Okay, maybe I would. I do like my food.

And feeding it to people I love.

Roxie’s Stuffed French Toast

• Prep Time

  5

• Cook Time

  Depends on Number

• Serves

  As Many as You Like

Ingredients

• As much bread as you want*
• 2-3 Eggs, depending on how many you're feeding
• Dollop o’ Milk
• Vanilla Extract
• Cream Cheese, softened
• Powdered Sugar
• Butter
• Maple Syrup

How to do it…

1. Get out a bowl and crack your eggs in. Splash your dollop o’ milk in and dab a bit of vanilla extract in. Vanilla extract is potent so don’t pour in with a liberal hand. I’d say no more than a teaspoon. The more you make this, the more you’ll know how you like it. Scramble that all together with a fork so you have your dippin’ mixture ready.
2. Now get out another bowl. Smush your softened cream cheese with some powdered sugar. Again, this is to taste. If you’re a cheesier sort, go with a light hand. If you’ve got a sweeter tooth, go whole hog. But beware to go slow, powdered sugar (or icing sugar, in the UK) has a tendency to liquefy stuff and you don’t want this runny. You want it goopy.
3. Grab yourself a big skillet and throw a healthy pat of butter in it. You want to be on medium heat here, sisters and brothers. You don’t want to go crazy and burn the crap out of your toast. Buttery browned, eggy goodness=good. Blackened grossness=bad.
4. Once your butter is melted, put a piece of bread in the egg mixture until it soaks through. When you fish the piece of bread out, hold it over the bowl for a bit so the excess egg mixture can slide off. Then, being careful with drips, put this in the skillet. Repeat this with your second slice of bread. Scoot this around a bit, lifting an edge after a few minutes to see if you’ve got browned goodness on the bottom side. Flip when it’s ready.
5. And you gotta be ready because you need to get right into the next bit.
6. Slap a big spoonful of the cream cheese mixture on the upward, browned slice of one piece of bread and spread it around, close to the edges but not over. Take the other slice of bread and put it browned side down on your cream cheese. You might want to put your spatula on top and press this together a bit (not too much! you don't want the cheese oozing out, just trying to seal the edges). Toast that puppy on one side, flip it and toast it on the other side, until you’ve got lovely golden goodness on either side and the cream cheese should heat a bit through.
7. Slide this on a plate, throw another pat of butter on (if that’s your gig), douse with maple syrup (if that’s your gig) and tuck in!
8. Now, just to say, you can have so much fun with this. In the powdered-sugar-cream-cheese mixture you can throw in some lemon zest and a squeeze of lemon juice. Or lime zest and lime juice. Or orange zest and orange juice. Or you can put in a dab of almond extract and sprinkle some slivered, toasted almonds on top when it's done. You could even shave some chocolate in there, and throw some shavings on top of the toast when it’s done and douse that mother in chocolate sauce! You can go the liquor route and splash in Amaretto or Cointreau. I mean, you can do whatever you want to put a little va-va-voom in your French toast.
9. Or you can take it like it comes, standard breakfast…except better!

Notes

* White bread I’d say, but you need to double up so if you’re making this for two people, you need 4 slices, four people, you need 8. You catch my drift.

The post Roxie’s Stuffed French Toast appeared first on Kristen Ashley.

Now, lemme tell you a little bit about me. I’m a klutz. Totally. I have not only learned to live with this, but embrace it. If something requires dexterity, like, say, making an omelet–forget about it. It won’t happen. It’ll be a mess. It will taste good but look terrible. Normally, I wouldn’t care about this. It’s just that, once I made up my frittata recipe, I didn’t have to bother with omelets anymore. And this is loooooooads easier. And grilling makes everything taste good.

Here we go…

Truthfully, you can put whatever you want in this. I’m telling you what February Owens used in For You and thus what I use.

Feb’s Frittatas

Ingredients

• 1 clove Garlic
• Pat (knob, for those of you in the UK) of Butter or dash of Olive Oil
• 4 (or whatever) slices/rashers of Bacon
• 4 (or whatever) Eggs
• Dash of
• A mess of Mushrooms, sliced
• A handful (or 2) of Shredded Cheddar Cheese
• Salt and pepper and other herbs/spices to your taste

How to do it…

1. Mince the garlic. I know, a pain in the patoot but the more you mince that mo-fo the more garlic taste you’ll get. And I like garlic so I mince the heck outta that sucka.
2. Scissor up the bacon so you’ve got little strips or bits.
3. Whisk up your eggs with a dash of milk, a pinch of salt, a couple turns on some fresh black pepper, and if you feel adventurous, throw in some dried basil, oregano or whatever. Another cheap, awesome trick is, instead of the milk, whisk in a teaspoon of sour cream or crème fraiche. Freaking awesome!
4. Right, now get your skillet and fry up the bacon. You can crisp those suckers up in the microwave if you want, your choice. Once crispy, remove bacon from skillet and drain off the grease. If you feel decadent, don’t. It’s your heart. I drain off the grease and wipe the skillet (carefully!) with a paper towel so the residue of the bacon remains but none of the bad crap.
5. Now back to the skillet, on medium heat, melt your butter or heat your olive oil and then toss your mushrooms in. Get those good and soft, flipping them around. When they’re almost done, toss in the garlic. Don’t do the garlic first or you might burn it and burned garlic sucks.
6. Now pour in your eggs. Don’t scramble them (as in break them up to cook them)! Just pour them in and let them cook. Use a spatula while they’re cooking to scooch the eggs from the sides of the skillet so more uncooked egg can pour into the scooched-empty part and cook. Don’t worry, they’ll all get cooked eventually. I don’t do raw eggs and I wouldn’t expect you to either.
7. While you’re cooking the eggs, turn on the broiler/grill in your oven to the highest heat there is. Have your rack as high as you can get it in your oven and still be able to scoot your skillet in there.
8. Once you’ve pretty much scooched/cooked the eggs to their most cooked, turn off the burner. Then sprinkle the top with the cooked bacon pieces and the cheese. When that's done, put your skillet under the broiler and let the broiler cook away the rest of the raw egg bit and melt the cheese all over your frittata. This will not take long and broilers vary widely, so watch it. By the way, I keep my oven door open for this (mostly) ‘cause my skillet handle sticks out.
9. Once the top is done (maybe five minutes), pull that baby out, cut it up and serve it with buttered, jellied toast (morning) or buttered, jellied toast (evening – yes, MM and I don’t mind breakfast at night – we do that all the time. We’re mavericks that way.)
10. Simple! Yummy! Heaven!

Notes

You can also slice up some spring/green onion and scatter it on the top. You can use cooked sausage instead of bacon. You can sauté some chopped bell pepper and/or onion. You can switch out the cheese. I mean, whatever! The sky is the limit with this baby!

The post Feb’s Frittatas appeared first on Kristen Ashley.