Baked French Toast

I've always enjoyed Challah french toast from various brunch places but truth be told, always thought it was too difficult to make myself. Then J. reminded me that there is a baking recipe and I had not been diligent enough to document our baking session in my blog. In an attempt to bring french toast baking recipe back, I browsed the web for some inspirations and made a few french toast breakfasts in the past week. 

The star of the show today (cue arcade game music of your choice)

no Pacman was harmed during this cooking session

Ok, on with the show.

Baked French Toast

ingredients:

• sugar (brown is probably best, but I had regular sugar, so I just used it)
• cinnamon
• nutmeg (optional, to taste)
• milk
• eggs (2-3 per each batch)
• salt
• egg challah (3 or 4 fat slices will be fine. you can also use brioche)
• butter (enough to coat pan)
• citrus zest (optional but is also life-changing. orange zest is best, but lemon is fine too)

directions:

day before making french toast

• leave bread out to harden (about an afternoon or so)
• make mix by combining 2-3 eggs, 1/2 cup of milk or more with a pinch of salt.
• melt butter (i used about 1 tablespoon or so). 
• butter bottom of baking pan. note that I used a circular one because it's my smallest pan. You can use larger pan if you plan on making more.
• Spoon out enough sugar to coat bottom of pan lightly.
• Add spices to taste. For me, that means a lot of cinnamon and nutmeg
• place bread in the pan
• pour on egg mix

• cover with foil and place in fridge overnight

day of cooking french toast

• preheat oven to 350 F.
• add zest to pan
• bake for 30min or until golden brown
• wait for pan to cool a bit and gently flip entire round french toast onto plate (this was an unintended surprise during my experiment, but hey, I'll take it)
• Optional step: Decorate with smiley face (can use syrup or sauce). Cut into funny shapes.
• Serve with any favorite french toast embellishments (powdered sugar, maple syrup, berries, etc). I actually didn't have maple syrup so used apricot jam and chocolate sauce instead. They also work nicely.
• Bonus: your room will smell like heaven. You are welcome.

source recipes:

baking (this is the main one I used, although I mostly guesstimated the ingredients):
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/best-oven-baked-french-toast/

frying:
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/french_toast/

tips for frying:

http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/common-mistakes/article/the-7-most-common-french-toast-cooking-mistakes

more tips and inspirations

http://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-to/12-food-hacks-for-perfect-french-toast-every-time-0157474/

Weekend Recap

Sometimes simple is best. My friend S. visited me this weekend and I would categorize the visit as pretty low-key compared to other adventures we’ve done before in NYC (sometimes involving many subway transfers). She took more pics of our food adventures (maybe I’ll post some here later).

Lunch – spinach salad with canned tuna, garden variety sprouts (whole foods sprouts section scares and amazes at the same time, garden variety consists of clover, radish, and fennel), grilled artichokes, fresh granny smith apple, fresh mango, grated parmesan, and olives. ice tea made with a combo of peach tea from Charleston and red tea from Argo.

Afternoon – took a walk around the seaport and waterfront. Lovely day and nice view of bridges.

Dinner – attended our friend W’s bridal shower at Joyce Bake Shop in Brooklyn. Cute place with excellent tea, food, and service. Everyone looked gorgeous. The décor is also very cute (spoon sets, round and square waffle irons, and even a coffee grinder). The place is also conveniently located near Grand Army Plaza, a used book store, and Ample Hills ice cream.

Origami lessons with Michael LaFossee (butterfly DVD). Arg forgot to take pics of those. they made for lovely gifts!

Breakfast – breakfast sandwiches from Financier. Pretty much can’t go wrong there, especially for people who want food on a weekend before 11am (apparently standard brunch time for many places near me).

Lunch – dim sum in Chinatown with S.’s family. It’s always very special to see three generations having food together (or just hanging out together in general).

Post-lunch Dessert (me only) – Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Zen  Butter flavor. The fact this flavor is under “regular” and not “exotic” should tell you something about the selection of flavors at this place. The reason they have so many flavors even in winter is because the line literately never stops.

Now that I’ve gone through all our activities, maybe it wasn’t all so low-key after all… good times!

30 Days of Queens: Day Two – Kane’s

Brunch is a big deal in Manhattan. We’ve all heard and witnessed the long lines, the hype, the overpriced lox omelets, the underwhelming fresh juices or mimosas. How about brunch in Flushing? The only line I’ve seen for brunch are for dim-sum joints and soup dumplings. I don’t like to participate in either hype and I hate how loud those places are (I don’t know about you, but when I’m groggy in the morning, I like to sip my coffee and not deal with screaming people). As such I only reserve dim-sum for 10am (early bird) when family is visiting. and I go to the soup dumpling places for dinner on a week day so I don’t have to get with the crowd.

For a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning, and by morning I actually mean between 10:30am-1pm, I go to Kane’s for brunch. My philosophy around brunch is that I shouldn’t have to take 30min getting there and that I shouldn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes getting a seat. The breakfast food shouldn’t suck (if a place can’t do eggs they really should just close down) and the menu shouldn’t cost more than a normal dinner. Kane’s meets my brunch philosophy perfectly and even offers me a booth when I only have party of two. Try that anywhere else and they’ll tell you they only give booths to four or more…

Photo courtesy of a Yelper (placeholder until I take my own photo):

At Kane’s I always start with a pot of coffee, whether I need it or not. Then I take about ten minutes (this drives my companions bananas) to leaf through the colorful laminated menu made out of magazine cutout of celebrities. When I came to Flushing I could swear the menu was more scandalous. The current and newer version is much more tame. Anyhow, in between the celebrity pictures, you’ll find plenty of food options.

In no particular order, various recommendations:

• sunny side up eggs
• garden omelet
• spinach feta omelet
• French toast (their version is superb)
• breakfast sampler
• morning kiss breakfast combo
• bacon (it should be part of most combos, skip the sausage)

Other things I like about the place are the photographs on the walls and the funny looking lights. There also used to be a nude statue holding take-out menus at the entrance which may or may have been removed.

Kane’s, thanks for for all those weekends when I’m too lazy to cook or have visitors from out of town. In my search for my new neighborhood diner, I hope to find a place that has a healthy combo of cozy atmosphere and tasty eats. Maybe I will come back for some French toast when I come for a afternoon Mets game in the future.

Banana Berry Smoothie

Ingredients (makes 1 glass serving of smoothie)

-1 banana

-handful of blueberries

-cup of milk (adjust as needed)

Directions

1. cut banana into sections (whole is probably fine too since you're using a blender)

2. put banana sections, blueberries, and milk into blender

3. I put the mix on "chop" first to chop up the fruits, then on a higher setting to blend.

Notes

This smoothie is a great way to get your daily fruit and milk. I drink it for breakfast since it's a great way to start a morning! I also like how the blueberries turn the milk purple (blue milk from star wars anyone?) I also had some lychee sitting around the apt so I peeled and seeded 3 or 4 as well. Not sure you can taste them over the banana and blueberries though.

Tip

Banana may seem bland by itself, but if you slice it and put it in regular cereal with some berries, the normal cereal gets transformed to a great morning experience as well.

Strawberry Noisella Crepe

Part of your amazing Sunday breakfast menu. Makes 1 serving. Takes less than 15 min.

ingredients
-2 generous tablespoons of flour
-2 tablespoons of sugar (optional)
-1 egg
-half a mug of milk. I think it measures to be a cup or so.
-cooking oil

filling
-strawberries (sliced)
-noisella (nutella, other chocolate sauce)

directions
1. mix first four items under ingredients together
2. heat up pan and add cooking oil to coat
3. pour mixture carefully into pan, swirl around to make the edges round, cook until there's no more liquid mix visible
4. use spatula to flip crepe and cook the other side (did you coat your pan with oil? If so, this shouldn't be too difficult)
5. Spread crepe on a plate and add filling
6. Fold in half if desired
7. Yum!

notes
1. you can probably use honey if you don't have any chocolate sauce.
2. Noisella needs heat to spread evenly, so I scouped out a glob and waited for the heat of the crepe to soften it. Then it was very easy to spread.
3. easy recipe, delicious results, impress your parents/friends!
4. Somewhat related is my mango crepe recipe. It's funny that no matter how many times I've made crepes, I still have days where I just don't get the proportions or they turn out crispy brown. Practices makes perfect though.
5. The reason sugar is optional is because the noisella will make your teeth rot by itself. However, if you love sweet things (I do!), you'd better put sugar in the crepe mix so the crepe itself is sweet, too. This is especially important if you end up not having any items to fill the crepe.
6. For presentation, add some strawberries to the side with mint leaves. (not pictured)