I have never made pancakes so fluffy and light before!

This is a pancake recipe from my Betty Crocker New Cookbook. The recipe is a simple one but this time, I tried the buttermilk variation and was surprised at the results. I don’t keep buttermilk in my fridge so I used a substitute of whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar and it seemed to work very well.

This was served with Olivio margarine, a drizzling of maple syrup and thawed, frozen raspberries.

Here’s the recipe:

1 egg

1 c. buttermilk (whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar for a substitute)

1 c. all-purpose flour

1?tbsp. brown sugar

3 tsps. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 tbsps. vegetable oil

Beat egg in medium bowl with a hand beater until very fluffy.  Beat in remaining ingredients just until smooth.  Heat griddle or skillet over medium heat and brush with margarine. For each pancake, pour less than 1/4 c. batter from cup or pitcher onto hot griddle.  Cook pancake until puffed and dry around the edges.  Turn and cook other side until light brown.

Stack on a plate in threes.  Top with butter or margarine, pour maple syrup over the top and serve with fresh or thawed frozen fruits.

Muruecos is the name of a common rice stick or suman as Filipinos call it. It was supposedly my grandmother’s favorite suman. I like it too and featuring it for Lasang Pinoy 20th Edition, Binalot made the effort certainly worthwhile.

Again, this was my first time to try this recipe. By the way, I used white sugar instead of brown. I had this thought the dark latik will make a great contrast with the white sticky rice. You be the judge. I asked my mother how it was made but got no details like proportions and cooking time. We never made this at home even when my grandmother, who instructed rather than cooked, was around. So this was really a huge task for me to undertake. Actually, for all the work that goes into this, I’d rather buy this next time. It didn’t turn out bad …look at the evidence….errrr…I mean photo!

And honestly, I don’t know how suman artisans make any profit. The cooking time alone will eat up any gains. Then there’s the wrapping…how on earth they make a perfect suman each and every time certainly boggles the mind.

The wrapper is a young banana leaf. To prepare the leaf, wipe it down with a clean damp cloth to remove any debris. Pass the whole leaf over an open flame to make it easier to handle. A hot clothes iron will also do the job. Cut into rectangles about 4×12 inches.
So here’s the recipe:

2 c. sticky rice

2 c. pure coconut milk

1 c. white or brown sugar (brown sugar is used for the original Suman Muruecos)

1/4 tsp. salt

4 c. coconut milk from second extraction

latik

1 young banana leaf, prepared as described above
Start by washing the sticky rice over running water. Strain to remove excess water. Soak the rice in a bowl with the pure coconut milk. Season with the sugar and salt. Adjust to your taste. Cover and leave in refrigerator at least 4 hours.

Lay out a piece of your banana leaf wrap on a small flat tray, wrong side up. Put 1 1/2 tablespoon of the soaked rice on one end. Top with latik as shown in photo.

Then take the leaf on the end where the rice is, move the rice over an inch and fold over the leaf once to secure it. Make sure the rice grains don’t run off as you fold all the way to the end. You can do this by folding one side, then lifting and repeating for the other side. When you have folded the whole leave over your rice stick, fold the sides so the ends meet in the center of your rice stick.

Take two of the sticks and tie it loosely back to back with a strand of banana leaf. Place this in a stock pot and continue wrapping until all your rice and wrap is used up. Cover the wrapped rice rice sticks with the coconut cream. If this doesn’t cover the  rice sticks, add more water to your pot.

Cover and bring to a boil. Allow this to simmer for 2 hours.

I’ve been meaning to do this omelette which I first tasted at the Village Smithy in Carbondale, Colorado last July when Spouse and I went to Redstone for our anniversary.   I thought it was a perfect recipe since I’ve always been gaga over smoked salmon (anything smoked for that matter) and cream cheese.  I didn’t have any bagels this morning but a couple slices of toasted French bread smeared with more cream cheese was fine.  Serving it with orange slices was a perfect way to cleanse the palate.

This omelette was simple enough that I could recreate it at home.  I’m sure it’s not exactly how they do it at the Village Smithy.  But with ingredients like cream cheese, smoked salmon, scallions and eggs – who can go wrong?

I highly recommend this.  It is not at all difficult to do and makes a satisfying and delicious brunch.

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Omelette

5 eggs, scrambled with 1 tbsp. non-fat milk

1 tbsp. extra light olive oil

4 oz. shredded smoked salmon (big pieces)

3 scallions, finely sliced

4 oz. cream cheese, scooped in 1-in. pieces

salt and pepper to taste

Heat your skillet over medium heat.  Add oil then the salmon and scallions, just to heat it up.  This will only take a minute, no more.  Add the eggs and mix gently. 

As mixture starts to cook, gently lift edges of omelette, and tilt pan to allow the uncooked portion to flow underneath.  When you come to the point where your omelette is half-done (to your preference) distribute the cream cheese scoops on the top and cover the pan.

Turn off the heat but leave the covered pan to allow the residual heat to finish cooking the omelette.  I like doing this so my eggs don’t get burned but will cook thoroughly.  Spouse likes his eggs well-done and not runny at all so I’ve learned this trick to satisfy us both.

Serve on a plate with some bagels and cream cheese and a few slices of fruit.

Sunday Brunch is getting to be a nice habit for Spouse and I.  It’s just a nice way to start what will turn out to be the most leisurely day of the week.

This week, I tried a recipe I’d never tasted or cooked before:  Eggs Florentine.  Spouse has never had it himself so he was looking forward to trying it.  There are so many ways to do this dish, I was stumped for a minute deciding how I was going to make it.  I could’ve done the eggs poached but thought it was too early to successfully manage that.  So I decided on baking it in ramekins instead.

Here’s a photo of my Florentines when I was getting it ready for the oven.  You start with a buttered ramekin, put in the spinach and crack two eggs over that.  Then you pour over your favorite Mornay sauce to cover the eggs.  I didn’t really follow any recipe…just went with what I had and how I felt like doing things. 

But here’s an approximate recipe anyway, feel free to make any changes.

Eggs Florentine:

4 eggs

5-oz. frozen chopped spinach, thawed

1 tbsp. butter

salt and pepper to taste

Mornay Sauce:

1 tbsp. butter

2 tbsps. flour

1/2 to 3/4 c. low-fat milk (depending on your preferred sauce thickness)

1/3 to 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese

some gruyere cheese bits (I used leftovers)

salt and pepper to taste

pinch of nutmeg

When your spinach has thawed, cook it over medium-high heat in a hot saute pan with the butter. Cook it till the spinach juices are almost gone.  Season as you go along.  Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

Heat your oven to 325F.

In the same pan.  Add the butter and when it starts to bubble, add the flour. Use a wire whisk to stir and keep lumps from forming.  When this sizzles without turning brown, add the milk.  Stir vigorously to avoid lumps.  Add the cheese as it simmers away and season to taste.  If it gets too thick, add more milk.  Remove from heat and allow to cool a few minutes.

Meantime, prepare your 2 ramekins by rubbing all sides with butter.  Place spinach at the bottom.  Crack 2 room temperature eggs into each bowl.  Season if you want to.  Now pour the cheese sauce over the eggs, making sure to leave room for the sauce to bubble.

Place  thebowls on a cookie sheet and pop in the oven.  Allow to cook for 20 minutes for medium done eggs.  I cooked this  a bit longer because Spouse likes his eggs well-done.  Between 15-20 minutes should be a long enough window to check how your eggs are doing.  A good indicator of how cooked your eggs will be is shaking the cookie sheet just a bit and testing how done the eggs are by how it jiggles.

Plating:  Toast some bread or English muffins and set on a plate.  Spoon out the Florentines over the bread, allocating 1 egg per slice. 

This turned out really fantastic considering I started out with no idea what I was going to do.  All I knew was I wanted scones for breakfast.  I also wanted some new recipe so I can post it on this blog.  So I decided to go with my old reliable High Altitude Cream Scone recipe and picked a few ingredients I already had.  So breakfast turned out to be a Lemon, Currant and Walnut High Altitude Cream Scone…delicious…

This is my first shot at this trumped-up recipe and I know I can make some improvements in the future.  I’ll give it to you as I made it, with notes that will improve the recipe.

Lemon, Currant and Walnut High-Altitude Cream Scones

I was looking for a good recipe for French Toast this morning and stumbled on this interesting piece from Daniel Rogov.  Mr. Rogov clarifies that the French Toast did not originate in France as I always thought.  It’s origins are in Albany, New York where a tavern keeper of the 16th century by the name of Joseph French came up with the recipe and  named it after himself.

After reading that, I really had no choice but to go with  Mr. French’s original recipe.  I then decided to dress it up with a bit of homemade orange and raspberry sauce.   It made one truly delicious breakfast.  Unlike most French Toast recipes I’ve tried, this isn’t sweet at all. The sweetness is provided by the sauce which is the way it was probably meant to be.

French Toast

3 eggs

3 tbsps. milk

1/4 tsp. salt

pinch of black pepper

several drops vanilla

4 slices white bread

unsalted butter for frying

Beat the eggs, milk, salt, peppper and vanilla

Heat a heavy skillet over medium high heat and add a tablespoon of butter.  Dip a slice of bread in the eggs, making sure to cover both sides.  Let the excess drip off.

Cook on both sides till browned to your taste.  Adjust the heat between medium to medium high and be patient or you’ll get a soggy middle.  Repeat with remaining bread.

This is served with a homemade raspberry and orange sauce and some orange slices.  You can also serve with maple syrup or honey.

Orange Raspberry Sauce

1 c. frozen raspberries

1/2 c. sugar (more if you want)

1/4 fresh orange juice

pinch of salt

Put all ingredients in a small sauce pan.  Cook over medium-high heat.  When it boils, bring down to a simmer and cook half-covered.? Reduce till there’s about half of the liquid left.

Strain on a sieve.  Keep this in a jar in your refrigerator for pancakes, ice cream or dessert toppings.

This was a delightfully wicked breakfast!  Don’t you think so?  It’s a Strawberry Shortcake using the Cream Scone recipe I featured previously.

All I did to turn it into a shortcake was to slice some strawberries and mixed them with some confectioner’s sugar, and a tablespoon (or two) of Grand Marinier and let that sit while my scones were in the oven.  I then whipped some cream to the soft peak stage and sweetened that a bit with more confectioner’s sugar.

When my scones were ready. I let it cool down just a little bit so I could assemble it all without the cream melting on me.  But I did have a warmer scone before I took this photo. Just my opinion, it was better warm.

Cut the scone in half.  Add some marinated strawberries with some of the juice on the bottom part. Cover generously with whipped cream then put the other half of the scone on top of it.  Decorate with more whipped cream and a slice of strawberry.  I suggest you prepare more strawberries and have it ready.  You may just find that there isn’t enough strawberries, and cream for that matter, once you get started eating…the scones just seemed to demand more…and more.

Wicked!

I got tired of eating our weekly supply of strawberries with oatmeal and cereal. Yes, it’s healthy but it does get boring.  I was dreaming up something with cream and alcohol…Yup, alcohol…hic! And yes… in the morning!

Now don’t be an old fuddy-duddy…it’s nothing that’s going to turn  me into a drunk. What’s the use of living in a kid-free environment if you can’t serve something with liqour in the morning, right?

I’ve also been going over my Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook, which spouse gave me almost a year ago.  Her recipe for crepes was very interesting…it had alcohol in it so I had to give it a shot.  It was a lovely recipe, delicate and paper-thin as you can probably tell from the photo.  Crepes can be agonizing to cook.  But this time, I discovered, quite by accident,  that using a pastry brush to loosen the edges made a big difference in keeping the individual crepe in one piece.

The filling was something I came up with, based on some recipe I was salivating over in some magazine years ago.  But not having kept the magazine, I had to improvise based on a memory of how it would have tasted.  Whew…try doing that!  Good thing there aren’t that many rules or rulemakers in my kitchen or the whole dish would be in trouble.  Then there’s my husband who trusts my taste and will call anything I cook fantastic…makes me wonder.

Truthfully, this crepe filling turned out to be delightful with the mix of strawberry and orange, unconventional with its spiciness and the liqueur.  It was a great looker at the breakfast table too.  The photo I took really doesn’t do it any justice….

Spiced Strawberry and Orange Crepes

Crepes: (start the night before)

3/4 c. milk

3/4 c. cold water

3 egg yolks

1 tbsp. granulated sugar

3 tbsps. orange liqueur, rum or brandy

1 c. all-purpose flour

5 tbsp. melted butter

Place the ingredients in a blender in the order they’re listed.  Cover and blend at top speed for 1 minute.  Scrape any flour sticking to the side with a rubber scraper and blend another 3 seconds more.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, cook your crepes in a small (6-inch) saute or omelette pan over medium high heat. It takes only a minute or two for each side to cook so have everything ready – the plate to put in the cooked crepes, the wax paper to put in between crepes, a ladle or 1/4 c. measuring cup for the batter.

Brush the pan with a little oil when it’s hot.  Pour about a quarter cup of the batter into the hot pan and quickly tilt the pan in all directions to run the batter all over the bottom of the pan.

Cook for a minute or more on one side.  Jerk the pan to loosen the crepe. If that doesn’t happen, use the pastry brush to go around and loosen the crepe, then try again.  Using the pastyr brush and your fingers, raise the crepe gently and flip to cook the other side.  Layer on a plate with wax paper in between to keep them from sticking.  Cover with another plate to keep them warm.

FILLING:

2 tbsps. confectioner’s sugar (more if you want it sweeter. I always work with less sugar in everything I cook)

juice of 1 orange

orange zest, to taste

pinch of cinnamon

pinch of powdered ginger

dash or two of orange liqueur

1 tbsp. butter

1 c. strawberries, quartered

orange slices from 2 medium oranges

Caramelize the powdered sugar in a saucepan.  Pour in the orange juice when the caramel starts getting dark brown.  Add the spices and the liqueur and cook about 10 minutes to reduce.  Add butter and swirl into the sauce. Turn off heat. Add the fruits and allow the syrup to cover the fruits.

Whipped Cream:

1/2 c. heavy cream

3-4 tbsp. powdered sugar (or more)

Whip the cream at high speed with a hand mixer in a chilled, stainless steel bowl if it’s a hot day.  Add sugar just as stiff peaks start to form.  Beat just long enough to incorporate the sugar.

Assembly:

For each crepe, lay down a tablesppon or two of whipped cream in the center.  Place 2 -3 tablesppons of the fruit, minus the juices. Fold over one end of the crepe then the other end. Do this with each crepe.

Arrange 3 filled crepes on a plate.  Pour over fruit juices from the filling and spoon more of the fruits.  Put a dollop of whipped cream over the fruits.  You may also sprinkle some confectioner’s sugar over the crepes before serving.  Serve immediately.

TIP:  Leftover crepes can be rolled up and refrigerated. They’re great with real maple syrup or some cinnamon sugar for breakfast the next day.

These scones are the second batch I made for the clotted cream I featured in an earlier post. It’s an easy recipe from www.joyofbaking.com which I adapted to suit baking at higher altitudes. We’re about 6,500 feet above sea level.  The altitude can wreak havoc on the texture and over-all success of your  baked goods.  With experience and some trial and error, you will learn that it’s just a matter of adjusting certain ingredients to get a recipe right.

This recipe is lusciously rich and is perfect with a cup of English breakfast tea or a rich cuppa java. You can serve this with some fruit preserves.  Don’t forget the clotted cream, it’s the best compliment to scones.

Cream Scones

2 c. plus 4 tbsps. all-purpose flour (2 c. for sea level)

1/4 c. sugar

1 1/2 tsps. baking powder (2 tsps. for sea level)

1/8 tsp. salt

1/3 c. cold unsalted butter

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 c. heavy whipping cream

1/4 c. cold water, approximately (omit at sea level)

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 tbsp. heavy cream

Preheat oven to 375F and place rack in middle of oven. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into small pieces and blend into the flour mixture with two knives. I start this mixing process by pinching the butter into the flour using my fingertips – it’s a nice way to feel and gauge how much extra water you’ll need to add. The mixture should resemble coarse crumbs.

In a small measuring cup, combine the half cup whipping cream, one egg and the vanilla. Add this to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined using the two knives or your fingers. Do not overmix.  I prefer to knead the dough while still in the bowl, scraping every bit of flour as I go along.  Knead very lightly, as you would for biscuits or a pie crust for maximum flakiness.  Add the water as you go along, until the whole mixture comes together lightly.

Transfer to a lightly floured surface. Now with only your hands, shape the dough into a 7-inch circle about 1.5 inches thick. Cut this circle into 8 triangular sections.

Make a mixture of one well-beaten egg and a tablespoon of heavy cream. Brush the scones with this to help brown the tops of the scones during baking.

Bake for 18-20 minutes (15 minutes at sea level) or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center of the scone comes out clean. Remove from oven and turn your broiler on high. Sift confectioner’s sugar over the scones and place under the broiler. Broil for just a few seconds turning the pan as necessary, until the sugar has melted and turns golden brown. (I left a few unmelted confectioner’s sugar for contrast.) Transfer scones to a wire rack to cool. Serve warm with clotted cream and fruit preserves.