French Toast

As we all know, breakfast foods are superior to all other types of foods. McDonald's only recently caught up to the rest of us when they extended their breakfast menu past 10:30 AM. Not to be outdone, I'm serving breakfast for lunch with this delicious recipe.

French Toast

What you'll need:
4 slices of bread
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon butter

1. Break the eggs into a flat bowl. Add the milk, salt, sugar, and vanilla. Mix well, using a fork.

Here's where things went a little wonky. I didn't have any regular milk, but I did have this delicious vanilla almond milk. So I substituted it for the milk, and cut back on the sugar and vanilla (since the almond milk was already sweetened and vanilla-flavored). At least, that's what I intended to do, but then I splashed more vanilla into the bowl than I meant to, and I misread the recipe and added too much salt. At this point, though, I had my heart set on french toast, so I just pressed onward, self-soothing with the mantra, "But we like vanilla! We're okay!"

Ahem. Moving on.

2. Put a frying-pan on the stove over a small flame. As soon as it's hot, add the butter, spreading it as it melts.

Boom. Nailed it.

3. Lay each slice of bread in the egg mixture and soak it well. 

I tend to feel my best when I limit the amount of gluten and dairy in my diet, so at any given moment I typically have gluten-free bread on hand in my kitchen. I went gluten-free for this step, but you could use any slice of bread that you prefer. I actually think the GF bread is a great option for this recipe because it's already pretty dry and is eager to soak up all of the egg mixture. It's also cut a little thicker than a regular slice of wheat bread, which makes for a little more substantial breakfast-lunch, am-I-right?

4. Then place the soaked slices of bread in the frying-pan and brown first one side and then the other.

Let's see how I stack up to the recipe book. This is, after all, an "Easy Recipe for Beginners" and we're supposed to be having "Fun with Cooking."

10-year-old chef, 1947

28-year-old chef, 2015

Not bad! Even with my modern modifications, this is looking pretty good. I will say my version probably smelled a little more strongly of vanilla. Between the almond milk and my heavy hand with the extract, my kitchen was alarmingly aromatic.

5. Serve immediately with jam or jelly. In the second picture, Gerrie shows you her delicious and wholesome lunch--French toast, jam, a glass of milk and an apple.

I let the toast crisp up a little bit before flipping and serving, and I took some liberty by sprinkling some powdered sugar on top. I did include an apple, though, just like Gerrie.

I could definitely taste the vanilla, but it didn't overpower the toast in the least. Success! I'm glad I didn't give up after step 1--I'm learning that even when things go "wrong," the recipe will probably turn out okay. Probably. After this, my 15th recipe, cooking doesn't seem quite so intimidating.

I'm not sure I would describe this lunch as wholesome, though, but it is pretty delicious. Let's just say McDonald's isn't the only kitchen with a high-caloric breakfast option all day long. Just sayin.

Strawberry Shortcake

As you enjoy the Labor Day weekend, what better way to celebrate the end of summer than with a bunch of fresh strawberries and a little homemade shortcake?

Thankfully my 10-year-old friend Geraldine from Fun with Cooking: Easy Recipes for Beginners has the perfect recipe for us to try! Let's get started.

Strawberry Shortcake
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup shortening
Strawberries
Powdered sugar

1) Follow the instructions on page 36 for Baking Powder Biscuits but use the new amounts given above. Be sure to sift the sugar with the dry ingredients. 
 
Beep-beep-beep-beep-be-beep-beep-beep-beep...we interrupt this broadcast for a breaking biscuit recipe! I've never made biscuits before, so this will be a venture into uncharted territory!

 

     Baking Powder Biscuits 
--Sift the flour, baking powder, salt (and sugar) all at once into a bowl.  
--Add the shortening and, using the fork, blend into the flour until you have a crumbly mixture. 
--Make a hollow in the middle of the mixture and into it pour the milk. Stir only until the milk is all taken up and you have a rather sticky ball of dough.
 

--Place the dough on a well-floured board and roll it gently with a floured rolling pin until it is a patty about 1/2 inch thick.
--With a biscuit cutter, cut rounds of the dough, each one just touching the next one, in order to get as many biscuits as possible. Pat the left-over strips into biscuits also.

--Lay the biscuits on a greased pan, not too close together, and bake in a hot oven, 450 degrees, for 10-15 minutes, until they are lightly browned on top.

Okay, now that we've made our biscuits, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming!

2) Wash and pick the strawberries. Mash them a little with a fork, leaving a few whole ones. Sweeten by stirring in a spoonful of powdered sugar.
(I didn't quite do this step--I prefer my strawberries to be fresh and natural, but this syrupy strawberry mixture would be delicious, I am sure.)

3) Split each biscuit and put some crushed strawberries over the bottom half. Then put back the top half of the biscuit and add more strawberries. If you like, finish with a dab of whipped cream sweetened with powdered sugar.

And there you have it! Featuring: baking powder biscuits (plus sugar) all dressed up as strawberry shortcake. Taylor added a little ice cream and some hot fudge to his, and I stuck with whipped cream. Next time, I'll roll the dough a little thicker so that the biscuits are taller and fluffier. And I might add a bit more sugar to sweeten the shortcake, too.

Hey, look at me! I'm cooking!

Chocolate Milkshake

With summer coming to a close, I'm trying to enjoy every last bit of ice cream before the weather turns cooler. Remember when we made frozen vanilla cream? I still had plenty leftover, but it was beginning to crystallize with freezer burn, so I wanted to find a creative use for it. Good thing I found this recipe for chocolate milkshakes:

Is that a new cookbook, you ask? Why yes, it is! This recipe comes from Fun with Cooking: Easy Recipes for Beginners, by Mae Blacker Freeman. It was published by Random House in 1947.

As soon as I picked up this cookbook, I knew I had to have it. Check out the Introduction--

It reads: This cook book is for beginners. The recipes are interesting yet not difficult, and each step is carefully explained. The recipes are for things youngsters like to eat, so that the young cook can enjoy the results of her own work. A girl who makes the things in this book, following carefully all instructions, gains enough experience to go on to more complicated dishes. Geraldine Miller is the young cook in the pictures. She is ten years old and lives in Woodlyn, Pennsylvania.

I mean, this book was written for me. I'm hardly a youngster, but there isn't a thing written here that doesn't apply to me. I'm even willing to overlook the inherent gender bias in this Introduction because I am just so desperate for victory in the kitchen! (See what I did there? That's the name of this blog, remember?)

Okay, back to the chocolate milkshakes. As you might have noticed from that first shot, before we can make the milkshake, we must first flip to page 44 and make our hot fudge sauce. Yes, folks, this is a multi-page recipe!

Hot Fudge Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Salt
1 cup hot water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1) Put the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and a dash of salt into a saucepan and mix well.
2) Stir in the hot water, then add the vanilla.

3) Put the saucepan over a small flame and cook the fudge sauce until it is thick, stirring all the while.
4) This fudge sauce can be poured hot over ice cream to make a hot fudge sundae. Or you can store it in the refrigerator in a covered jar and use it cold for sundaes, milk shakes, or poured over cake.

Bingo! I decided to chill my fudge sauce in a covered jar so that I could use it for milkshakes later. After a couple of hours in the fridge, I flipped back to page 10 for the very complex task of making a milkshake.

Chocolate Milk Shake
1 cup cold milk
1 tablespoon chocolate syrup (page 44)

1) Put everything into a clean jar that has a tight screw cap. Shake well until frothy. (One or two spoonfuls of ice cream added just before you do the shaking makes the milk shake taste especially good.)

You guys, the recipe seriously says this. It's a book for beginners, after all. And I'm not saying it wasn't helpful.

2) Pour into a glass and serve.

Doesn't that look delicious? People, I'm here to tell you it was. I added the whipped cream and chocolate chips, and that made it even more delicious. (And more photogenic for the blog.)

While I was drinking this delicious concoction, I started reading more "About Milk" from my cookbook for beginners. The book depicts an old milk bottle alongside the description, which I remembered seeing at a local antique mall a few weeks ago:

About Milk
Milk is one of our most valuable foods. It contains many important minerals and vitamins. Every child should drink a quart of milk a day. Milk is made up of millions of very small drops of butter-fat floating in water. They are so tiny that all you can see is an evenly white liquid. When a bottle of milk stands for a while, the larger droplets rise and flow together. This is the cream which you see in the upper part of the bottle. 

The top part is cream. The bottom part is skim milk. All mixed together it is whole milk.

Oh. Cool. I think I'll stick with my homogenized chocolate milkshakes, thanks.