remember to take time to wake up slowly and enjoy breakfast with the family, whoever that might be to you.

Americanized Chilaquiles :)

Chilaquiles were one of my favorite things to get when my family and I went to see my Grandmother and far away family members on many of our vacation road trips to go and see them. Every time that we got to my Tia's (Auntie in Spanish) house she would make the most amazing chilaquiles that I have ever had. She made them with her special salsa that she made fresh and mexican chorizo from the local Mercado. I remember having these every time that we were in the area to see everyone.

So today I made a beef stew with a friend from work, and upon tasting it and with my love of breakfast, I had the bright idea of asking, "What do you think this would be like with and egg on top?" So I went with it. I thought that it would be awesome with some tortilla chips too. So I fried up and egg and lined my plate with some chips, topped it with the beef stew, and my fried egg. Nothing could have made them any better. Cutting into the egg and letting the yolk run over and coat everything in its path. It was like a delicious mountain of happiness, all ready for MY breakfast.

I called them Americanized Chilaquiles because they had many of the same elements that you can often find in chilaquiles and they reminded me of the amazing ones that  I would eat as a kid at my Tia's house, just with an extremely american twist on them.

I hope you all try out this recipe, because it is truly mind boggling. And as always, remember to take time to wake up slow, and to spice up your breakfast once and a while. Enjoy y'all.


Americanized Chilaquiles

3 TBS    Olive Oil

2 TBS    Garlic, Minced

1 ea        Red Onion, Finely Minced

4 ea        Carrots, Large Diced

6 ea        Potatoes – Yukon Gold, Large Diced

1 lb.        Stew Beef

2-15oz. cans 

               Diced Tomatoes

½ Gal     Tomato Juice

To Taste Salt and Pepper

               Tortilla Chips

               Eggs

In a large stockpot over medium heat, sauté Garlic and Red Onion in Olive Oil until translucent and fragrant. Add Stew Beef and cook until browned and tender. Add Carrots and cook until lightly caramelized and cooked half way through. Add potatoes and brown slightly. Deglaze the pan with the Diced Tomatoes and Tomato Juice and season with Salt and Pepper. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Serve over Tortilla Chips with an over easy or sunny side up Egg on top and enjoy.

The base Beef Stew Recipe was made in collaboration with friend and co-worker Catt Quinn

Who gives a Crêpe!!!!!!

I got a little Crêpe crazy the other day. I was reading through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and going over the breakfast recipes, to be more specific, where else would I be??? ;) The Crêpes stuck out to me out of everything. They are something that I have not tackled in a long time, let alone in my home kitchen. I was ready to be challenged, so I did it, I made Crêpes!

Now I was slightly afraid at first but everything came together. The recipe seems daunting when you first read it with having to make the batter in the blender and then letting it sit for a hour in the fridge, and down to measuring each so that you get a specific number, it can discourage you really quickly. But I am hear to tell you it can be done, its not as scary as it might seem and they are delicious.

I made a filling of baby asparagus tips, mushrooms, and garlic sautéed together in a little butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. I then made a hollandaise sauce to put over top of them after I assembled them, and some sliced green onions to garnish with. I also cooked off some beef bacon and made some mango-raspberry yogurt bowls to round off the meal. Fresh squeezed orange juice and a fresh pot of coffee topped it all off.

I had some crepes left over from breakfast and made this delicious raspberry cream crepes for dessert after dinner later that day. They are super delicious and a snap to make, and not waste your leftover crepes after all of that hard work and time you just put into them.

Raspberry Cream Crepes

4 leftover crepes

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 pint fresh raspberries

Raspberry Jam

In a kitchenaid or with a handheld mixer beat your heavy cream until showing signs of slight thickening, and add the powdered sugar. Spread raspberry jam over crepes, fill with whipped cream topping, fold in half, add a little more whipped cream, and fold in half again. Top with fresh raspberries or berries of you choice and ENJOY!

Remember to take time to wake up slowly and make breakfast for someone you love

Julia Childs crepe recipe that I used follows below.

Julia Childs Crepe Recipe - from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck

French Pancakes

Crepes

Every French household makes use of crepes, not only as a festive dessert for Mardi Gras and Candlemas Day, But as an attractive way to turn leftovers or simple ingredients into a nourishing main-course dish. Crepes may be rolled around a filling of fish, meat, or vegetables, spread with sauce, and browned under the broiler. More spectacular is a gateau de crepes is which the pancakes are piled upon each other in a stack of 24, each spread with a filling. This is then heated in the oven and gratineed with a good sauce. Or the crepes may be piled in a soufflé mold with alternating layers of filling, heated in the oven and unmolded, and coated with sauce. Whatever system you decide upon, including rolled crepes, your dish may be prepared in advance and heated up when you are ready to serve.

Dessert crepes, called crepes sucrees, and entrée crepes, crepes salees, have slightly different proportions, but their batters are blended and cooked in the same way. The following recipe is made with an electric blender, because it is so quick. If you do not have one, gradually blend the eggs into the flour, beat in the liquid by spoonfuls, then the butter, and strain the batter to get rid of any lumps. Crepe batter should be made at least 2 hours before it is to be used; this allows the flour particles to expand in the liquid and insures a tender, light, thin crepe.

Pate a Crepes

{Crepe Batter}

For about 25 to 30 crepes, 6 to 6½  inches in diameter

1 cup cold milk

1 cup cold water

4 eggs

½ tsp salt

1½ cups flour (scooped and leveled)

4 Tb melted butter

A rubber scraper

Put the liquids, eggs, and salt into the blender jar. Add the flour, then the butter. Cover and blend at top speed for 1 minute. If bits of flour adhere to sides of jar, dislodge with rubber scraper and blend for 2 to 3 seconds more. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

The batter should be a very light cream, just thick enough to coat a wooden spoon. If, after making your first crepe, it seems to heavy, beat in a bit of water, a spoonful at a time. Your cooked crepe should be about 1/16^th inch thick.

Method

The first crepe is a trial one to test out the consistency of your batter, the exact amount you need for the pan, and the heat.

Rub the skillet with the rind or brush it lightly with oil. Set over moderately high heat until the pan is just beginning to smoke.

Immediately remove from the heat and, holding handle of pan in your right hand, pour with your left hand a scant ¼ cup of batter into the middle of the pan. Quickly tilt the pan in all directions to run the batter all over the bottom of the pan in a thin film. (Pour and batter that does not adhere to the pan back into your bowl; judge the amount for your next crepe accordingly.) This whole operation takes but 2 or 3 seconds.

Return the pan to heat for 60 to 80 seconds. Then jerk and toss pan sharply back and fourth and up and down to loosen the crepe. Lift the edges with a spatula and if the under side is a nice light brown, the crepe is ready for turning.

Turn the crepe by using 2 spatulas; or grasp the edges nearest you in your fingers and sweep it you toward you and over again into the pan in a reverse circle; or toss it over by a flip of the pan

Brown lightly for about ½ minute on the other side. This second side is rarely more that a spotty brown, and is always kept as the underneath or nonpublic aspect of the crepe. As they are done, slide the crepes onto a rack and let cool several minutes before stacking on a plate.

Grease the skillet again, heat to just smoking, and proceed with the rest of the crepes.

Crepes may be kept warm by covering them with a dish and setting them over simmering water or in a slow oven. Or they may be made several hours in advance and reheated when needed. (Crepes freeze perfectly.) As soon as you are used to the procedure, you can keep 2 pans going at once, and make 24 crepes in less that half an hour. 

Breakfast prevails, even in my dinner :)

Just in case you haven't gotten the idea yet, I really love breakfast. It is starting to show up in every meal that I have. I went out with the family the other night for a family friends birthday, and there it is showing up in my dinner. 

We went out to an Italian restaurant, a big familiar chain that you all would recognize, only to find that there menu had changed and that my favorite item was no longer available. So I browsed the men for a while, a kind of long while, long enough that I had to make everyone wait one more round of the server asking "Has everyone decided yet", because I was intrigued by the new menu. They had really moved away from doing run of the mill, commercial, Italian food and really started to make it real, home style, like ur mama made it in her little kitchen in Jersey Italian food. It is great to have that feel in a national chain, which makes you feel like you are on a rooftop in Italy.

The waiter finally came back and took everyones order, and I had finally decided on the pasta Carbonara, made with pancetta and a beautiful cream sauce. Just reading the description made my mouth water. It sounded so delicious and it also had something typically associated with my favorite meal of the day on it, an EGG.

They brought it out to me in this beautiful bowl, with a perfectly cooked over easy egg on the top, covered in olive oil and black pepper, two of the best cooking ingredients, and all you really need to make something taste delicious. The egg was done so well that it almost looked poached, and as a chef myself I can appreciate when someone has great technique in the kitchen. It was one of the best pasta dishes that I have had in a very long time. It hit the spot :)

Enjoy your week, tell someone you love them, give them a BIG hug and always remember to take time to wake up slowly, and enjoy breakfast :)

hot! Hot! HOT!!!!! The Breakfast Bandit is cooking......LITERALLY :(

This week the air conditioning went out in the house after have more than sixty days of 100+ degree temperatures in the DFW Texas area. It has literally been the most miserable summer of my life. You can barely get from the front door of your house to the care without beads of sweat starting to run down your back. I mean it has been bad people. The terrible, horrible, no good very bad summer of 2011. Blah. 

So with the air conditioning down this weekend, we packed up a bag and the dog and went to stay at a hotel for the night. CJ was not very happy to have to leave his home but he was ecstatic to get out of the heat and into a nice cool air-conditioned hotel room. With this series of events I didn't have much time to do breakfast for everyone this week, so mom and I went to IHOP for breakfast this week.

So we started our adventure off to the International House of Pancakes. We had to make a pit stop back to the house to drop off CJ, which didn't make him very happy because he had to go back into a hot house. I opened some windows for him and left him with a bowl full of ice cubes and headed to a cooler climate. 

I made it to IHOP and mom was already there with a table waiting for me. She could not bare the heat, and it was starting to really make everyone in the house quite unbearable. We had already lived with the air barely running for about two weeks already. Anyway, enough complaining, back to breakfast. 

I can imagine what you all are thinking, IHOP, really? And I know it really isn't anything special, but they have been doing this for a long time and most of there offerings are good, not to mention that the strawberry syrup is the BEST. Mom ordered one of the special meals that they had running at the time, which came with a doughnut style apple fritter covered in a caramel apple syrup and whip cream. It was delicious, like, warm doughnut, melt in your mouth delicious.

I had the chicken fried steak with the hash browns, over easy eggs and a WAFFLE :) I mixed together my eggs and hash browns letting them absorb all of the yolks and then covered them in my favorite cholula hot sauce. By the way, you did read that right, at the international house of PANCAKES ........ I had a WAFFLE :) I just had to be a little different, and I had been craving a waffle for a while. I was really surprised to see that they even served waffles, but I sure did enjoy it covered in that delicious strawberry syrup. It was yummmy :)

So we got to have a little holiday adventure, because later that day when I went back to meet the A/C guy and he was unable to fix it, he said that he would come back the next morning to work on it, and long story short, it was labor day weekend and he didn't return until Tuesday morning. So it was a hot weekend, but thank the lord it cooled off on Sunday and Monday, because it was devastatingly hot.

Enjoy your week everyone and remember take time to wake up slow and enjoy breakfast.

Bandito y Bandita

Today I made a beautiful breakfast spread for my sister and my self.

I started a new job this summer and it really flipped my body clock for a HUGE loop, but in turn it has begun to give me time to have breakfast at the normal time in which most people would say it was appropriate, although I would eat it at any time, any day, any where, it's my favorite :)


So I got up really early, or what used to seem really early for me, and went straight down to make a delicious breakfast for my sister and me. I started with making the coffee to wake me up and keep me motivated to finish the job. I turned on some music to get me in a great mood for the day, something fun and calm at the same time. Then I got the bacon started cooking, this got my sister almost barreling down the stairs for one of her favorite things. Anytime that bacon is cooking in the house you can expect her to show up.

While the bacon was cooking I got all of my vegetables cut up for omelets, fresh squeezed the oranges, and set the table. I wanted to make it special for her, so I set the table nicely with my bight fiesta ware china, set out candles and got them lit, and had her favorite coffee creamer out and ready for her. When she made it down she gave me this really weird look and asked "What are you doing up so early?" With my schedule change I have been getting up between 5 and 6 am which used to be closer to bed time for me than it was breakfast time, but I have adjusted and it is natural to wake up at this time now. So I told her just to relax and to be ready for a delightful breakfast with her brother today :) I got a slight eye roll and a request for extra bacon. So I thew a few extra pieces of bacon on and got the omelets going.
A sort of light western omelet, I sauté  tomatoes, red onion, bell pepper, salt and pepper and then whip up my eggs for a few minutes to get them really light and fluffy with just a splash of heavy cream and add that to my pan. My favorite part is the flipping of the omelet. You just have to get all of that confidence up and do it. FLIP. Throw a little cheddar cheese on it and let it melt then slide it out of your pan onto the plate and make sure to fold over when it gets out of the pan, and then top it with some beautiful avocado slices. It was so so so good. We just sat and enjoyed each others company while Jack Johnsons, Banana Pancakes was playing in the the background. It was the most beautiful, peaceful, relaxing way to start a Saturday morning with my sister. I really enjoy days like this, it really helps to alleviate stress from the work week and to just relax and have a little "me time". Take time to wake up slow and enjoy breakfast y'all.