french toast breakfast

Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day, and French Toast is easily one of my favorite breakfasts. I’m surprised that I don’t make it more often because it is super easy, but it may be best to keep it as a weekend specialty to stay away from being too sugared up during the week :).

Some French Toast recipes look pretty time consuming, and have so much cream, sugar and eggs in the base that the dish ends up being super rich. This coating is definitely not that way, but when the bread is lightly dipped in the mixture it turns into absolute deliciousness. I’m not sure where this recipe originated, but it’s how my mom has made French Toast for years!

The below recipe is for roughly two servings (3 pieces of bread per person)

French Toast

• 6 slices bread of your choice (if you’re gluten free, I highly recommend Udi’s Ancient Grains Millet-Chia Bread – 6g protein + 6g fiber per serving and super good!)
• 1 egg
• ~1/4c unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• splash of vanilla extract
• cinnamon

1. Whisk the egg, almond milk and vanilla extract together in a bowl that the bread will be able to dip into (think wide but somewhat deep – if you’re making a bigger batch a pie dish would work).

2. Dip each piece of the bread in the egg mixture to lightly coat and place immediately on a preheated griddle.

3. Top the wet top side of the bread with a sprinkling of cinnamon, and then flip once the underside is golden brown.

4. Top with anything you’d like – butter + powdered sugar are definitely my favorites, but you can become more gourmet if you’d like!

When I was younger I would top each piece of French Toast with syrup and then powdered sugar for the best sugary concoction I could make. I was definitely one sweet child ;). Nowadays I use just as much powdered sugar as necessary so I can still taste the bread and cinnamon underneath. I’m also sure to pair it with something healthier, like scrambled eggs or greek yogurt for extra protein, or a juicy ruby red grapefruit.

super bowl sunday!

I’ve got to be quite honest here, I’m not a huge fan of Football. Yes, last year when the Packers were playing I did enjoy the game (when I was paying attention anyways). The marketer in me more so enjoys the commercials ;). I am definitely hoping that they’re better than last year – they were so disappointing!

Jury’s still out on whether I’ll tune in on Sunday, but either way I think I’ll be making some snacks to eat throughout the day! I put these recipes together as a Christmas/NYE treat as a guest post on another blog, but never got around to reposting them here! I thought they were quite fitting with the Super Bowl, or really any snack-filled day!

Gluten Free Taco Dip

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt (or sour cream)
• 1T, or roughly half a packet of gluten free taco seasoning (look to avoid “wheat flour” as an ingredient)
• Shredded iceberg lettuce
• Shredded cheese
• Salsa of your choice

1. Beat together the softened cream cheese, plain greek yogurt and the taco seasoning until thoroughly mixed.
2. Layer on a serving plate and top with lettuce, cheese, salsa and any other ingredients you like such as olives or jalapenos – yum!
3. Serve with gluten free tortilla chips (a majority of tortilla chips are made with 100% corn – naturally gluten free!).

Gluten Free BBQ Meatballs

• 1 pound lean ground chicken
• Gluten free BBQ sauce (Saz’s is delicious)

1. Cut chicken into roughly 24 pieces (I did 6 rows of 4 cut in the container to make it simple).
2. Roll into little balls and place on a baking sheet.
3. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the chicken is no longer pink in the middle.
4. Once the chicken is cooked, transfer into a pot on the stove and add in as much bbq sauce as you’d like.
5. Warm up the sauce with the meatballs and serve warm! These would keep nice and warm in a crock pot or a small fondue dish.

valentine’s m+m’s

At least this February-inspired recipe had more success than my baking fail!

As a “holiday” I really have no patience for Valentine’s Day. I really could care less when February 14th rolls around. The only redeeming quality V-Day has for me are the pretty colors of Valentine’s m+m colors. Red, pink and white are a great combination… it’s just unfortunate they have to come out around this “holiday” ;).

I decided to pick up a pack of these spontaneously at Target when I was getting a heating pad and ICEE hot for sister’s back. I told myself awhile ago that I wasn’t allowed to buy m+m’s… mostly because they disappear way too quickly! At one internship I had last year, the front desk had two m+m characters with unlimited amounts of m+m’s… it was way too easy to grab a few when walking by ;).

Because of how fast they usually disappear, I figured it would be good to space them out a bit with some cookie dough. Yes, cookies disappear quite fast as well, but they can be given away much more easily to family + friends than a handful of m+m’s, haha. At first, I thought of making the World’s Best Chocolate Chip cookies with m+m’s instead of chocolate chips… but then I had another idea. How about Peanut Blossoms adapted with m+m’s? Oh, and adding in an extra ingredient that makes them a little nutritious to top it all off? Well, nutritious may be a bit of an over-statement…  but at least better than they were originally!

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Balls with Valentine’s M+M’s

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup natural peanut butter (I used Skippy)
• scant 1/4c brown sugar
• scant 1/4c organic white sugar
• 1/4c ground flax
• 2t vanilla
• 4T unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 3 to 3 1/2c gluten free bisquick
• 2t xanthan gum
• 2t baking soda
• 1t salt
• valentine’s m+m’s
• sugar, for rolling (optional)

1. Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugars until all creamy.

2. Add in the flax, vanilla and milk. Mix to combine.

3. Put in the xanthan gum, baking soda and salt, and then gradually add in the bisquick until the dough is no longer sticky and will roll into balls. Doing your dry ingredients this way helps keep this to a one-bowl recipe!

4. Add in the Valentine’s m+m’s (as many as you desire) and stir to combine. Place in fridge.

5. Once chilled (to hold shape better and help the m+m’s not melt as much), scoop the dough into balls (I used a small cookie scoop and then rolled into round balls). Roll into additional sugar to coat the outside of the dough.

6. Place on to a lined baking sheet, and bake in a 375? preheated oven for 10 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven and move to a cooling rack.

Oh boy were these tasty. I was at first expecting them to turn out more like a regular cookie, but these reached semi-doughball cookie status. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome :). The added flax is barely noticeable, only a few speckles here and there but you almost get the sense that it’s specks of chocolate. And one awesome bonus of using the flax? It makes this an egg-free recipe so you can eat as much dough as you want, ha!

baking fail

I tried making the Babycakes Baked Doughnut recipe over the weekend…

Despite appearances, me and this recipe do not go well together.

Don’t worry, I will be experimenting until I get this right.

baked corndogs

Last week I had a few brilliant ideas for some meals to make this week. One of those brilliant ideas? Homemade corndogs. Oh man has it been forever since I’ve had a corndog! When I used to make them at home in the past, I would definitely gravitate toward a pre-packaged variety, one of the favorites being Morningstar Farms. I thought this veggie variety was delicious and not too unhealthy (or at least nowhere near as unhealthy as ones you would get at a fair!).

Luckily, being corn dogs, it’s easy to convert this recipe to be gluten free. Yes, I understand that baked corndogs really look nothing like their fried counterparts (or maybe it’s just me not being able to get them to compare), but the taste is pretty darn similar and the nutritional info is a heck of a lot better. Plus, you can do with the recipe what you will.

• 2/3c cornmeal
• 1/3c sorghum
• 1t baking powder
• 1.2t salt
• dash chili powder
• 1 egg
• ~1/3c milk (unsweetened almond, regular, soy – not vanilla!)
• 1T honey
• 4 gluten free hotdogs (I used Smart Chicken – but feel free to sub any beef or veggie dog you like the best!)

1. Combine all of the dry ingredients and whisk together.

2. Add in the egg, milk and honey and stir to combine. The mixture should be thick, but still spreadable.

3. Pat off the hotdogs with a paper towel and them dip/smear them in the cornmeal mixture. You can be pretty creative at this point and use whatever method works best!

4. Bake in a 425* oven for 15-20 minutes.

My hotdogs pre-oven were definitely not going to win any beauty awards, but I thought the breading would stay on for the most part.

The cornmeal breading did sink off a little bit, but not enough to make it a complete fail of a recipe :).

Want to make these more of a finger food? Cut each hotdog into 3 or 4 pieces and make a mini corndog variety. Perfect for an appetizer or snack! I’m also thinking these would store well in the freezer, and just need to be reheated in the oven or microwave when that corndog craving hits. Serve with a side of steamed broccoli slaw, and you’ve got a perfectly healthy and fun weeknight meal.

You can pretty much sub any spice into the cornmeal breading to give it a unique twist (spicy, mexican, italian) and changing around the type of hotdog inside will also change the flavor considerably. Also adding some shredded cheese in the breading sounds like a pretty good idea ;). You can spice it up, add in other ingredients or just make a special topping to jazz up these corndogs for any occasion.

world’s best chocolate chip cookies

Now don’t get me wrong, I would eat pretty much any type of cookie I could get my hands on. Especially if there’s chocolate. Or frosting. And sprinkles. Anyways, I know cookie recipes really have been taking over my blog lately, what with my 12 days of cookies before Christmas, but these are not Christmas cookies. These are every day and any day cookies.

The best cookie, in my honest opinion, are cakey chocolate chip cookies. Ever since childhood these have been by far my favorite, but I was never successful in making them. They would always turn out too flat, too buttery tasting, I could never get it right.

Little did I know that I would finally find a way to make my favorite kind of chocolate chip cookie while being gluten free. You mean gluten free cookies don’t have to be dry, hard rocks? No, no they do not. I’m not sure if regular bisquick would result in the same type of cookie, but there is just something about the gluten free bisquick that I am just a little obsessed with. Betty Crocker, please feel free to send me unlimited supplies of gluten free bisquick. I will send you some cookies in return. Thank you.

• 2 1/4 cups gluten free bisquick
• 1t xanthan gum
• 1/2t baking soda
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• scant 1/4c brown sugar
• scant 1/4c organic sugar
• 1t salt
• 2t vanilla extract
• 2 eggs (I used egg whites this time because we were out of real eggs!)
• 1c+ chocolate chips (Guittard semi sweet)

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

2. Add in the salt, vanilla and eggs.

3. Once that is mixed together, add in the baking soda and bisquick until everything is combined.

4. Add in the chocolate chips.

5. Scoop into larger scoops and place onto a parchment covered baking sheet.

6. Bake in  350* oven for 12-14 minutes, flipping halfway through.

*Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I am still shocked with how delicious these cookies are. I will never go back.

banana bread pancakes

I feel bad for not providing any new recipes since before Christmas… So that’s already almost a month. I really wanted to post something, but haven’t made anything recently, and if I tried during the week my pictures would turn into a major fail – sun, why do you hate Wisconsin in the winter? Thinking back to filling my (NEW!) recipes page this past weekend, I came across this picture on my hard drive…

 

Mmm, those look like delicious pancakes! I searched over my blog to see if I ever posted the recipe, and it turns out this one went un-posted. I even had a named post in my draft posts with only the ingredients put in. At least I had gotten that far! And when, you may ask, was this picture/recipe taken and made? September 15th. Oh goodness, that’s quite a long time ago. I wish I could say for certain that I loved this recipe, but to be quite honest, I can’t really remember… but I certainly wouldn’t have saved the picture if they were bad!

• 1 c oat flour (ground using gluten free oats)
• 1t baking powder
• 1/4 c rolled oats
• 1/4c ground flax
• cinnamon
• 2 bananas
• 1/2 c unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 2 eggs
• vanilla

1. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2. In a smaller bowl, mash the banana and then add that, the milk, eggs and vanilla to the dry ingredients.

3. Stir everything together and then cook on a griddle until done.

At least all pancake recipes are cooked basically the same way! Served here with some delicious chicken breakfast sausage.

I imagine these would taste like banana bread… and that sounds quite tasty. I think these might have to be recreated this weekend, along with a bunch of other recipes :).

12 days of cookies

Merry Christmas!

12 days of cookies: cocoa marshmallow

It’s official. It’s Christmas Eve. Is that hard to believe for anyone else? It seems like just yesterday I had the thought of making 12 different kinds of cookies for my blog, and here I am sharing the 12th recipe. And boy is it a good one.

I went back and forth with what the 12th cookie should be. I thought maybe peppermint bark, some other kind of candy, a chocolate chip cream cheese idea, I just couldn’t settle on what should be made.

Sister brought up the idea of making a Hot Cocoa cookie, but she wasn’t exactly sure how it should be executed. Later I learned she was thinking some sort of chocolate cookie with chunks of marshmallows in it, but my mind went somewhere entirely different. To Martha Stewart’s Cookie Cookbook yet again and to a recipe I didn’t think I would be able to make again. Chocolate-Malt Sandwich Cookies. Malt powder + gluten sensitivity? No go. Hot Cocoa + gluten sensitivity? Heck yes.

Cocoa Marshmallow Sandwich Cookies

• 2c +2T gluten free bisquick
• 1/2c cocoa powder
• 1/4c hot cocoa mix (2 pouches)
• 1t baking soda
• 1/2t salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1 3/4c organic sugar
• 1 egg
• 2t vanilla
• 1/4c plain greek yogurt (or creme fraiche)
• 3T hot water
• 1 tub marshmallow fluff

1. Sift together all of the dry ingredients into a medium bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

3. Add in the egg, vanilla, greek yogurt and hot water.

4. Once the wet mixture is all combined, gradually add in the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

5. You can either bake the dough right away, or refrigerate like I did. Once the dough was cool, roll it into balls and put on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

6. Bake in a 350′ oven for 10-12 minutes. The warmer the dough is, the more it will spread and the flatter cookies you will have, so it’s up to you and how you want yours to look!

6. Once cooked, take out of the oven rack and place on a cooling rack.

7. After the cookies are cooled completely, stuff each cookie with marshmallow fluff, or the filling of your choice! (chocolate ganache, buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting…)

These taste like a cup of cocoa in a cookie. Just like we were going for.

Cookie sandwiches are the best.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!

Luke 2:9-12
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

12 days of cookies: peanut blossoms

I seriously can’t believe it is only two days before Christmas… and not even full days! Christmas has come way too fast and before I know it, it’ll be the new year and I will be running in the Disney 1/2 marathon – only 2 weeks and a day away! Well, there’s still time for two more cookie recipes to round out the 12 days of cookies and you will be sure they do not disappoint.

Peanut blossoms have been a staple in my house at Christmas for as long as I can remember. I personally like the chocolate star topping the best – it is the perfect size and it is easy enough to get some chocolate in each and every bite. If you can’t find chocolate stars, then you can substitute kisses (might want to spring for the ones out of the wrappers!) or four Christmas-colored m&m’s on top. This recipe makes 7 dozen… which might seem like a lot, but they will be gone faster than you could imagine.

Peanut Blossoms

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup natural peanut butter (I used Skippy)
• 1/2c brown sugar
• 1/2c organic white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2t vanilla
• 4T milk
• 1 package gluten free bisquick
• 2t xanthan gum
• 2t baking soda
• 1t salt
• chocolate stars/kisses/m&m’s

1. Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugars until all creamy (I cut the sugar quantity in this recipe in half – I couldn’t put in 2 cups of sugar!).

2. Add in the eggs and vanilla and milk. Mix to combine.

3. Put in the xanthan gum, baking soda and salt, and then gradually add in the bisquick. Doing your dry ingredients this way helps keep this to a one-bowl recipe!

4. Scoop the dough into balls (I used a small cookie scoop and then rolled into round balls). Roll into additional sugar to coat the outside of the dough.

5. Place on to a lined baking sheet, and bake in a 375′ preheated oven for 8 minutes.

6. Take out of the oven and place a chocolate star on the top of each one. Put back into the oven and bake for an additional 2 minutes. Remove from the oven and move to a cooling rack.

Once again, the gluten free bisquick makes this recipe just as good as the original… if not better because of the extra puffyness!

You can make this dough in advance and keep in the fridge for a couple days, but the balls are easier to roll when you make them right away. These cookies are also Santa approved ;).

Check back tomorrow for the 12th day of the 12 days of cookies! We’re trying out a new recipe tonight, so hopefully it turns out!!!