dessert Archives - Page 2 of 13

French toast apple and sausage muffins

apples, bread, breakfast, dessert, desserts, muffin tin, muffins, pork, recipes, sausage | February 25, 2013 | By Jessi

Hey, hey, lookie here! I’m going to do a recipe post! That hardly ever happens. :D

Unfortunately, it actually wasn’t as simple as it should’ve been to find the recipe I used for these apple and sausage cups. I knew what they were when I edited the pictures. I knew what I filled them with. I could even picture the blog post that I first saw them on….

But when I googled “apple sausage muffins” like I thought they were, I couldn’t find them immediately. The same thing when I searched my Google Reader, which is where I pull the vast majority of my recipes.

I forgot a key part of the process….they’re not muffins! The base that’s filled is french toast circles. The Noshery isn’t the original place I saw these, but it is where I ended up finding them eventually and she has a great tutorial for how to make them. And shockingly enough, this is one of the rare occasions where mine actually resemble someone else’s creation in appearance. Usually mine are much messier, ha.

So anyway, if you want to make your own, the recipe is below. I highly recommend checking out the link for a picture tutorial and some tips for how to change up the flavor. Take note that I made 24 of these or two full muffin tins worth. The recipe below is for a single pan (12 cups):

French toast cups

12 slices of bread – If it’s starting to go stale, great!

Whatever ingredients you usually use for french toast. For me, roughly 5 eggs, a bit of milk. You may also use cinnamon, nutmeg, etc, too.

Apples and sausage filling:

2 cup diced apples

2 cup breakfast sausage (I usually make my own, using a mix of ground pork and ground turkey so it’s healthier)

1 cup butter

6 Tbs brown sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Using a large cup or jar lid, cut circles out of bread slices about 3 inches in diameter. Mix eggs and spices together. Dip bread circles in egg mixture and shake off a bit.

Press bread circles into the muffin pan, bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes, until brown.

While bread is in the oven prepare breakfast sausage. In another hot skillet melt butter, stir in brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Add apples to brown sugar mixture and cook until apples begin to soften and sugar mixture caramelizes. Combine sausage and dripping with apples, stir. (This is how The Noshery did these steps. I did it the opposite. Browned the sausage, drained, and then fried the apples directly in the grease left by the sausage, and mixed it in a bit sooner so the flavors could combine.)

Fill french toast cups with apple and sausage mixture and enjoy. You can drizzle them with maple syrup or any of the apple syrupy drippings if you find they’re not quite sweet enough.

The kids loved them as is, though, and they reheated well the next day, too. I don’t know about freezing them, but I could imagine it working considering I freeze and reheat all of the ingredients on their own at other times, including the french toast. If you try it, please let me know how it goes.

Trendiest Desserts Of 2013 (Guest)

chocolate, dessert, desserts, guest | February 22, 2013 | By Jessi

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Today’s post is brought to you by a guest poster, Betty, via MyBlogGuest.

Image by zigazou76 on Flickr Desserts are often the ultimate indulgence. In a world where people are more health conscious than ever before, desserts seem like a nice treat now and then. Wondering what you might see on the dessert menus of 2013? Here are a few hot tips on what the trends might be.

Ethnicity Matters: It seems that on main menus an ethnic flavor of the year tends to appear, and this trend has moved toward the world of desserts, too. Southeast Asian flavors are moving to make quite a dominant presence this year, even in the sweeter treats, but don’t be surprised to see a mix of ethnic influences in your desserts. From fruity Italian influences to Asian ginger flavors, you may see several surprising pairings from around the world.

Individual Diet Matters: People are moving toward a gluten free world now more than ever before. Some are headed toward lactose-free, too. There are even some who are going sugar free. Expect to see all of those trends on your dessert menu. As these diets pop up all over the culinary map, there are chefs thinking about how to get around them at every course. One walk down the grocery store aisle will tell you that there are gourmet cookies that seemingly have nothing in them because they’re gluten free, lactose free, nut free, and sugar free. One taste, though, will convince you that they’re the single best baked good in the entire world. Chefs are paying attention to the health needs of many these days, and this year’s desserts may prove that to be the case.

Milk Matters: As much as you may see milk free dessert options on the menu, many foodies have suggested that milk will be a key ingredient in many of the top desserts this year. A San Francisco spot has patrons enjoying the World Peace Peanut Muscovado Milk. It’s milk, cream, vanilla, sugar, and roasted peanuts in a shot glass. Uchi in Houston has fried milk on their dessert menu. It’s hard to tell what other milk-based desserts will hit menus across the U.S. this year.

Portability Matters: You’d like to sit down and enjoy dessert, that’s not always possible in our on-the-go society, so you may see more choices that are made to help you get moving. This is as much a continuation of the cupcake trend as it is of the smaller portions trend, but it has managed to roll itself into one package this year. From grab and go cheesecake to the ever-present, ever-creative cupcake flavor of the week, many menus will have portable treats that help you get up and go, even with dessert in your hands. You may even see dessert machines, like cupcake dispensers, in various locations to help you have your cake and eat it too no matter where you are.

Kids’ Foods Matter: The popular news site, The Examiner, recently reported that foods once relegated to the kids table like the push pop will get a gourmet dessert makeover this year. If you’ve never had one, a push pop is typically a frozen treat in a plastic container with a stick at the bottom. As you enjoy the treat, you push the ice cream or sherbet toward the top to have more. The plastic tubes this year, though, will be filled with much more than a frozen treat. From cheesecake to layered classics, it’s going to be childhood all over again this year.

Featured images:

License: Creative Commons image source

Betty Ann Sherman is a baker and a writer. She also regularly contributes to the Cookie Gift Baskets Blog, hosted by http://www.cookiegiftbaskets.com.

The ugliest bread I have ever made

accidents, bread, dessert, edible art, mistakes, quirky creations | December 14, 2012 | By Jessi

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Unfortunately, the picture above is the PRETTY version of it, after I tampered and tweaked it into something a person could actually tolerate looking at…and maybe consider eating it.

Let’s go back to the beginning to see how this “masterpiece” started, though. I believe this is from the time I tried recreating the adorable panda bread.

Adorable bread that looks like a panda when sliced

It totally looks like that, right? :P

Anyway, I started with all the appropriate proportions of colored bread dough:

I went with a lovely blue because I didn’t want it to be exactly like the panda above and I thought the blue would make a nice sky instead of grass behind it.

Unfortunately, the bread dough recipe I used decided that not only was it going to rise….but it was going to rise and rise and rise some more, so that it didn’t come out like a flat loaf at all.

It came out as a monster! And oversize, lumpy (albeit, fluffy and tasty) monster of a loaf!

There was no way it looked like a panda inside, of course, and didn’t even look like a pretty swirl. Even I didn’t want to eat it. So instead, I thought it would look cool as a bread pudding. Then it would be more swirled and cool, right?