MONKEY bread

It was a busy week last week, both my boys had birthdays! Sandwiched between Christmas and New Year that makes for ALOT of eating and celebrating! I try to spoil my kids rotten when it comes to what they want to eat on "their day". Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.....the skies the limit. Tuesday was Luke's birthday he turned 11, he requested homemade donuts for breakfast, and fried chicken for dinner. Like I said, "the skies the limit". So when Noah (14), who's birthday was Thursday, said he would like Monkey Bread for his birthday breakfast, and take-out pizza for dinner. I kissed him, and hugged him, and thanked him, until he said, "MOM alright already!"

This recipe is so easy EVEN a monkey could make it! I love my Monkey Chef!

Monkey Bread

printable recipe

3 cans of Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits

2 sticks of butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup of granulated sugar

3 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Melt 2 sticks of butter in saucepan with 1/2 cup of brown sugar, over medium heat. Stir until the butter and the sugar have become one, this takes about 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Add 1 cup of granulated sugar and 3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon to a 1 gallon Zip-loc bag, toss it around so the sugar and the cinnamon become one.

Now take your cans of biscuits, and peel back the paper on the can that allows you to let the biscuits out of their tubular dwelling. Now here is where things get scary....if you're jumpy like me. It NEVER fails, when that can pops and the biscuits Boing out of their tubular home, I ALWAYS jump. AH! Why is that. I know it's gonna pop, I know it's just biscuits. But I always jump.

Confession: I jump when the biscuit can pops open. It ain't gonna change people.

Sorry, you can leave now and never come back if having revealed my freaky character to you is totally disturbing. I understand.

So after I jump and yelp "AH!", I then take the biscuit dough and divide each biscuit into 2 or 3 parts. I like to mix it up. Give the bread some textural variety. Some pieces will be more caramelly and others will be more bready, if you do it with varied size pieces of dough. Or if you like things orderly and you want all your pieces the same size then that works too!

Toss the divided pieces of biscuit dough into the sugar. I do one can at a time. Zip up the bag give it a shake, then I add the next can of biscuits, until all three cans have been added and shaken and completely deliciously covered with cinnamon sugar.

I use a nonstick Bundt pan.....you can use any ring shaped pan. Dump the entire contents of the biscuit dough and cinnamon sugar into the pan. No need to grease the pan.

LUVerly!

Now whisk 1 teaspoon of vanilla into the brown sugar and butter mixture.

Pour evenly over the biscuits. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes. Remove from oven, and let rest for 5 minutes, then place a plate that is at least 2-3 inches wider in circumference on top of pan and invert your Monkey Bread onto the dish.

VOILA!

Delicious OOOey, gooEY Monkey Bread. Fit for any birthday breakfast! Or really any day of the week.

Enjoy!

keepin' it REAL- I mess up recipes.

Confession #1: I do not always have recipes come out perfectly the first or even second time around. Sometimes the recipes that I make the most are those that I mess up. Like the one I am going to share with you today. My mom's Apple Bread. I have watched my mom make this my whole life, I have made it myself countless times. So why today did I pour all the batter into one loaf pan. Why I ask you, WHY....why....WHY? (grimace, nashing of teeth). Usually I fiddle with the recipe and make the mistakes I've made work. Today, I just had to bake it 20 minutes longer and put foil over the top, for the last 30 minutes so that I wouldn't burn it on top. It turned out fine.

Unlike my Mac-n-Cheese that I shared with you the other night. I created the recipe just fine, and most of the family was able to eat their dinner. But the problem was that somehow one of the burners did not get turned all the way off....hmmm distracted mother of four perhaps. One of the gas burners was left on the extra low setting and the pan of Mac was placed back on the stove, on that burner, with the lid on. Just perfect for a slow even burn. It took me two days to clean that pan. AND worst of all there were no left overs!!!!!

Who's the women in charge of this kitchen anyway?

Yikes, she needs to be fired. And what she has a food blog? Who does she think she is, just about burning down her house and at the sacrifice of delicious Mac-n-Cheese.

Confession #2: I am not friends with the broiler. Me and that broiler of mine, are always having problems. If I don't burn "the bread", when it's under the broiler it is a very rare occasion. The Occasion would be one where I stand right next to the stove and don't leave the breads side, or if I have the genius idea of using the timer, which I never remember to use.

Enough of my cooking fauz pas. How about an easy recipe for all those apples you are going to pick this weekend. What no apples to pick? You need to come visit me in the land of Fruit and Maple Syrup!

Mom's Apple Bread

printable recipe

Ingredients needed:

1 cup sugar

1 stick unsalted butter(you can use salted if that's all you have)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons buttermilk

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups chopped apples (macintosh, spy, granny smith)

topping

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons cold butter

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

makes 2 loaves of bread (unless you are a stoopy like me)

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. mix ingredients in order given. Creaming butter and sugar first, then eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, and then dry ingredients.

3. Now add the apples. The batter will seem like it's half batter and half apples. It's thick. That is just fine. Grease your loaf pans and spoon half in one pan and half in the other.


4. Add topping ingredients together in a bowl and crumb together using a fork. Crumble this evenly over batter. Place in oven and bake for 50-60 minutes

TA-Daaaaa! Confession #3: I like to say TA-daaaa!, and it embarrasses my kids.

Keepin' it real.

saturday morning TRADITION

At the request of my third child we have started the tradition of always having a big breakfast on Saturday mornings. YES he actually said "mom can we have a Saturday morning tradition of always having a big breakfast?", I said "um yes son, that sounds like a grand idea!". And from that day forward we have done our darnedest to have a "big breakfast" on Saturday mornings.

Sometimes that can get tricky with soccer games, and softball, and just life in general. But we do our best to not let a Saturday morning pass with out a "big breakfast". Which means nothing out of a box, and ALWAYS having bacon! Sometimes the bacon is accompanied by eggs, and breakfast taters, or Swedish Pancake, or my Buttermilk Pancakes, Challah French Toast.

My youngest Cece calls pancakes, "panahcakes". And eggs are "iggs". I hope she never grows up. I need her to stay 7 forever!

In case you were in need of a tradition that includes bacon OR if you just need a good breakfast recipe or two, or three.....WELL then you are in luck my friend! I have all of the above for you below.

BAKED BACON

1LB thick cut bacon
2 cookie sheets
tin foil
preheat oven to 425 degrees.

1.Cover cookie sheets with tin foil, you can skip this step if you want BUT it will save you time scrubbing your pans.

2.Lay bacon out on pans.

3.Baked 15 minutes. Less if you like limp, wiggly bacon, more if you like crispy charred bacon.

Yes, your oven will get splattered with bacon grease, and eventually after years of baking bacon, your oven will not look new and shiny again no matter how hard you try. And yes your house will smell like bacon! (I happen to know some people who will not cook bacon because it smells up their house. (Hmmmm, not quite sure what I think of the never cooking bacon philosophy.) My motto is "WHO THE HECK needs a clean oven and a lemony fresh smelling house?!".

In fact IF by chance you are in need of a new perfume, just dab a bit of bacon grease on your wrist and rub together....ooooh smell that maply, salty smell. Just watch out for your dog, you may get licked to death.

BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

printable recipe

makes 10 medium sized cakes

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 stick of butter melted
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk ( or you can use 1 cup regular milk, 1cup buttermilk)
** if you don't have buttermilk on hand you can add 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar to just under 1 cup of milk....you want the vinegar and the milk to add up to one cup.

1. preheat griddle (300degrees is what I put my griddle at) or frying pan

2. mix dry ingredients together

3. in a large measuring cup measure out milk, crack eggs into the mixture and mix together with a fork

4. add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients

5. add butter and mix until just combined

Batter will be very thick and lumpy. If you want to thin it out with a little milk that's fine, but don't go crazy.
Plop your batter down on the griddle, you can spread it out a little if you need to with your spatula. Now wait...wait..wait do you see little bubbles starting to form on the top of the pancake, do the edges look dryish? FLIP IT!




We always add mini chocolate chips in our pancakes. I sprinkle them on after I plop the batter on the griddle, then kinda poke them in a little bit with your spatula, so they don't sit on top and then when you flip them you will have burnt chocolate on one side of your pancake...not delicious.

This would be the "Pour syrup all over the stack Party".

This would be the more conservative "Syrup around the edge Party".

OK. Now for the BIG question.

Which side are you on?

I would tell you which side I am on but then I would have to kill you.

Not really...that's just what my son would say.

I will tell you later......

SWEDISH PANCAKES

I am not Swedish. My heritage is German and Irish. But my boys LOVE Swedish pancakes....so I do my best. I found this recipe in a church cookbook. Thanks Nancy Tournell for sharing your recipe with the world...my boys are forever indebted to you!

serves our family perfectly 2 adults and 4 hungry kiddos

3 eggs

2 1/2 cups milk

1 cup flour 1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons melted butter

Beat eggs, milk, and butter together. Gradually add sugar and flour, using a wire whisk. Heat a large frying pan to medium and lightly grease for the 1st pancake only. *** I actually use a crepe pan. Put 1/3 of a cup batter in pan to make 1 pancake. When the edges look brown give it a flip and cook a minute more. I make several ahead of time and keep them warm in a cake pan in a warm oven. If you have any leftovers they warm up nicely the next day in the microwave.

birds eye view of me making Swedish "panahcakes".

you can eye ball the 1/3 cup thing

There ya go that looks perfect, give it a flip!

Then when it's done fold it up, like so. They love it when you do this....

Ahhh so warm and cozy.

We enjoy our Swedish pancakes with many condiments. I ESPECIALLY like mine with Nutella!

When I lived in Germany, I could not pass up a crepe' vendor with out getting me a Nutella crepe. The most heavenly thing on this earth...is to eat a Nutella Crepe while walking the streets of Flensburg, Germany.

OOPS WE DON'T HAVE ANY SYRUP....SYRUP RECIPE
This recipe was born one Saturday morning when my oldest son had a passel of friends spend the night and they were all lined up at the counter forks in hand, when I realized much to my TERROR that I had seven kids licking there chops and NO syrup!

After a million scenarios went through my head...none of which were pretty. I took a deep breath, said a prayer, and VOILA! Owdhas syrup was invented.

1 cup of corn syrup
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon maple flavoring (if you don't have this then....I am so sorry for you)

1. melt the butter in a 2 cup glass measuring cup
2. add 1 cup corn syrup
3. whisk in the maple flavoring
4. heat on high for 15 to 30 seconds, whisk again making sure that the ingredients are combined well
There you have it Ooops We Don't Have Any Syrup syrup!

(oops I forgot to get a picture....go figure.)

CHALLAH FRENCH TOAST

I buy my Challah bread from a very yummy little eatery in Grand Rapids, called Marie Catrib. If you have never had Challah, it is sweetened with honey so it has a mild sweetness to it, and it is a very heavy, dense bread. It is lovely for French Toast. But if you can't get your paws on this type of bread, then a thick cut of white bread or Texas toast will do. (However, Marie does sell online....so you could get the very same bread as me...YIPPEE!)

8 thick slices of Challah

1 cup of milk

1/2 cup half-n-half

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/4 cup sugar

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

Whisk ingredients together well....dip your slices of bread in the egg mixture and fry it up in a lightly buttered fry pan or griddle. Let it get good and brown before flipping. When browned on both sides cut into cute little triangles and dust with powdered sugar...unless you are in the "NO powdered sugar Party".

In that case........I will forgive you.

And this goes without saying......I love me some java Joe.

Have a great morning,

Yoohoo down here....

In case you wondered I am in the "Syrup around the edge Party". I hope we can all be friends and accepting of one anothers choices.

Thank you.