Rice Pudding

Best Rice Pudding Ive EVER made or tasted. It Has a Custard-like Flavor. I followed the recipe to the letter. Only change I made was I added 2t cornstarch to the simmering milk & rice (just to enhance thickening) also I recommend using whole milk (makes for a creamier texture and richer taste) Click link for Recipe: Creamy Rice Pudding

Crescent Cinnamon Rolls

I was craving cinnamon rolls but we didn't have pre-made cinnamon roll dough and we didn't have yeast. But we had Pillsbury Crescent roll dough. So I looked online for a cinnamon roll recipe that used crescent dough and found one that looked awesome. (Click HERE for recipe) What looked best about the recipe was the cinnamon butter. You'll have to read the recipe to understand. I also have always liked the recipe blog that I pulled it from. Anyway. I made them with Caleb. He was being a little difficult. Kept trying to play with my phone instead of helping me make the rolls. These turned out delicious. Caleb downed 2 and he usually doesn't like anything. 

Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
Click HERE for recipe.

Puff Up Pancake

About 5 yrs ago I was thinking back about a breakfast my mom sometimes would make for us when we were kids. All I remember could remember was that it was square shaped, tasted a lot like buttery eggs with jam on it, and for some reason we absolutely loved it. So I asked her if she knew what I was talking about so that she could make it again. When I said "egg square-shaped thing with jam on it" she knew exactly what I was talking about. Hootenanny Pancake!!! So within the last few years, we've been making this a lot. Its amazing!!! Heres the recipe she always used.  Click HERE. Same as on this bloggers site. (or just use the recipe down below (same thing.)  Ours Calls for 1 less egg than most hootenanny recipes, and uses slightly more flour and slightly more milk. And It definitely doesn't need that extra egg. But here's a link to the more typical version just in case you want it: Click HERE. or HERE. Anyway Today I halved the recipe (my recipe:) I used 3/4 the batter, 6 T butter, and a 9x9 pan. (the baking time and temp are the same for a full recipe or a half recipe.) BTW: there are at least 3 names for this pancake... German pancake, hootenanny pancake, puff-up pancake (just take your pick, i guess)

Puff Up Pancake (full recipe)(Link to the same Recipe: Click HERE)

Ingredients: 1/2 cup butter, 5 eggs, 1 1/4 cup milk, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions: Melt butter in 9x13 while oven is preheating to 400. Mix eggs, milk, vanilla, flour, and salt in mixer bowl till well blended. Add batter to dish (pour over the butter) and bake apx 25 min (till puffy and lightly golden.) Serve with fruit, jam, powdered sugar, whipped cream, and/or syrup. My favorite is just with warm smuckers strawberry jam and sweetened whipped cream (like in the picture.)

Heres a link to another version of this that also looks amazing: Click HERE 

Cinnamon Scones

My parents, Caleb, and I all went to San Francisco about 4 weeks ago. While there we stopped at a Starbucks and I bought a cinnamon scone. Ive never bought a scone before due to a bad scone experience that I'll talk about later in this paragraph. But these scones looked way to good to pass up. And they were. So This is where my new found scone fetish began. I bought 2 more (and a maple scone - which was super good too) and then couple days later we came across a Panera bakery and so I ordered a cinnamon scone there as well. Panera's was even "better" than the amazing Starbucks scone. We don't have a Panera in UT so I decided I had to replicate the recipe as close as close as whats possible. So I searched the Internet and the top rated cinnamon chip scone recipe came from taste of homes. A lot of bloggers copied the recipe and had huge success, so I figured that this is the one. I modified it slightly. Like this blogger, Cream instead of buttermilk. and slightly more sugar and slightly more butter. Only complaints on the Taste of Homes recipe was "not sweet enough." My scones came out perfect. I am going to use this recipe always from here on out. Couple years ago I made Barefoot Contessa scones and they were not good. That was the 1st time I'd ever had a scone and so I had always though that scones were just dry and gross. But Thank you to Starbucks and Panera for fixing my dislike of scones!

cinnamon chip scones

3 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup plus 2 T sugar (divided)
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
14 T cup cold butter

1 cup cream
10 oz cinnamon chips
2 T butter, melted
Rainbow Chip Frosting (optional)

Combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cream just until moistened. Fold in Chips. Turn onto lightly floured surface and knead 10-12 times or until dough is no longer sticky. Roll out dough 1" thick, even, and flat. Cut with circle cookie cutters. Brush top of circles with melted butter and then sprinkle with the remaining 2 T sugar. Yields: 12 scones.Bake 375 10-12 min or until LIGHT golden. Serve with butter, jam, frosting, cream... (I like Mine topped w/ Rainbow Chip frosting)

Cinnamon Rolls

Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls are so good, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. I ran across a blog the other day that claims to have a recipe for cinnamon rolls that are better than Pillsbury so I'm gonna have to make them some time. Problem is, No one in my family has ever been good at bread baking so we always only buy store bought bread stuff, but I'm totally OK with it because I like Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls much better than any Homemade cinnamon roll Ive ever tried. And when it comes to homemade bread recipes, The only Homemade "Rolls" Ive ever absolutely died over are my moms friend Helen's rolls that she always made at thanksgiving. Ill share the recipe if I'm ever able to get ahold of it. But Until then, Pillsbury Great Harvest and Rhodes will have to work(:

IHOP French Toast

So I went to Great Harvest Bread Today and bought a loaf of white bread. I NEVER eat bread unless its from Great Harvest. They make bread exactly the way I like it: Thick and chewy. And then tonight I noticed a carton of fresh whipping cream in the fridge. And I started thinking back about the IHOP french toast recipe off of thesisterscafe.com that Iv'e been wanting to try forever, so I knew I had to make it right then, and I'm so glad I did! The results were more than perect. And I'm not sure if it is because this is such an amazing recipe or if its just because great harvest bread makes awesome french toast, but whatever the reason, it really was the BEST french toast EVER. So I'll for sure be making this one on the regular.

IHOP FRENCH TOAST

(original recipe: thesisterscafe.com)

(my modifications are printed in red, and of course they're just optional)

2 eggs (I used 1 whole egg + 2 yolks)

1/2 cup whole milk (i used 1/4 C vanilla almond milk + 1/4 C cream)

1/8 t salt

1 t vanilla

3 or 4 Tablespoons Flour 

4 slices Great Harvest white bread

Whisk ingredients together in med size bowl. Dip bread front and back allowing each side to soak a couple min. Fry bread in butter in nonstick skillet over med heat till lightly golden on each side. Sprinkle w/ powdered sugar. Top with Coconut syrup and whipping cream or whatever other toppings you'd like.

Topping Ideas:

buttermilk syrup, strawberry syrup, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, butter, whipping cream, bananas

((tonight I got carried away and used all of the above(: except for the bananas))

Breakfast Casserole

Breakfast Casserole
8 Slices of bread
8 Slices of bacon (cooked)
2 cups cheddar cheese
4 Eggs
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3/4 tsp dry mustard
3 T dried onion flakes
1/2 cup cream
1 cup milk
A dash of hot sauce
1/2 cup Butter

PLACE 4 of the bread slices on bottom of buttered 8-inch square baking dish; top with bacon and then cheese. Cover with remaining 4 bread slices. BEAT eggs, salt, pepper, mustard, onion, cream, milk, and hot sauce with wire whisk until well blended; pour over bread; Drizzle top of casserole w/ melted 1/2 cup butter. cover casserole. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or overnight. BAKE, uncovered, in preheated 350°F-oven for 1 hour or until center is set. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting to serve.

Hootenany Pancakes

Hootenany Pancakes

1/2 cup butter (one full stick)

6 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 425. Place stick of butter in 9x13" glass casserole dish. Melt butter in preheating oven. Remove just as soon as melted. While butter is melting, in blender, blend together eggs, milk, flour, and salt. Pour batter into the 9x13 dish over the melted butter. Bake 20 minutes. Cut into squares and serve w/ jam, syrup, powdered sugar, and/or sweetened whipped cream!

Santa Lucia

This morning we celebrated Santa Lucia (Swedish Holiday-supposed to be on the 13th). Family Tradition, few nights before Christmas, where my mom wakes us up at about 6am or just while its still dark and brings us downstairs around the dining room table for a Swedish Breakfast. She then tells us the story of Santa Lucia while we eat our Breakfast, this year and typically always it consists of Eggs, Oranges, Other Fruit, Bacon, sausage, Hash browns, Orange Rolls, Egg Nog, Hot Chocolate, Orange Juice, chocolate Santas, of course Swedish Pancakes (pictured above). Theres always spinning candles on the table and Swedish music in the background, and My mom always wears her white Santa Lucia dress and candles on her head while we just stay in pajamas. The tradition explaining the candles, the dress, and the dark all revolve around the story.

Swedish Pancakes
1 cup Flour
1/2 t salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups milk

Mix in blender or beat in mixing bowl till very smooth. Spread 1/2 c batter on buttered hot 10" non-stick skillet. Flip over when lightly golden on one side (apx 1 min.) Then cook other side (apx 30-60 sec.) Remove. Serve pancakes with butter, Smuckers seedless jam, &  Sweetened Whipped cream.

Buttermilk Syrup

I posted a photo for this recipe on allrecipes years ago and they've always used my photo as the main photo, so I guess it was a good one:/ Ha Ha. Anyway, after trying this syrup you never want to use store-bought again. Also if you dont have buttermilk; then milk, or cream, or 1/2&1/2 work awsome too!

Buttermilk Syrup

1 1/2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla

In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda. Bring to a boil, and cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.

Crepes

My family is Swedish so we always make Swedish pancakes. I love them but they're really hard to make and sometimes it just takes too long so lately Ive been making crepes and Ive played around with several recipes until I finally found one that's easy and turns out perfect every time (only if you use a good crepe pan. Mine looks like this one I have pictures to the right.)

Perfect Crepes

Ingredients:

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

3 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup powdered sugar

Dash of salt

Directions:

Blend all ingredients together in a blender. Generously butter crepe pan and set on med heat. Measure 1/2 cup crepe batter. Pour batter evenly into pan and tilt pan back and forth until crepe batter thinly and evenly covers the entire base of the crepe pan. Heat crepe until no longer liquidy (apx 2 minutes). Flip crepe and cook other side apx 30 seconds.

*Fill middle of crepe with Nutella, jam, whipping cream, or whatever other toppings you like.

Pizza Dough Donuts

There are cake donuts where you basically can just make a biscuit dough, cut out donut shapes, and then fry the shapes, or you could cheat and just use Pillsbury refrigerator biscuit dough. And then there's raised donuts where you actually have to make a bread dough using yeast and wait forever for the dough to raise and what not or you can just cheat and use Pillsbury pizza dough. As Ive been browsing recipes Ive noticed that a lot of people use the pizza dough method and it seems to work out really well. So tonight that's what my family and I did. We made a few like the one in the picture above and then made a few donut holes and rolled them into powdered sugar.

Easy Homemade Donuts

Ingredients

1 13.8oz tube Pillsbury pizza dough

Vegetable or Canola oil, for deep-frying

Powdered sugar for coating or Frosting and Sprinkles for topping

Directions

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to 3/4-inch thickness. Use a cup and a cap to cut out donut rounds (The cup for the outer circle and the cap for the inner circle.) You can also roll 1" balls of dough to create donut holes!
Heat the oil in fry pan over medium heat. Working in batches, fry the doughnuts until they puff but are still pale, about 45 seconds per side. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the doughnuts to paper towels to drain. Cool slightly. While the doughnuts are still warm, generously coat each with powdered sugar or wait till cool and top with Frosting and sprinkles.