Chocolate Hazelnut Smeared Strawberry Toaster Pastry

I've been working on some ideas to improve upon the simple toaster pastry, or Pop Tart if you will.  I like to keep it clean and use the Nature's Path brand pictured below.  I've got a few Toaster Pastry recipe ideas up my sleave, but any suggestions are welcome, just drop me a line.

I thought I'd start with a simple improvement by adding some off-brand Nutella from Italy called Fantastico (yes, thank you Big Lots) to the top of  the pastry, as if it were a slice of toast.  The result is a warm strawberry-chocoolate-hazelnut treat that far surpasses the lone tart.

            

Ingredients

1-2 Strawberry Toaster Pastries

~ 1-2 tbsp Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Directions

Toast your Toaster Pastry (or Pastries) and then spread Chocolate Hazelnut spread on top! You could even go nuts and sprinkle the top with, well, nuts!  (or shredded coconut or sprinkles or those silver ball bearings...)

yum.

Everything Bagel with Cream Cheese and Fried Egg

It's Sunday.  That means a heady breakfast that doesn't require changing out of my pajamas.  To me, an Everything Bagel with cream cheese is the shit.  Throw a fried egg on top of that and it becomes a bad-ass stoner brunch you can eat with your hands.  I use Nancy's Cream Cheese --made by Ken Kesey's family at their dairy out in Oregon.  Check them out, they have a very colorful history!  You can find it in most Natural Food stores.  It contains probiotics which gives it a tangy kick, and even though it's still creamy, yummy and cheesy it's more environmental and a little bit healthier then the average cream cheese.

Ingredients

1 Everything Bagel

a heap of Nancy's Cream Cheese spread

1 egg

butter or cooking oil

salt and pepper

Directions

Heat up cooking oil or butter in frying pan over medium-high heat.  Crack egg into pan.  After dropping egg in pan, place bagel in toaster.  Spread cream cheese on toasted bagel then plop egg on top.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  (I eat mine open face with just half a bagel, but sometimes add the second half on top to make a sandwich).  Sink your teeth in.  Sit back and enjoy the day.

Ravioli Pizza

The concept for this pizza was conceived and carried out within an hour.  I couldn't decide if I wanted pizza or ravioli for dinner, so this delicious creature became my ingenious solution.  I had my pie and ate it too.

You can make your very own Ravioli Pizza.  It's easy.  Just make pizza like you normally do, and add some cooked ravioli on top before you throw it in the oven.  I used a trio of spinach, porcini mushroom and roasted red pepper raviolis for this pie.

A few tips I learned from my 1st Ravioli Pizza trial run:
1.  Let the cooked ravioli sit and dry out for 10-15 minutes after you cook it.  Pat dry if need be.  I didn't and thus there was some extra wateriness in the pasta.

2.  Place some cheese on top of the raviolis so the raviolis don't burn.  I used slices of fresh mozzarella and I experimented by placing some raviolis partially under the slices and some out in the open.  The raviolis began to brown a little too quickly.  It would be easiest to use a shredded or thinly sliced cheese to cover the raviolis.

3. Don't eat the normal amount of pizza you usually do.  These slices were heavy.  I thought I could handle two.  I could not.  I had to walk around my house like Paul Newman's egg-eating ass in Cool Hand Luke.

Ingredients
Pizza stuff
Raviolis

Directions
Make pizza like you normally do, and add ravioli.  You could even use frozen pizza (just put some extra cheese on top halfway through the cooking process).

For this pie I mixed pesto and vodka sauce together for the sauce, fresh mozarella, onions, tomatoes, and a few dashes of kalamata tapenade.  Here's some pics...