More breakfast: French Toast!

Hey all,

So it's been a while! But I'm back with more breakfast foods... this time, French Toast. :) More specifically, Nutella-stuffed Brioche French Toast with Sauteed Cinnamon Apples.

I've been wanting to make french toast for a while, so I even specifically made Peter Reinhart's Brioche (from the Bread Baker's Apprentice)... it's a lot nicer than a previous brioche recipe that I've used before. But, like any brioche recipe, the dough is kind of sticky and annoying to work with, and definitely requires refrigeration. There are various versions--the Rich Man's Brioche, the Middle Man's Brioche, and the Poor Man's Brioche. The difference is mainly in the amount of butter used... I think that the Middle Man's Brioche was a good choice--not too high in fat, but still buttery, rich, and delicious.

Little brioche à têtes! :D I made one giant 9"x5" loaf, and then another 4 brioche à têtes. :) The little brioche à tête were delicious to eat on their own... I am such a sucker for carbs. They weren't the prettiest things... I tried using the knotting technique instead of making separate balls to make the shape... but I'm sure they'll be prettier next time. :)

Anyhow, so I decided to make french toast the next morning! :) Okay, so yes, they all say that french toast is best made with stale bread, that was it can soak up the "custard" mixture while still holding its shape. I really really wanted to make french toast and to use my brioche, so what I did was cut thick 1/2" slices and toast them on the lowest setting just to dry them out a little. I think stale bread would've been the best... but you work with what you've got!

Click below for more nutella-stuffed brioche french toast with sauteed cinnamon apples.

Meyer Lemon Tartlets

So not only was I obsessed with making all sorts of buns last week, but I also had so many lemons sitting on my dining table... I had gotten a giant bag of lemons and a giant box of meyer lemons (yay Costco), and they had been sitting there for, well, forever, and some of the meyer lemons looked like they were on their way out. So, as much as I love the idea of making lemon-y things, it's actually hard to find lots of good recipes that require a lot of lemon juice. Most things require just the lemon zest, or just a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, and I didn't feel like making lemon curd. For some odd reason, I liked being able to bake the lemon-y innards... maybe because it makes it easier to deliver to other people? Who knows.

Anyhow, I finally after going through so many food blogs and so many pages on Google, I came across this recipe for a meyer lemon tart on the New York Times online, and figured that I'd give it a go. It was adapted from Alan Tangren's recipe, who was a co-pastry chef at Chez Panisse (well known high-end restaurant here in the East Bay). Sounds credible, and most importantly, used 5 or so lemons!

The result? Full of deliciousness... tasty shortbread crust that didn't shrink too much, and a delicious lemon-curd-like filling that was baked with the tart. It requires so many eggs and so much butter, but, well, it's worth it.

This is such a yellow dish. Yellow is such a bright and happy color...! All the ingredients and the final product are full of yellow. I don't usually like yellow, but for some reason, yellow food always looks so deliciously happy.

Yes, it uses a ridiculous amount of egg yolks, but also so much lemon!

Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee

Look, look, a post! Here is the promised creme brulee recipe. I love cracking the layer of caramel on top... :)

For Christmas, my roommate gave me a kitchen torch (I know, Edith + fire? Sounds like a disastrous combination, I know. It's okay, you're probably right. But I'm still okay for now!) and his parents gave me some beautiful creme brulee ramekins. So I'm not much up for the multi-tasking baking dishes for the most part, and the deeper ramekins that most people use are nice, but these are just beautiful.

And, honestly, my favorite part of the creme brulee is usually the burnt sugar on top, so these shallow ramekins give just the perfect portion of burnt sugar to custard. It was seriously nommy.

Creme brulee (with its respective accents that I don't know how to do in Blogger) means "burnt cream" in French. It is a dish that is comprised of a rich custard bottom layer and a top layer of caramel. There are so many various recipes out there, each with their own ratio of egg yolks to various types of cream/milk to amount of sugar. Having never really made custard (I tend to avoid it... my fear of tempering anything makes me avoid certain recipes... but I'm working on that!), I wasn't sure which recipe sounded the best. Also, many of the recipes came with fancy flavors like lavender or ginger or chocolate, and I just wanted a simple vanilla creme brulee. However, I knew that I didn't want something too sweet and tasting too much like egg yolks. So, after reading about 15 different creme brulee recipes, I decided to combine a few of them and make my own vanilla bean creme brulee recipe. (Don't ask me which recipes I combined... there was like, a combination of 3... so it's kind of my own recipe, right?)

It was delicious. I generally don't actually really like creamy things, especially custard, but I loved the flavor in this, and I think the people that ate it liked it too. :) Click below for more pictures and recipe!