Tag: breakfast

Fall Breakfast: Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

Spices and crystallized ginger mean no syrup needed for these fall pancakes.

I am no big fan of pumpkin. Mostly it tastes like the spices that flavor it, IMVHO — it doesn’t have a specific taste, really, especially if it comes out of the can (and is likely to be butternut squash anyway).

But these fall pancakes manage to balance the more subtle flavors of pumpkin with a fiery kick of ginger. I add a ton of chopped crystallized ginger, so I get a crunchy piece in every bite. It’s the perfect fall breakfast or late-night snack or mid-day snack or dinner or…you get the idea.

Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

These pancakes could not have been more delicious if they tried. Faintly spicy, studded with crispy candied ginger and tasting of pumpkin. Light and fluffy. Delicious with or without maple syrup. Delicious with homemade apple butter. You will want to keep this recipe and make it often, especially my gluten-free friends. They freeze beautifully, and you can even freeze the batter (although the resulting pancakes are less fluffy. Still delicious.). Add more or less spice, use the ginger or don’t, fry bacon until it’s super crispy, and then crumble it into the batter before you fry them up: go crazy.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour

¼ cup sugar (use less if you like)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Minced crystallized ginger (as much as you like; I ended up with about 4 tablespoons).

1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (freeze the leftover puree in ice cube trays and pop them in soup as a thickener)

1 1/2 to 2 cups of milk (dairy or non-dairy works — I usually use oat milk; use less if you prefer waffles, but aim for thick-ish cake batter)

4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled slightly

2 eggs

Method

In a large bowl, mix together flour sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, cloves, and ginger, adjusting the spices as you see fit.

In a separate bowl, stir together pumpkin puree, milk, melted butter, and eggs.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. You don’t have to be gentle here, but it’s also okay if there are still lumps in the pancakes. I gave the batter a good thrashing with a whisk because lumps drive me crazy, and the pancakes seemed to like it (and gluten-free flour doesn’t mind it, but maybe be a little more gentle for regular AP flour).

Heat a skillet, and add a little butter if it’s not non-stick. Use a little less than 1/4 cup of batter per pancake, and cook on one side until the edges are dry and little bubbles form and pop (about 2 minutes, depending on the heat). Figure that your first pancake is going to look awful, and resign yourself to eating that steamy mound of deliciousness right away. It’s a sacrifice I am sure you are willing to make. Flip, cook for another minute or two, then serve with syrup, apple butter, wrapped around a sausage, or plain.

This makes about two dozen pancakes. I can’t actually remember. I eat them plain hot off the griddle, and I lose count. But it makes a bunch.

If you have leftovers, cool them all the way then pack them in single serving sizes and freeze. YUM.

Recipe notes

  • You can also use ground ginger, but I like the texture of the crystallized ginger in the pancake. For ground ginger, try 1 teaspoon.
  • Freeze the leftover pumpkin puree in ice cube trays and pop them in soup as a thickener. You can also use fresh-roasted pumpkin, pureed, when it’s in season.
  • Add more clove or cinnamon (or less) as you prefer it.
  • Freeze in sealed baggies in appropriate portion sizes, reheating from frozen or thawing in the ‘fridge.

Sunday is Funday: Waffles All Day Long

Waffles. Plain, sweet, savory, topped with chicken, or wrapped around a generous
tablespoon of Nutella. No wrong answer.

This has been a helluva a ride, 2020, and we are in for a wild few (more) weeks? Months? Years?

You can still influence that timeframe by voting if you have not already. Make it count by dropping your mail-in ballot in an official ballot box OR donning a haz-mat suit and voting in person. However you do it, VOTE.

But in the meantime we have somehow made it through another week of biblically-proportioned disasters, both natural and manmade. It’s time to rest and reset, preferably with something absolutely delicious.

Pancakes and muffins are for Saturdays, but Sunday means waffles.

Crispy on the outside, soft and steamy on the inside. I eat the first one off the iron with my hands before the lid is even closed on the second one. Drenched in maple syrup, spread with Nutella, or oozing with homemade apple butter.

Sometimes, truthfully, delightfully plain. It is brunch-y goodness.

But here’s my recent discovery: play your cards right, and you can eat waffles all day long. One recipe, minor modifications, and you have breakfast and supper all in one. 

Regular sweet waffles in the morning (ish) with whatever toppings make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Then in the afternoon? What about the afternoon?

Chicken and waffles, friend.

Someone has actually looked into the history of chicken and waffles, but all you really need to know is this: it is pretty much the best thing you can put in your face on a Sunday afternoon.

I like mine with a fried chicken breast or thigh (easier to eat, and ease is the rule. Purists insist on the bone. I do not.), a copious drizzle of honey-sriracha sauce, and pickled banana peppers or onions or maybe an apple slaw with vinegar and jalapeno. 

None of these things take long to make. Ten minutes, max, made while the waffles are cooking.

Easy like Sunday morning. And afternoon. As it should be.

Basic waffles

As ever, this recipe is gluten-free, but you can certainly use gluten-packed regular all-purpose flour if you’d like. 

Ingredients

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour blend
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T sugar (use 2 T if you are skipping the savory recipe)
3 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup neutral oil (you can use butter, melted and cooled, but oil is easier)
1 tsp vanilla (sweet version only)

In a medium bowl, mix the first four ingredients (the dry). In a small bowl, combine the last four ingredients (including vanilla if you are only having sweet waffles) and mix until totally combined. Add the wet to dry ingredients and stir until they are no longer lumpy.  I use a whisk and beat out any remaining frustrations from the week. #Smile #Breathe

SAVORY VARIATION

At this point, if you are planning on waffles for brunch and chicken and waffles for football snacks, move half of the waffle batter to a separate container and add 2 T chopped chives or scallions (chives give a less intense zing) and a generous grind or three of black pepper. 

Optional: up to one cup of grated cheese of your choosing. Cheese for me is gilding the lily, so I wouldn’t use it for chicken and waffles. Maybe with a burger and a fried egg. 

Cook the waffles according to the directions on your waffle maker (they all vary, so me giving directions for mine is pointless. You know your own tools, so go with your instincts on this one).

Cook the sweet waffles first, then the savory. In my waffle maker, this makes six to eight waffles, depending on how diligent I am with getting equal amounts ladled for each waffle.

When it’s time for chicken and waffles, here are a few tips:

  • Set up a breading station. Pat the chicken breasts dry. Dip into cornstarch, then a beaten egg, then a mixture of gluten-free all-purpose flour (or almond meal is delicious here) that is seasoned with salt and pepper. Let sit in the ‘fridge while the oil heats.
  • Keep frying oil at 350 degrees. This ensures a crisp coating AND cooked chicken.
  • A medium-sized chicken breast takes between ten and 15 minutes to cook. I am not above cutting one open to check. I find taking an internal temperature to be a dangerous proposition in hot oil, so I do a visual check.
  • Make these vegan. Obvi, skip the chicken and use any egg and plant milk substitute for the waffles themselves. Flax eggs would work here, and a neutral milk will serve your better (almond milk seems to come closest to neutral).

Serve these with a sauce that is equal parts honey and sriracha, or try a sauce of yogurt, Dijon mustard, and a touch of honey. Or drizzle the whole thing with maple syrup. #YourChoice

Crispy Quinoa Granola

Don’t sleep on this delicious, versatile snack/breakfast/garnish.

Look, I’m not gonna say that this is the best thing you’ll put in your mouth all week. I don’t know how you live your life. But if you want a strong contender for that title, this crispy quinoa granola is it.

Packed with protein, filling, slightly sweet, salty, versatile AF. As at home on top of a curried squash soup as it is in a vat of that extra fatty Scandinavian yogurt. Excellent with plain old (non-dairy) milk or eaten dry out of a coffee mug with a spoon as you lie in bed watching cooking shows. #AskMeHowIKnow

Take 30 minutes (largely hands-off) and make yourself happy. You’ll be glad you did.

Crispy Quinoa Granola

(makes about four cups)

Nuts, seeds, and fruit can be subbed in any combination you like. Just keep amounts the same and you’re all good.

Ingredients

1 cup almonds, chopped

1 1/2 cups uncooked quinoa

1 cup pumpkin seeds (I used salted)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup honey (see Recipe Notes)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup dried fruit (I used cranberries)

Method

Preheat oven to 300 and line a large rimmed baking tray with parchment paper.

Combine almonds, quinoa, pumpkin seeds, and salt in a large bowl and stir to combine.

Add honey and oil and mix completely. Pour onto baking tray and spread evenly. Use two baking sheets if the mix is more than 1/4″ thick.

Now the fun part, where you need be mildly diligent. Cook for a total of 25 minutes on 300, stirring every 8 minutes or so, then turn the oven temperature up to 350 and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes.

Be careful here. Your quinoa will go from a lovely brown to a charred cinder very quickly.

When the quinoa is a nice deep brown, remove from oven. I like to take it off the baking sheet (still on parchment) and set it on my cool marble counters to cool completely.

DO NOT SAMPLE WHEN HOT. The quinoa will cling to your fingertips and lips and burn the shit out of you. Be patient.

Store in an airtight container. This might last longer than a week, but I doubt I will try that out.

Recipe Notes

If you are eliminating added sugar, you can use apple cider syrup instead of honey. Reduce any quantity of apple cider (not juice) by half and use that instead of honey. You can also substitute maple syrup here. If you like a slightly clumpy, sticky granola, honey is your best bet.

The picture above is made with almonds and cranberries. I can imagine that cashew/apricot and walnut/cherry would be delicious.

This is unspiced, but I also imagine that cinnamon would do well here.

Breakfast Cookies

My office window, viewed through a breakfast cookie filter.

I don’t know about where you live, but here in Maryland we have just gotten our first glimpse of fall.

This past week overnight temps hovered in the mid-60s, and daytime highs were just around the upper 70s. Dry, clear blue skies, and the beginnings of leaves drifting out of the tops of trees.

I am predicting it here, though: we are in for a big winter. Lots of cold and snow.

This may be dire news for you, but I am here to console you with breakfast cookies. I like a warm, good-smelling house in the fall, and I also like an easy and comforting breakfast in the morning. If we were all rushing off to work and school as in the past, these would be an ideal way to get some food in you on a busy morning, too.

You can also tell yourself that these are good for you – there is very little added sugar, and really, less than that doughnut or French toast you may have been having.

Plus, even though we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, these breakfast cookies are portable bundles of goodness. These days I like to take them with me on hikes. Quick and easy nutrition that’s not filled with preservatives.

And, in the spirit of my Depression-era grandmother, you can use whatever you have on hand for these, pretty much. Make your own granola (Best Granola Recipe included in Recipe Notes), or finish up the dregs of multiple boxes of breakfast cereal, whatever kind you like.

They are simple and ready in about 15 minutes, start to finish.

Breakfast Cookies

This recipe makes 12-14 cookies. I portion them with an ice cream scoop and freeze. Pop them in a preheated oven and you have fresh cookies in 12 minutes.

Ingredients

1/2 cup vegetable/canola oil

2/3 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour (see Recipe Notes)

3 cups cereal (granola, multigrain flakes, anything you like – see Recipe Notes)

Method

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking tray with parchment (or silicon sheet) and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine oil and brown sugar and whisk to combine.

Add baking soda and eggs and give it a sturdy whisking until the mixture lightens slightly.

Add flour and mix well with a spatula, the add cereal and mix well with same spatula until well-combined.

Scoop onto a cookie sheet (ice cream scoop works here, or use two heaping tablespoons per cookie). Flatten slightly.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until brown and set. Cool on the pan for one minute, then move to a wire rack and cool completely. OR eat them warm, which is what I do because they smell so good when they are cooking that I cannot wait.

Recipe Notes

Best Granola Ever: Preheat oven to 250. Line baking sheets with parchment. Combine 3 cups oats, 2 cups nuts, 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes in a bowl. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and 3/4 teaspoon of salt, then pour over oat mixture and stir to combine. Spread on cookie sheets and bake for an hour, stirring every 20 minutes. Remove from oven and add 1 cup dried fruit, any kind, mixing well. THAT’S IT. Substitute any kind of nut or dried fruit, add spices (cinnamon, clove, pumpkin pie spice, etc). Whatever you like.

Feel free to use any flour that floats your boat here, literally. I use my gluten-free AP flour, but I have also used oat and, when still eating gluten, wheat flour. They all work.

As for cereal, use the Best Granola Ever from above, or add literally any other kind of cereal you can imagine. Go as trashy or as healthy as you like.

MAKE THESE VEGAN: Use whatever egg replacer you normally use to replace the two eggs here.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

apples
Ugly apples make the best apple butter. #Trust

Growing up, we had an enchanted orchard on our property.

I grew up on the side of a mountain in western Maryland, about an hour from both Baltimore and DC. Our driveway was an old stagecoach route, and the core of our home – the kitchen, the room above the kitchen (mine, eventually), and the dirt-and-stone basement – was 100 years old when I was little.

My childhood being what it was, I spent a lot of time alone, and some of that outside, wandering around the 11 acres of our (mostly) wooded property with a dog, a lot of ticks, and many copperhead snakes. We had a creek that ran through the property, minor rocky caves, and the above-mentioned orchard.

The orchard wasn’t much to look at. With just two each of neglected apple and pear trees, the harvest was uneven and unpretty. In the way of children, I don’t remember any pruning or care taken for that orchard, and I don’t remember any formal apple picking from that orchard. The apples and pears started out small and gnarly and grew more so as I got older, but if I had to guess at a memory I would say they were probably delicious in the way that only non-hybrid, heirloom, planted 30-years-before dwarf apple and pears can be. I took them for granted, I am sure, but I do remember pies, apple butter, and baked apples – the core hollowed out and stuffed full of nuts, raisins, cinnamon, and brown sugar and baked until the apples softened and combined with the sugar to release a syrupy ambrosia.

I remember dappled light streaming through the overgrown branches, the dampness of moss, and a constant hypervigilant awareness of the possibility of snakes. There was a moss-covered rock I spent time on, dreaming and staring out through the golden green undergrowth into the deepness of the rest of the woods.

Fast forward thirty years to five acres in Marietta in 2010 and a modestly larger group of five apple trees (plus six blueberry bushes and a peach tree that was mostly dead and only ever produced one rock-hard but perfectly delicious peach in our time there). Same unkempt branches. Same unlovely apples, but in abundance this time, weighing the branches so that in the fall I thought perhaps the pruning might take care of itself. These were Macintosh apples, I guessed, and covered with black spots that the interwebs assured me would not hurt me but just weren’t pretty to look at.

The squirrels sure loved the apples. They would sit high in the tree and take one bite, hurling them to the ground, often just as we walked by. If they had better aim things might be different, but as it stood then our orchard was littered through the late summer and early fall with half-eaten and partially rotted apples, bees, and the sickly sweet smell of decay.

Even with the squirrels doing their wasteful best, the apples the first year we moved to that house were abundant. I sent my horse’s hoof trimmer home with bags, and anyone else who wanted some, from the neighbor to the mailman to the UPS driver. And still there were too many.

In our urban environment now, there is no easy abundance of fruit – unless you look for it. Just one alley over there is a peach tree loaded with small, hard, but soon-to-be-delicious peaches. Two blocks away is an apple tree, pruned back hard last fall in anticipation of a house sale but coming back gangbusters with big apples. A sad little peach tree shares that yard as well, and an overloaded crabapple tree is just down the block in a pocket park off an alley.

Last week I nearly missed the apple tree down the block. I meant to go on Sunday morning but couldn’t quite drag myself out of bed, and when I passed it walking home from teaching yoga on Wednesday, nearly all the apples within sidewalk reach were gone. I don’t know what kind of apples these are – their texture is spongy and the flavor is tart apple essence rather than a big, bounding punch in the taste buds. But they might as well be my favorite kind – they have the terroir of Hampden, Baltimore. This could be a positive or negative, depending on your perspective, but for me, in many ways this tree brings me back to that enchanted orchard and makes me feel more connected to this city that I am still trying to love in spite of its trash and corruption and inequality. I can come to this tree in all of its stages – barren limbs, shy little buds, bursting flower, heavy with apples, gently drooping with the coming cold – and it brings me a similar peace that I felt in the glade on the side of the mountain in western Maryland.

This recipe is an easy solution to a beautiful abundance of fruit – apples, peaches, or pears. It couldn’t be easier, and you don’t need a stupid Instant Pot to do it. Allowing it to slow-cook overnight (or during the day while you’re at work) deepens the flavors, caramelizes the sugar, and produces a nuanced fruit butter unlike anything I have ever tasted.

Share it with your neighbors.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

(makes about four pints)

Ingredients

A dozen or so apples, about six pounds, peeled, cored, and chopped  (see Recipe Notes)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (freshly ground if you can)

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

hearty pinch of salt

Method

Place all ingredients in your slow cooker and stir to combine.

Let it cook on low for eight hours, or high for four to six. You sort of know when it’s done. Look for completely soft apples, like melted butter almost. If your slow cooker isn’t slow, keep an eye on it and watch for burning. If your apples are not very juicy, you can add a little apple cider (1/4 cup or so).

When the apples are cooked, use an immersion blender (if you have one) to blend until velvety smooth. If your apple butter is not a dark, luscious brown, it needs a little more time. You can let it cook on low for another hour or so.

If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender. Be mindful of lava scalding hot apple butter flying from the blender, though. That shit is deadly.

Recipe Notes

  • Because the neighborhood apples were not as flavorful as I would have liked, about half of my most recent recipe was supplemented by Braeburn apples, which are a good crunchy combination of tart and sweet. Straight up pie apples require more sugar to make a proper apple butter than I would like to use, so go for a mix of sweet and tart. For god’s sakes, don’t use Red or Yellow Delicious.
  • An apple peeler makes life so much easier. I use this one.
  • This recipe can be preserved with canning. The USDA would prefer that you use a pressure canner, but I have canned this by ladling hot apple butter into clean, sterilized pint jars and boiling in a water bath for 15 minutes.  If I don’t hear the pop of the lid, I eat it within two weeks, give it away, or freeze it. Some people add citric acid to deter bacteria, but I like to live on the edge.