French toast apple and sausage muffins
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.
Homemade pancake mix recipe (Bulk OAMC)
I don’t buy fruit punch in the first place, but somehow we ended up with these huge jugs (from a party?) that were too good to throw out. One of them was converted into a jug of homemade pancake mix.
I’m not a fan of spending the money on the mixes in the first place, but I can’t argue with the convenience of having a box already premixed and just needing an egg or some water. We could spend the same money on all the ingredients for several boxes worth instead, though, so why not?
(The sister’s handwriting circa 2009)
The mix:
- 8 C. flour
- 6 T. + 2 t. baking powder
- 4 t. salt
- 2/3 C. sugar
- 1 1/3 C. dry non-instant milk powder or 2 2/3 C. instant milk powder
- (If you have powdered eggs, you can add 1/2 of the dry product here and you won’t have to add an egg later)
How to use:
- 1 1/2 cup mix
- 1 cup water
- 1 egg
- 2 T oil
Cook your pancakes as you normally would. :) Add a bit more water or a bit more powder if it’s too thick or thin, respectively.
Tip: Make sure you write the recipe for use on the back so you don’t have to look up how much to use every time.
Tip: Add this to your “once a month cooking” list and you’ll always have a steady supply of the mix, too.
When a recipe fails – Fried chicken (cooking challenge)
A few weeks ago, I tried the Cracker Barrel fried chicken and well, I may have just fallen in love a tiny bit. For a chain restaurant, that may be a first even, but I really enjoyed the crispy coating and it seemed like the perfect fried chicken to replicate for this challenge.
When it came time to do so, we had company and again, I thought, “hey, this lines up pretty nicely,” especially considering one of the kids only eats chicken. “Perfect.” And the recipe I found that claimed to be a copycat of it? Looked great!
I decided last minute to try to bake it instead of fry it, though, and it was a HORRIBLE mess. Sure, it tasted okay, but it looked horrible. Parts of it were still powdery and most of the coating stuck to the pan, despite taking precautions.
In my book, definitely a failure….so much so that I didn’t even consider taking a picture until I was clearing the table and it was mostly gone already. And then I only took a picture to show the mess, ha.
See? Not exaggerating.
I woke up a few mornings later, though, and decided that before I even scrounged around for breakfast, I’d toss another few strips of chicken into a milk bath to soak. I didn’t bother measuring out seasonings this time. I didn’t even use half of them. It was a spur of the moment thing and I figured I had a 50/50 shot of convincing myself to even cook it later that day. Maybe I’d say ‘screw it’ and microwave it for the dog instead.
But by lunch time, I did want to fry them. I really wanted to see if it was the difference between baking and frying that made the recipe work. And turns out, it was.
I started arranging the pieces on a lovely white plate, as all food bloggers are supposed to, and at some point midway through, I asked my sister “What am I doing?! That’s not how I do this.”
At which point, I headed for the smiley face sauce:
Phew. Personality confusion crisis averted. Much better.
And the taste? Soooo much better than it was when I baked it. This was definitely a case where the batter wasn’t going to hold well without being tossed into super hot oil so that it’d hold in a single piece around the chicken….without actually sticking to the chicken at all.
See how it’s not really touching around most of the chicken?
Anyway, this was sooo much better, both in presentation and taste departments. The double-dipping in the batter was worth the little bit of extra time and for once, this is a recipe I’ll likely repeat.
Speaking of, here’s the recipe and the linky at the bottom for the Cooking Challenge.
- 4 cups buttermilk
- 1/2 tablespoon dried thyme
- 2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce (used another hot sauce)
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (didn’t add)
- 2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 2 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
- 2 frying chickens (about 3 pounds each), cut up (used breasts instead)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour (you think I actually measured this stuff? pfft)
- 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning (made my own)
- Olive oil or vegetable oil, for frying
The directions can be found here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Dipped-Buttermilk-Fried-Chicken-358138 I didn’t follow half of them, though. I did let it set for a few hours. I did fry it. And that’s about it. Cook it like normal chicken….nothing special.
Also, this looks like a cartoon fish:
If you don’t see it, that’s probably a good thing….
Recent Comments