Category: Breakfast

I normally try to make something special for weekend breakfasts. It’s fig season, so I had a bunch of figs in the fridge to use up. I’ve made a pear bismarck before, and that went over well, so I figured that could be reconfigured to use figs. Turned out quite well. I did cook the figs for a bit to cook off the water and start browning them.

Fig Bismarck

MealsWeLike.com

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Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 35 minutes mins

Course Breakfast or Brunch

Servings 4

Ingredients

  

• About a dozen figs
• 2 T butter
• 2 T brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• Maple syrup optional
• Powdered sugar optional

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 450˚
• Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high heat
• Slice the figs in half or quarters
• Melt the butter and add the figs and brown sugar
• Cook, stirring occasionally until the water has been released from the figs and they start to dry out and caramelize a bit
• Meanwhile mix the eggs, flour and milk.
• When the figs are ready, pour the batter on top
• Put the pan in the oven and bake 25-30 minutes until golden brown.
• Remove from the oven, slice and serve with maple syrup and/or powdered sugar if desired

Happy July 4th!

We made these star-shaped scores with raspberry jam and blueberries for breakfast on the 4th of July. The recipe is one we use a lot, found here.

We had some diced butternut squash left over from the yummy butternut squash, sage and Parmesan pasties, so I found a recipe for muffins–make the kids eat the veggies for breakfast!

Adapted from Simple Daily Recipes

Dry ingredients

• 1 c whole wheat flour
• 1 c old fashion oats
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 c dried cranberries, rehydrated in warm water
• 1/4 c raisins, rehydrated in warm water

Wet ingredients

• 1 1/4 c diced raw butternut squash (or roasted if you have that)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c vegetable oil
• 1/4 c fruit juice or water

While assembling the other ingredients cook the squash in a frying pan over medium heat. Stir it from time to time, but no need to pay much attention to it. It takes 15-20 min to cook, probably about as long as it takes to get the rest of the stuff below assembled.

Preheat the oven to 350, grease muffin tins.

Place the cranberries and raisins in a microwave safe bowl and cover with warm water.  Microwave on HIGH for 1 minute.  This is a speedy way to rehydrate the dried fruit. Drain off the water from the dried fruit.  The rehydrated fruit won’t burn when it’s exposed at the top of the baked item.

Combine the dry ingredients and the rehydrated fruit in a large bowl, mix well. Add the wet ingredients, adding the squash last, once it’s nice and soft. Stir everything together and spoon into the greased muffin tins.

Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Last February, we found a recipe for Mint scones, and have made them a few times. They are quite good, though I have always liked this scone recipe from Fine Cooking. So when it came to making Christmas breakfast I combined the two and made some delicious mint scones. Turned out we only had 1 cup of white flour, so I used some whole wheat too…still tasted yummy, and maybe a bit healthier!

Whole wheat mint scones

Adapted from Fine Cooking

• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup  sugar
• 1 Tbs baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. table salt
• 6 Tbs cold unsalted butter
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh mint leaves
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 6 tsp (2 Tbs) of strawberry jelly

Preheat the oven to 400˚ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix with pastry blender. Use the pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour until the largest pieces are about the size of peas.

Separate the egg, saving the whites. Add the egg yolks, mint and cream to the flour. Stir to combine and gently gather the dough into a ball. Place the dough in the center of the prepared baking sheet and pat it out into a disc about 1 inch thick. Slice into six wedges and spread the wedges out.

Using a spoon make an indentation in the wide part of each wedge. Add about 1 tsp jam into each indentation. Put the egg whites into the measuring cup that you used for the cream and mix it up a bit. (The original recipe called for using another egg and a Tbs of milk, but this seems to work fine and is a lot easier). Brush the tops of the scones with the egg white.

Bake for 18-22 minutes.

We were running low on flour this morning, so I was looking for a cornmeal recipe that didn’t use much wheat flour. I stumbled across this at southern.food.com, and thought it looked like a good start. Here’s our breakfast version with some blueberries for good measure:

Rustic Oatmeal Blueberry Cornbread (adapted from Susie D @ southern.food.com)

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 Tbs Baking powder
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup melted butter, plus about 2 Tbs for pan
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2-3/4 cup milk
• 2 cups blueberries

Preheat oven to 450˚.

Mix dry ingredients together. Put about 2 Tbs of butter in a cast iron skillet and put in the heated oven to get the pan nice and hot. Add the melted butter, eggs, cream, 1/2 cup milk and blueberries to the dry ingredients and mix. The batter should be wet enough to pour, if it seems too dry, add some more milk. Take the pan out of the oven, tilt to spread the melter butter around, and pour in the batter.

Cook 15-20 minutes until golden brown and cooked through. Slice and enjoy!

Today is my wife’s birthday, and was looking for something a little special to make for breakfast. After visiting a certain coffee establishment yesterday I was craving pumpkin scones. While there are plenty of recipes that try to mimic theirs, I fond a few that looked even better. The one I settled on was from Bodacious Girl‘s blog. I made a few modifications, partially because I didn’t have cream cheese or buttermilk on hand. We skipped the chocolate glaze, though that does look yummy…and sugar coma inducing.We also had some truffles from a neighbor that we sliced on top of scrambled eggs and made a nice fruit salad.

Pumpkin Maple Scones (modified from Bodacious Girl)

• 1 1/2 cups white flour (we use white whole wheat)
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking sode
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp powdered ginger
• 6 Tbs cold butter
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375˚.

Mix together the pumpkin puree, cream, lemon juice, maple syrup, and vanilla and place in freezer.

In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients. With a pastry blender, cut in the butter until it is coarse crumbs.

Pour in the wet ingredients and mix as little as possible to blend. The last part of mixing is best done with your hands in the bowl, gathering it all into a ball. Place the ball on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Pat out into a disc 1 1/2 in thick. Cut into 8 pieces and move them around on the sheet to spread out.

Bake 15-20 minutes.

I’ve seen lots of names for these oven baked pancakes–bismarck, flapjack, popover…Some recipes cook the pancake and put the fruit on top after cooking (usually berries of various sorts), others put the fruit in the pan and cook with the batter (mostly apples). A neighbor has a pear tree that produced a super-sized crop this year and the kids picked a bunch of pears. I combined a few recipes to come up with this. I think most recipes are geared for a smaller (9in) pie pan sized dish, so this is doubled for a larger 12in pan.

Pear Bismarck

• 2 pears, sliced
• 2 T butter
• 2 T brown sugar
• 1-2 tsp cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 450F. Slice the pear. Beat the eggs in a medium bowl, add milk and flour and mix. Heat an oven proof 12in pan on medium high heat and melt the butter. Sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon in the pan. Spread the pear slices on the bottom of the pan. Top with the batter and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Loosen the edges and turn upside down onto a plate or cutting board. Slice and serve.

Some recipes call for sprinkling with powdered sugar and/or adding maple syrup, but neither is needed really.

We made these Honey Yogurt Waffles this morning. I modified it a bit, doubling the dry ingredients and bumping up the wet, but not double…should have taken better notes…The outmeal adds a nice texture and they turned out really nice and brown and crispy–maybe the yogurt or honey?