baby rambutan

French toast (eggy bread, pain perdu, pain dore) was invented as a way to recycle old bread.
any old stale dried up loaf will do. but for me brioche is IT.

so it is logical and understandable that an obsessive compulsive foodie will bake brioche just specifically to make it stale and old in order to make French toast.

except my last brioche loaf did not make it past its prime, nay! it didn’t last the evening it was baked. i have to make another one pronto. and then hide it.

here’s the recipe for bread machine brioche. …and take my word for it. French toast must be brioche-d. Brioche must be French toast’d.

the order of placement depends upon your machine.

1 & 1/2 tsps. active dry yeast
2 tbsps. sugar
3 cups bread flour
3/4 tsp. salt
3 large eggs, beaten
1/3 cup lukewarm whole milk (80F)
3 tbsps. lukewarm water

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

set machine menu to “sweet bread” setting, crust setting should be light.
put everything in the bread pan except for the butter. press start then let machine mix the dough for about 5 minutes then add the butter in portions, letting the machine work before adding the next bit.

THAT’s IT!

for the French toast: eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon/nutmeg/cardamom to taste. soak brioche and then cook in a shallow pan with melted butter. brown both sides.

i thought a bread machine would be fun to have in the kitchen.
i wanted a Japanese one..but have you seen how much those cost? i couldn’t justify spending too much on a brand new Zojirushi that i might not use much in the end. or that i’d feel pressured to use, to make it worthwhile…so i turned to eBay. i got really lucky and got a barely-used Dak (out of business, but parts are still available). i made our first bread machine loaf the day it arrived…

it was a bit alarming in the beginning, with all the noise it made. but 3 and a half hours later i got the best surprise…

it worked! and it was beautiful, moist-inside-crusty-outside kind of loaf. oddly shaped, but the magical way that it kneaded the dough, “fermented”, baked and cooled it…all you do is measure everything in, in proper order.

freshly baked, i slathered on some carabao butter…*sigh*
thank heavens for all the people who share recipes (the machine didn’t have its original cookbooklet)–i hope to try out as many as i can, who knows how long this machine will last?!

here she was at age 4. i don’t make pan de sal anymore since this really good brand has been for sale here (as long as you arrive promptly at 1 pm every Friday–blink and you miss it). but my little daughter truly enjoyed helping make these. she particularly liked rolling them around in the dry bread crumbs.

do you have a favorite pan de sal recipe? i didn’t have much luck the last time i tried it (they transformed into hockey pucks).

i do remember that instant yeast and the dough hook of a heavy duty mixer made it easy. it’s crucial that the liquid be at the proper temperature to make the yeast active yet not entirely kill it.

do you have a favorite pan de sal recipe? i haven’t had much luck the last time i tried it (they transformed into hockey pucks). i’ve bookmarked some from my favorite Pinoyfoodbloggers but i don’t have a bread machine.
i am willing to try highly recommended tried and true recipes.

for the next time i miss the delivery truck!

this new year is supposed to be husband’s lucky year…so we accompanied him to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the nearest of his “playgrounds,” for some playtime. we stayed in a little generic suite hotel, with an ample free breakfast!, and had us some of that bad buffet. bad as in big, grand, sinful, gluttonous! we stood in line for a good half hour, building up an appetite. thankfully there was a little sitting area for the kids to wait it out, and by the time we reached the cashier we were able to give the buffet due justice.
nothing too exciting except for a scuffle on the buffet “veranda”, we followed the line of boys in teal uniforms who separated the women…too bad we didn’t find out what the fight was about. a huge crowd gathered around to watch the drama. i think it’s human nature: crowd curiosity, morbid fascination and neck craning, you just have to look back on a bad scene.

a wall of security boys in teal
sigh, luck wasn’t raining down on us for this foray though…rain was raining down on us when we drove back home.

another cold day= kakanin day! #2son had a bad cold and was very sad to stay home and miss all his playdates on this vacation week (winter break).
had to make a vat of pancit sotanghon (glass noodles) and a huge pan of bibingkang kamoteng kahoy (cassava bibingka) for husband’s work party (”multiethnic” day or some such holiday made up by his co-workers) so i finagled a little portion for the kiddies, and then made a pan of what i really wanted to eat…bibingkang malagkit (glutinous rice cake) with coconut custard topping.
i think it was the memory of eating something cooked in a roasted fragrant banana leaf that triggered all this bibingka making.

i tried to cheer him up by having him assemble a large deep dish pizza with his favorite topping–pepperoni. i think that it coaxed a big smile out of him.

then what do you know, a snowstorm blew into town and dumped 8 new inches of the fresh and fluffy kind…time to make a snowman?


how about a fry-up for breakfast, the morning after?

for breakfast!

#1son is home for the weekend! and hungry for Chinese food and rice. so we got some of our favorite take-out dishes from our neighborhood joint and this morning i decided to bake some scones (also had to use up the jar of clotted (Devon) cream–our once-a-year indulgence.

from Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cook Book, everyone just loves this scrumptious buttery scone . served with my favorite raspberry jam, Bonne Maman!,  i eat it with such an overwhelming feeling.   guilty as sin.

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tbsps. sugar

3 tsps. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

5 tbsps. unsalted butter, cold

3/4 cup whole milk (approximately)

1 beaten egg

1 egg + 1 tbsp. milk for egg wash (save extra for scrambled eggs)

preheat oven to 425F.

sift or whisk together well flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. cut in the butter with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.

mix the egg and milk together then sprinkle into the flour-butter mixture, folding with a spatula, until dough is soft and easy to handle.

knead about 15 times, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness then cut into rounds. glaze with egg and milk wash.

place on lightly greased cookie sheet and bake about 12 minutes.

to serve: split into halves then spread cream and jam. pop into mouth and slurp some milk tea or cafe au lait. jog 5 miles.

[YIKES! i forgot the atbp. part of this post! check out aling kikay….20 March]
i took a little break from this blog…in fact, to be honest, my blog and i broke up . we’ve since kissed and made up and here are my recent experiments:
blackberry and apple bread:
this recipe has been winking at me “bake me! bake me!” ever since i stumbled upon it and i must say, it’s very easy and delicious, with a brioche-like-bready-hearty crust and Golden Delicious apple and studs of fresh blackberries on top. i told the kids, it’s a fruit pizza. and they really loved it. wonderful for breakfast!


after baking, with streusel topping.
the recipe is from the joy of baking. next time i’m going to use a proper smaller baking pan to get it more cake-like.

special request for this time of the year when we are gifted with bags and bags of fresh oranges:
gulao rou or sweet and sour pork with fresh fruit juice.

this time i added fresh pineapple and red and green sweet peppers. i missed my little sous chef though–he likes to help peel the tiny little shallots– who was at school during the March nor’easter. our school system just never ever cancels school ever! kids come home looking like little snow people.

to think that just this past Wednesday, a full two days before, it was 70F and i wore flip flop tsinelas and we went to the playground and broke out in a sweat.

this is my nod to the St. Patrick’s day celebrations this weekend, a recipe based on Ben O’Donoghue’s, via olive magazine. i’ve seen many recipes for stews enriched by Guinness stout so Sunday dinner was just the perfect time. i added aromatics to the stew (carrot, celery, bella mushrooms) and ahem quite a lot more lashings of sea salt and pepper to the broth. i also skipped the Stilton cheese supposed to be incorporated into the puff pastry crust (to increase the likelihood my children will eat it; their tastebuds aren’t ready for blue cheese yet). nothing leftover–the kids had it with boiled buttered new red potatoes.

recipe follows… (more…)

when i feel like a tightly wound-up coil (cobra?) i like to mix and stir and roll out dough and bake to unwind. after a day of dodging jittery motorists and distracted pedestrians and trips to the pediatrician and schools and a beautiful middle school concert, i decided to bake. but i didn’t want to make Christmas cookies yet, i just really had to try out this new recipe from the New York Times’ dining section, December 13 issue.

we used to enjoy this famous grocery-store brand frozen cheese danish which they sadly discontinued. i read through this recipe and thought, it sounds the same and it looks easy. i’m glad i did try, for the filling is  nearly identical in taste (maybe just missing a bit of transfat badness?).  i was a bit apprehensive at first because it doesn’t call for any rising time for the dough, just resting and chilling times, but it did turn out tender and tasty. i might try neufchatel (light cream cheese) next time, and i might even try for a home-made Danish pastry dough. maybehhh:fryingpan.

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i finally acted on my obsession–nay, it was a challenge!? me versus me? me versus dough?–, and made croissants.

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from Baking with Julia, with baker Leslie Mackie.  to use up some of the half bushel of tart apples we picked.  at least the kids love munching on fresh apples, whew.
it’s easy! first make a flaky pastry, chill, then make the apple mush compote, slice even more apples for topping while you melt the butter, then assemble everything. recipes follow!
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i truly pushed myself to make these for the kids’ breakfast. my baking-with-yeast phobia from numerous failed childhood experiments sometimes prevails but…it’s just that i really detest the long list of (mostly unpronounceable) ingredients in the commercial baked goods from the grocery.

anyway, now i think it is fun to work with dough. this is from Betty Crocker: the recipe yields two 8-inch pans of rolls, one using up the extra honey nut filling from the empanaditas, and the other frosted with a tart-sweet orange icing.

the recipe:

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