It's breakfast for dinner.

At least once a week I get on the mood for breakfast food for dinner.  Whether it be waffles, pancakes, crepes and this week french toast, all yummy and cozy on a cold winter night.

I used a good loaf of challah bread, and had it sliced at the bakery.  I wish they could make slightly thicker slices but it seems the bakery has one size fits all slicing.

It may sound silly to some people, but I actually use a recipe for french toast.  On my own I never know ratio of egg to milk, is my batter to think or thin?  So once again I go to my trusty America's Test Kitchen Cookbook because they have worked out all the kinks for me.

Recipe


8 slices quality white sandwich bread
6 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour.


Melt 2 Tbsp butter and whisk it together with milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt.  Slowly whisk in the flour until smooth.


Soak bread 2 slices at a time in the batter.  In the meanwhile, melt 1 Tbsp butter at a time in the non-stick skillet to cook the french toast.  Let excess batter drip off of bread before putting into the pan.  Cook about 2 1/2 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.


Serve with warmed maple syrup.

Now, there a few things I changed in this recipe.  The milk originally called for whole milk, I only had 1% and that worked fine.  The flour called for all -purpose flour and I used whole wheat.  I also left out the salt because I used salted butter, I never even buy unsalted butter.  The original recipe also called for drying out the bread in the oven prior to soaking it in the batter, I am just too lazy for that extra step.

Even with my changes to the already tweaked ATK recipe it was a huge hit at our house, and it made more than enough to freeze for future quick breakfasts.

Celebrating the New Year with Nutella Bread Pudding

Well, I went through a lot of changes last year and all for the good.  There are always new things on my plate, which I like.  My #1 priority is to get healthy, I have a lot of living to do and want to feel great doing it.  But of course I wanted to go out with a bang on New Years Eve.

Well that "BANG" was a Nutella Bread Pudding in the crockpot!  I am a lover of hot desserts, especially hot chocolate desserts.

I started with a loaf of challah bread from Rockland Bakery, if you have never been there and are in Rockland County it is a must stop into place.  You walk right into the back of this gigantic "warehouse" where bagels are coming right out of the oven onto a conveyor belt, fresh loaves are wheeled out on huge racks, and oh the pastries and sweets are overwhelming.  You help yourself with a gloved hand of course.  I should do a segment on that place alone, kind of like a field trip.  I get excited just thinking about it.

The recipe can be found at the Americas Test Kitchen Blog, and it was easy to follow.  One of the only changes I made were to prepping the crockpot with an aluminum foil liner, and I replaced it with one of the new crockpot liners.  They are similar to oven bags and they keep the clean up to a minimum.

Let the baking begin.

It is that time of year, cookie swaps, holiday parties, gift giving.  I always make a ton of cookies, my co-workers and the kids teachers looked forward to the home baked gifts.  I find something relaxing about baking in the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle.

This year I started a little later than normal, but I also don't want to make as many as normal.  I really don't need an extra 10 pounds of Christmas cookies floating around the house after Christmas and into the New Year.

I started with Chocolate Chip Cookies, not just any recipe but my friend Amy's recipe.  I don't quite know what makes this recipe come out better than any other chocolate chip recipe I have ever tried, but these really ROCK!

As a matter of fact the only person I ever heard say they didn't love these cookies was my little guy, Francis, and he loves anything with chocolate.  I think it is the fact he is home sick and we are waiting the results of some tests from the doctors office, and I think right about now in his world nothing is good.

Where does the time go?

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything here.  I have been very busy.  We took a family vacation.  I have finished 99% of my Christmas shopping.  I made lots of crafts for a craft fair I did, my very first one.

There were just one of the styles of notepad stands that I had made.  I thought they made cute teacher gifts

I love making these ornaments, paper and glitter, what else does a girl need?  These were very popular at the craft fair, they were my biggest seller.

These Santa Candy Bar covers I saw on another blog and just thought they were too cute not to make a batch.  Plus with the covers on them I didn't eat up all the candy bars, it deterred me ;)

I hope to post a few more times before the end of the year, and I plan on making my New Years resolution to post at least once a week.

Where did October go?

I have to say I don't know what happened to October?  With the blink of an eye it was over.  It did however go out with a banging snow storm.  Atleast during the storm I was able to get some things done I wanted to accomplish before Halloween.

I had bought a bunch of pumpkins that I wanted to carve.  Here in Warwick you can't carve a pumpkin too far before Halloween, the second you cut into that thing the deer verge on your house and eat up the pumpkins.  This year I had them eat pumpkins that weren't even carved, that was a first.

I also made some pencil packs for my boys to share with their friends at school.  I didn't want to send in candy since I knew there would be plenty after trick or treating.  I was pleased with how they came out.

Spooky

Francis, my youngest loves holidays, all holidays.  He has been asking for us to make the house spooky for Halloween, when other families out-spook us he gets bent out of shape.  He had seen some bat decorations in the craft store and decided he needed to have some spooky bats in his room.

I gave this a lot of thought, only because I had visions of him waking up at night and being scared to death of bats in his room.  I decided on a bat mobile, not the Batmobile.

I used my cricut to cut out bats of different sizes, and had to dig around up in the attic for an embroidery hoop to hang the bats from.  The biggest problem I had was getting the bats to hang right side up.  As you can see I didn't succeed but does it really matter when Francis LOVED IT!  Then he asked for one with ghosts, that's my boy.

It's been a banner few days.

One thing I love to do is make pretty or fun or pretty fun things out of paper, that is how the whole banner thing started.  My first banner was for a baby shower and it has just grown from there.  Birthday's, holiday's and now most recently a business name banner for a craft fair.

This banner was made for a friend's business Shabby By Chic, she sews some really nice creations.  She is going to use the banner at craft fair before the holidays.  I know she is going to do great there, her stuff is so cute.

One of the other banners I just finished up was a banner for a Sweet 16.  This one was a little more of a challenge as they wanted pink and black with a Halloween theme.  With the help of a fellow crafty friend and her cricut cartridges I cut out some "girly skulls", spooky and fun. to jazz up the banner.

Last but not least was a banner for a first birthday party that I finished up a couple of weeks ago but never got around to posting some photos here.  Lots of times I use the cupcake die cut to accent the birthday banners, but I just love the party hat to I did a combination of the two.