Fruit Bread French Toast

In the final installment of my Easter weekend breakfast bonanza, I present Fruit Bread French Toast with caramalised bananas! Yes, it's as delicious as it sounds.

This is basically the sweet version of your traditional French Toast. Fruity, sweet, tasty.

Come next Easter, you could totally do this with hot cross buns. I'd flatten them a bit, just with your hand, and then just follow the directions below.

I slathered my french toast with maple syrup (the real stuff, not the imitation - it's a bit more expensive, but totally worth it) and topped it with whipped cream cheese. If whipped cream is your thing, a dollop of whipped cream would also be fantastic.

To make this mouth-watering breakfast for two you will need:

4 slices fruit bread toast (I use Vogels gluten free)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 tablespoons milk
2 bananas, sliced (on a diagonal is pretty)
Butter

Beat the eggs, cinnamon and milk together, make sure it's well mixed.

Heat about a teaspoon of butter in a non-stick frypan over a gentle heat (you don't want the butter to burn).

Quickly dunk your bread in this mixture (you have to be quick here, push it into the egg mixture for about 2 seconds max), flip and dunk the other side and then hold it above the egg to let it drain well.

Pop it in the hot frypan and fry until brown and the egg is set. Flip and cook the other side. Remove from the heat, add some more butter and crank up the heat. Fry the banana slices until caramalised and soft - it won't take very long so watch it closely.

Serve up your Fruit Bread French Toast with lashings of maple syrup and your bananas.

Mexican Eggs

My eggs with chorizo, capsicum and tomato was another part of my Easter breakfast bonanza - a delicious, decadent breakfast every day of Easter, yum. This was actually day one. And it was a good start.

I have called this Mexican eggs as the flavours remind me of Mexican-inspired food. I have never been to Mexico (although I hope to one day) so I have no idea how authentic this is. But Mexican eggs is easy to remember, so there you go. 

This is super easy to make, and pretty quick too. It's a fabulous weekend breakfast as you can afford to be super lazy. It's not one of those recipes you need to watch like a hawk - not something you want to be doing blurry-eyed first thing on the weekend! Weekends are for relaxing and unwinding and de-stressing. This will do the trick. 

I don't eat onions, but if you do I would totally recommend adding them to this dish. But, you don't have to. I didn't and it was still delicious. I cooked us two eggs each because we were feeling greedy. If you served this with toast, you could easily have one egg per person for a filling breakfast. 

You need:

1 large capsicum, sliced thinly

2-4 cloves of garlic crushed (depending on how much you love garlic)

1 stick of chorizo, sliced

1 tsp paprika

3 tomatoes, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

4 eggs

salt and pepper

olive oil   

Heat a dash of olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and turn your oven on to grill at a high heat (about 200 degrees). 

Put the chorizo, capsicums and garlic (and onions if you're using them) in the frying pan and cook until the capsicums are soft. Add the paprika, tomatoes, parsley, salt and pepper and cook until the tomatoes are soft, about five minutes. 

Make four dents in the capsicum mixture and crack an egg into each one. Cook for two minutes and then pop under the grill for another two to three minutes until the eggs are just cooked. You still want the yolks runny when you serve it (unless you don't like runny yolks - by all means cook the eggs to your liking). 

Serve immediately - yum! Enjoy your weekend, sit back and relax. 

Peanut Butter and Nutella Cookies (gluten free)

I love peanut butter. Seriously love it. I'm pretty sure just about everything tastes better with peanut butter. Well, perhaps I am exaggerating a little... But only a little. Cookies definitely taste better with peanut butter!

Here is my recipe for delicious peanut butter Nutella cookies. The best thing is they have no flour! If you want more of a peanut butter kick, replace the Nutella with peanut butter. Yum!

1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth - you choose)
1/2 cup Nutella
1 cup of caster sugar
1 egg

Preheat you oven to 170 degrees and line a tray with baking paper. Beat everything together until well mixed. Drop spoonfuls onto the tray (the mixture will be quite sticky), make sure you don't place them too close. Bake for 10 minutes for a chewy cookie, 12-15 minutes for a crunchy cookie.

If you're a chocolate fan, chocolate chips added to the batter would be delicious. But, they are pretty good just as they are!

Pavlova Stack with Boozy Berry Sauce

We had a delicious lamb roast cooked for us for our Easter Sunday lunch, with carrots and potatoes from the garden. Spoilt! It was so, so yummy. I was responsible for dessert to conclude this delicious lunch. It was a hard act to follow! You can't beat a good roast. 

I was browsing my latest copy of Food magazine, and spied a recipe for a Meringue Stack and decided that would be a tasty end to our meal. I decided to make a berry sauce to go with it. It was a special occasion, so decided the addition of a little booze wouldn't go amiss. 

Pavlova Stack

5 egg whites, at room temperature

1 and 1/2 cups of sugar

2 teaspoons cornflour

1 teaspoon water

Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 100 degrees. Line three oven trays with baking paper and draw a 20cm circle on each sheet of paper (flip this upside down so the pen is on the underside). Now check your oven, make sure you can fit three trays in there! 

Place the egg whites and salt in a bowl and whisk with an electric beater until they reach soft peaks. Continue to beat and add the sugar a spoonful at a time. The meringue will be thick and glossy. Mix in the cornflour and water. 

Divide between the three trays and spread the mixture into a disk into the edges of the circle. Bake them for 90 minutes. Turn the oven off and leave them to cool completely. 

To assemble, layer the meringue disks with cream. I added lemon curd to may layers, but chocolate or even the berry sauce would be delicious. 

Boozy Berry Sauce  

1/2 cup berry jam (I used my homemade boysenberry jam and some raspberry jam)

2 tablespoons booze or orange juice (I used brandy and port)

1 tablespoon water

Gently heat everything in a pot until you have a gorgeous syrupy sauce. Add more water (or booze!) if you want it a bit more runny.  

Enjoy!

Corn Fritters (gluten free)

I love long weekends. I particularly love extra long weekends! I also love breakfast. During my working week breakfast is fast and dirty as I fly out the door to make it to the train on time. Toast, perhaps a smoothie if I am feeling particularly energetic. (My favourite smoothie - one banana, a handful each of frozen berries and spinach, and about half a cup of coconut water or enough to make it a consistency you're happy with. Delicious!)

So long weekends give me the opportunity to indulge in breakfast. And this long Easter weekend, indulge I did. 

I started with corn fritters. I love corn fritters. I read an article by a well-known chef the other day who said that you wouldn't really serve corn fritters to adults, they are really a dish for children. Hmm, well this adult disagrees. So it seems do all the cafes that serve corn fritters! 

One of the brilliant things is the variety of condiments you can serve with corn fritters! As kids we always, always had corn fritters with Worcestershire sauce. That's what my parents did, so that's what we did. Worcestershire  is a delicious accompaniment, something about the salty, tangy zing it adds. But, so many other things also work, right down to good old tomato sauce. My favourites are a spicy chilli sauce, fruity chutney and plum sauce. 

So, here is my recipe for gluten free corn fritters. If you don't want or need them gluten free, just substitute the flour for regular flour. 

1 can whole kernel corn, drained

2 eggs, separated

1/2 - 3/4 cup gluten free flour (I used a mixture of tapioca flour, corn flour and corn starch) 

1 tsp gluten free baking powder 

1/4 cup milk

Salt and pepper

Put the egg whites in a bowl and whisk until they are stiff. Put the egg yolks, corn and baking powder in another bowl and mix. While you are stirring the corn mixture, gradually add the milk and flour to make a thick batter. Add salt and pepper to taste. Gently stir through half the egg whites until well mixed, then add the remaining egg whites. You should end up with a smooth, pourable batter. 

Heat oil in a frying pan on a gentle heat and cook spoonfuls of the mixture until the fritters are golden brown, flip and cook until golden on the other side. Don't let the pan get too hot, you want to make sure the mixture cooks right through. 

Serve with you favourite sauce, sit back, relax and enjoy the long weekend! 

 

Quick and easy dinners

You know those nights when you need something nourishing quick - either you can't be bothered or you're coming or going from the gym or a meeting. You need dinner and you need it fast. This week I had two of those nights. I had the added issue that we have not been shopping for a while so our cupboards are looking rather bare. Here are two of my quick and easy dinners.

First, my Throw it all in the pot pasta. The title says it all and I make this quite often. Whatever I can dredge up from the bottom of my fridge's vege drawer goes in. Pasta like this can be a bit boring, so it's important to make sure it has a flavour punch. I did this by whizzing up a quick pesto - I use basil, cashews, chilli, parmesan, garlic and olive oil. If you can't be bothered making pesto, other flavour punches can simply be added by using chilli, garlic and lots of fresh herbs such as parsley.

So, to make the pasta I got my frying pan going with some oil and fried some chilli and garlic. In went mushrooms, corn, peas and broccoli heads. To speed up the cooking time I threw the broccoli stalks in with my boiling pasta. When the pasta was done, I simply drained the whole lot and threw it in with the rest of the veges. I had some leftover chicken, so in that went too. I mixed the whole lot together with most of the pesto and some of the pasta cooking water to make it a bit saucy. I topped it off with some pesto and, in true Jamie Oliver style, "olive oil drizzled from a height". Done.  

Although it's a bit of a funny colour, don't be put off because this next dish tastes amazing. This is my version of Tom Yum Soup.  Note I say my version, I have no idea what authentic Tom Yum Soup tastes like, but this does the trick for me. It's super quick, easy and only uses one pot!

You will need: ginger (chopped finely), lemongrass, a tomato, mushrooms, green veges, capsicum, Nam Prick Pao (a Thai chilli paste that you can pick up from an Asian grocery store), fish sauce, lemon juice, corriander and prawns.

Put 3 cups of water into a pot. Add a 2 teaspoons each of the ginger and lemongrass and bring to the boil. Add a chopped tomato, a handful of chopped mushrooms, some chopped beans (or whatever green veges you have), half a chopped capsicum and 4 tablespoons of Nam Prick Pao. Let that bubble away for about 10 minutes and then add a handful of rice vermicelli noodles. When the noodles are almost done, add about 200g of prawns. Boil until the prawns are cooked, or warmed through if they are precooked. Don't overcook your prawns! Remove from the heat and one tablespoon of fish sauce, some chopped corriander and the juice of a lemon.  
This will serve two for a hearty dinner. You won't be disappointed.

Sticky date pudding with caramel rum sauce

My darling partner often has to watch as I whip up some baking and trot off somewhere with it (usually work), only to return with crumbs. So when I was musing about what I could bake on a relaxing Sunday afternoon and he suggested sticky date pudding, I couldn't disagree. I had a craving for caramel and wanted to experiment with making rum caramel. And what goes more perfectly with sticky date pudding than caramel sauce!

I have a gorgeous sticky date pudding recipe, it really is the best. Never fail, deliciously moist and moreish. It's one of those fantastic recipes that I have cut out of a newspaper many years ago and sellotaped into a recipe notebook. I return to it time and again.

I like making them as little individual cakes - using a giant muffin tin.

1 cup of pitted dates, chopped
1 cup hot water
50g butter
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
2 large eggs

Pop the dates and water into a microwave bowl and microwave for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the butter and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking soda and spices into a bowl and stir in the brown sugar.

Add the eggs to the cooled date mixture and mix well. Fold in the dry mixture.

Pour into muffin tins or a 23cm cake tin and bake at 180 degrees for 25 minutes for the muffins or 30 minutes for the cake. Leave them to stand for 5 minutes or so before you turn them out - this helps them keep their shape. They are best served warm - they will heat beautifully in the microwave.

This time I made it as a cake, just cos.

I smothered it in rum caramel sauce, mmmm. I just made a simple caramel (a cheat's caramel, not a melt sugar and make sure you don't burn it caramel) and added a good slosh of rum. I love rum. There are tons of recipes online for easy caramel sauce, I would recommend on like this.

You could add sultanas to this recipe if they are your thing, just use a few less dates and make sure you soak them or you will end up with a dry cake.

Yummo