Peaches & Cream Stuffed French Toast

This past week has been a complete whirlwind. Well, to be honest the last month has been one, between finishing up school work, finals, housework, regular work, etc. But Josh had show, after show, after show booked this past week, and it culminated in a weekend of almost non-stop movement. Friday night he played in Austin, Saturday evening in Addison, then later that night in Texarkana. When he plays in Austin our friends Niki & Veronica are kind enough to let us stay with them. To say thanks I brought some french toast fixings with us this time. Veronica picked up some fresh berries, mimosa fixings, and the milk that I'd forgotten to bring with me (d'oh!), and it all made for a delicious meal. After a pretty rushed week, it was nice to sit and have a good breakfast with good friends before we hit the road again.

Peaches & Cream Stuffed French Toast
Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart; Serves 4

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup peach preserves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon-sugar
8 slices challah, appx. 1" thick
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
Pinch of salt
Unsalted butter

• In a small bowl, mix the cream cheese, preserves, and cinnamon-sugar until well blended.
• Using a small knife, cut a slit in each slice of challah, lengthwise along the bottom to create a pocket.
• Fill each pocket with the cream cheese mixture and press slightly to seal, scraping off any excess from the bottom of the bread.
• Whisk together eggs, milk, and salt in a bowl.
• Soak both sides of each slice of bread in the egg mixture very well.
  
• Heat butter in skillet or griddle over medium heat. Fry bread until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Serve warm. You can keep prepared slices warm in the oven while you continue cooking the rest.

My notes: I use a stripped down version of a Martha Stewart recipe for the batter, and created the stuffing mixture on my own. I sliced and stuffed the challah Friday morning, so at Niki & Veronica's on Saturday I just had to whip up the batter and get to griddling. I kept the bread refrigerated until about an hour before I cooked it. This came out really yummy. I think I could have fit a bit more filling into some of the slices, so I'm going to try and get them a bit fuller next time. I had some filling leftover, which is excellent on a bagel, or leftover challah slices.

Sweets for the Sweet

I know, I know- sure, I got our Valentine's Day dinner posted before too long after the day, but here I am almost a week later posting the dessert I made for us. But things kept me a little busy this weekend. Things like taxes. Blech. And a friend's wedding. Hurrah. Anyway, here I am with the goods, tardy but not absent. I worked with what I had in the kitchen, which included semisweet chocolate and half a bar of cream cheese. This recipe is supposed to turn out different than it did in my case, but that's because I decided I wanted more of a flavored topping than a completely marbled cream cheese brownie. So I sort of plopped the cream cheese mixture on top of the brownie batter and ran a knife through it to marble it just a bit, but keep most of the cream cheese sitting atop the chocolate. I liked it a lot, but I'll try it the regular way sometime soon too.

Super Fudgy Brownies with Cream Cheese Crust
Recipe from Everyday Food; Makes 16












Brownie batter:
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus more for pan
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs

Cream Cheese batter:
4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush a 9" square pan with butter. Line bottom and two sides with a strip of parchment paper, leaving a 2" overhang on the two sides. butter paper, and set pan aside. In a small bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
• Place butter and chocolate in a large heat-proof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth; remove bowl from pan. Add sugar; mix to combine. Add eggs, and mix to combine. Add flour mixture; mix just until moistened. Transfer batter to prepared pan.
• Whisk cream cheese and butter. Whisk in sugar, egg, and flour. Spoon mixture over brownie batter, leaving some spots of brownie batter showing through. Run knife through pan to marble top.
• Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached., 50 to 60 minutes. Cool in pan 30 minutes. Using paper overhang, lift brownies out of pan; transfer to a rack to cool completely. Use a dampened serrated knife to cut into squares. Store in an airtight container.

My notes: Doing it this way you will probably have a bit of the cream cheese batter leftover. Just an FYI.

Seeing Red

I was originally going to make this cake as a Sugar High Friday event entry, but alas things just didn't work out the way I had hoped. In fact, I wasn't going to bother blogging about it at all, except that Josh is crazy about the darn thing. He has had a piece every night he's gotten home from work. Don't tell anyone, but tonight he had two! I agree that the cake is mighty tasty, although I'm not 100% over the moon for the frosting and cake combo. Anyway, I made the cake and icing last Friday night, but once they were each done it was late, so I wrapped everything up and stuck it in the refrigerator. Saturday I leveled the cake layers, got them stocked and put my crumb coat on. That was a little rough, thanks to my laziness in preparing the baking pans with only grease. The outside of the cake was a bit crumby, so I had my doubts about the crumb coat working at all. Well, I popped it back in the fridge, but then ran out of time. I left early Sunday morning for Louisiana for Uncle Sammy's funeral, and didn't get home till late Monday night. So the cake I baked Friday night wasn't completed till Tuesday afternoon. Which only adds to my surprise at Josh thinking it is so great. I pulled this recipe from my grandmother's recipe boxes. It's signed at the bottom with the name of her best friend and former neighbor, so it's not quite a family recipe. And it's almost common knowledge at this point that this cake doesn't actually have it's roots at the Waldorf Astoria, but I'm keeping the title all the same.

Waldorf Red Cake
Recipe from Pat Gilliland; Makes 2 9" cakes

1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
1/4 cup red food coloring
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon vinegar

• Cream shortening, sugar and eggs. Make paste of cocoa and food coloring and add to mixture. Add buttermilk and salt alternately with flour. Then add vanilla. Lastly add soda and vinegar.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes in 2 9" pans.

My notes: I ended up baking my cakes for about 35 minutes. Also, I used one small bottle of red food coloring, which wasn't quite 1/4 cup. As you can see there wasn't any problem telling what kind of cake it is, so you could definitely use less coloring. I made a basic cream cheese frosting for this cake.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 8 oz. block cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Beat the butter on medium for 2 minutes. Add the cream cheese and beat for another 2 minutes.
• Sift the confectioners sugar and add to butter and cream cheese. Beat for 2 minutes.
• Add vanilla and beat until well blended, light and fluffy.

My notes: Here in Texas, especially in the summer, this frosting can't stand up to much so this cake has to be kept in the refrigerator.

Sugar High Friday #31- Neutral Territory

This month's theme for Sugar High Friday, an event created by Jennifer at Domestic Goddess, is very clever in my opinion. Tara at Seven Spoons is hosting this round with the theme of Neutral Territory, meaning sweet things in the brilliant or soft shades of white. My favorite cookie just happens to be the creamiest shade of ivory. Now, I can't claim to have created these cookies. I discovered them on baking sheet, now Baking Bites, right before this past Thanksgiving. I baked up a batch to take to our family dinner and they were a huge hit. In fact, the cookies were gone before we even had Thanksgiving dinner! I made a double batch for Christmas, and the kids were over the moon for them. If they asked for a cookie, despite the wide variety available, they meant my cookies. So I just can't be more grateful to Nicole for putting that recipe up. These cookies are easy and quick to pop out of the kitchen, making them even more appealing. Not to mention that the possibility for variations are endless, as many flavors of cheesecake exist, you can create it's cookie counterpart. But, as many different additions I've thought of, I've never gotten around to messing with them. This cookie is perfect just the way it is, in my opinion.

Cheesecake Cookies
Recipe from Baking Bites
1/2 cup of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softenend
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup all purpose flour

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• In a large bowl, beat together softened cream cheese and butter. Gradually beat in sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and salt.
• In a small bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder, and mixing by hand or at low speed, add to cream cheese mixture.
• Drop by rounded tablespoon full onto prepared baking sheet.
• Bake for 12-14 minutes until the bottom edge just barely turns brown.

My notes: The recipe doesn't really specify salted or unsalted. I use salted because I like that bit of saltiness against the sweet of the sugar and cream cheese, despite the 1/4 teaspoon salt you also add. And I use neufchatel cheese, which has 1/3 less fat than regular cream cheese. Personally, my oven's temperature means I take the cookies out after about 10 minutes. I use two baking sheets, so that I can set one on the rack to cool, while the other one is in the oven. These cookies are very soft, so allowing them to cool on the cookie sheet before transferring to the wire rack let's them set up a bit.

I saw the Easter bunny!

On Saturday as we left our niece's Easter themed birthday party I saw the cutest bunny by our back tire. I decided it must be the Easter bunny, so I have been very excited about that. Sunday I got up and made the pound cake that I was supposed to make Saturday morning, when I was apparently too busy sleeping to do anything. This was my dessert contribution to our Easter dinner with Josh's mom and family, with an accompanying strawberry whipped cream. This was a pretty simple recipe and I will definitely make it again.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Recipe from Martha Stewart; Makes 2 loaf cakes
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 bar (8 oz.) cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
Non-stick cooking spray

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees;. With an electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar; beat until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla. With mixer on low, add flour and salt in two additions, beating until just combined.
• Generously coat two 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch loaf pans (1 1/2 quarts each) with cooking spray; immediately pour in batter (pan will seem full). Tap pans on work surface to eliminate any large air bubbles.
• Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out almost clean, 60 to 75 minutes (if the tops begin to brown too quickly, tent with aluminum foil).
• Cool 10 minutes in the pan. Turn out the cakes; cool completely, with top sides up, on a wire rack.

My notes: As per usual I halved this recipe, since I really only needed one cake. I also used nuefchatel cheese, which has 1/3 less fat than regular cream cheese. Everything went as described, but as I was also making the strawberry whipped cream and working on the easy-way-out version of my potato casserole I didn't check the cake as often as I should have. It definitely browned quickly and I was a bit late in getting it tented. This resulted in dark sides and top edges when I removed it from the pan. To make it look prettier I trimmed the sides of the cake, and since that made it look a little bit awkward, I went ahead and sliced it as you see in the picture. This worked out well- big slices of the creamy white cake were very appealing, and it was all ready to go at dessert time.

I will have a further report on Easter dinner, as soon as I snag a pic that our niece, Amber, took of my dinner plate, ha.