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...

Breakfast on Dec. 25th: Lemon Curd French Toast with Raspberry Maple syrup

Holy shit this was delicious.  Rich and big enough that one slice is plenty for the average person.  It's really pretty simple to make, too.   You mix together some french toast batter and place slices of bread in a container, cover with batter and place in fridge overnight.  In the morning you just put the bread in the oven for 10-15, cover with syrup and toppings and you're good to go.  We ended up making our own raspberry maple syrup by heating up some raspberry jam w/ some maple syrup and water.  We also fried up a few patties of Gimme Lean "sausage" to go on the side.  [yummy deliciousness satisfaction noise]

Ingredient
1/2 loaf Challah or Brioche bread sliced into 4 thick slices
4 eggs
1/4 cup milk or cream
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup and 1 tbsp maple syrup
4 tbsp of lemon curd
1 pack of fresh raspberries
4 tbsp raspberry jam
1/4 cup water
about 6 tbsp vanilla yogurt

Directions
Mix together eggs, vanilla, 1 tbsp maple syrup and milk in a bowl.  Slice bread into 4  1 inch slices.  Spread approximately 1 tbsp lemon curd on 1 side of each slice of bread.  Place bread in a large baking dish large enough to hold each piece of bread in one layer, lemon curd side UP.  Pour a little bit of the batter on the bottom of the baking dish--enough to cover the bottom pan with a thin layer.  Place the bread in the pan and pour the rest of the batter on top, covering each slice.  Cover and place in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 400 F and cook the french toast for 12-15 minutes.  Start making the syrup, heat raspberry jam, water and the rest of the maple syrup in a saucepan and heat on medium to medium-high heat for ~15 minutes.  Stir occasionally.  Take this opportunity to fry up some sausage (real, fake, whatever your fancy) in a pan.  When the French Toast is complete, plate the toast, pour syrup on top, sprinkle some fresh raspberries on top and then add a dollop of vanilla yogurt.  Eat it up.  Your tummy will thank you.

Hot Chocolate & Bailey's Irish Cream

And marshmallows!  It's cold.  Which means it's time to grab a mug and cozy up.  I noticed my cupboards were barren of hot chocolate, so I went by the new EarthFare (store #420!!) and picked up some Equal Exchange drinking chocolate and 'mallows.  I mixed the cocoa with H20 leaving plenty of 'room for cream' so that I could add an ample amount of delicious Bailey's to make the hot chocolate creamy and keep me toasted!

Ingredients

1 serving powdered Hot Chocolate

1 cup boiled water

1-2 shots Bailey's Irish Cream

Marshmallows!

Directions

Place 1 serving powdered hot cooca in your mug.  Boil water and pour in mug, leaving 1-2 inches for the Irish Cream.   Top off with Irish Cream and Marshmallows!

CREATIVE LEFTOVERS!! Maple Pecan Sweet Potato Pancakes and Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Every year for Thanksgiving I make Sweet Potato casserole sweetened with  maple syrup and a pecan brown sugar topping.  Given the chance, I also make homemade cranberry sauce with orange juice and zest.  This year was no different and after most of the leftovers had been eaten for lunch the next day, there were still a few scoops left.  While I was laying in bed this morning, I was thinking about how I wanted pancakes for breakfast and the idea for this recipe popped into my head.

Leftover Maple-Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole Pancakes

makes 3 large pancakes 

Ingredients

1 cup Streuseled Sweet Potato Casserole

           (or any ol' smashed sweet taters)

1 cup flour

2 tbsp melted butter

1/2 tbsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

2 tbsp maple syrup

Mix dry and wet ingredients separately and then mix together.  Poor 1/4-1/2 cup batter into pan.  When bubbles start appearing in the center of the pancake and the edges look cook, it's ready to flip....be patient or you'll make a mess!

Heat up (or not) leftover cranberry sauce and plop on top of your stack of flapjacks.  Top with extra syrup if you like.

  

Homemade cranberry sauce is easy and quick to make...

Cranberry Sauce

1 bag fresh cranberries

1 tbsp orange zest

1 cup orange juice

1/3 cup brown sugar

This year, I added a shot of rum and a few chopped-up cubes of crystallized ginger I had lying around the kitchen.

Bring OJ and sugar to boil in a medium saucepan. Stir until the sugar dissolves.  Add the cranberries (and ginger and rum) to the pan. Return to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer on the stove for about 10 minutes-20 minutes. Cranberries will pop!  It's super-cool.  Stir in the orange zest and take off of the heat.  I enjoy it warm, but many like it cold.   

Sprinkle Some Fries on those Cupcakes.

This post is dedicated to the brilliant and hilarious Patton Oswalt.  

For those of you familiar with the comedian, Patton Oswalt, you may have heard a bit on his CD Werewolves and Lollipops where he describes this recipe when he concurs with Brian Dennehy at a party that nobody cares if character actors get fat.

One day, when I was contemplating some salty-sweet combos, Patton's voice rang in my head and I thought, "It's sounds crazy, but I gotta try it".   The result?  Something incredibly rich.  Perhaps almost too rich for one person.

With all of the trendy cupcake shops opening up, I figured I'd skip the baking step (like a typical stoner) and try out a few fancy pants cakes from a local cupcake, uh, boutique??  I grabbed a White Chocolate Chocolate and a Strawberry cupcake and toasted up some shoestring fries from my freezer.  These cupcakes had TONS of frosting on them (as you can see) and it was delicious cream cheese frosting.  However, the icing mixed with the greasy fries made it so that I was unable to take more then a few bites before having my fill.  These are definitely for sharing!

Recipe

Make your favorite cupcake recipe or go to a hip cupcake shop and pick up a few 'cakes.

Obtain fries from your favorite restaurant/fry vendor, or bake up a few of the frozen variety.  Pretend you're doing Japanese flower arranging and place the fries atop the cupcakes.  Eat in a straight forward manor or remove the fries and lick off the ridiculous amount of icing (like birthday candles!)  Invite a few friends over, fire up the pipe, pop in one Patton's albums and pass the cupcakes to the left.