French Toast with Cinnamon Apple

Ingredients:

• 2 TBSP butter
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• cinnamon
• sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3 slices of wheat bread

Directions:

1) Melt the butter.
2) Cook the apple over medium heat for a minute or two.








3) Add the cinnamon and sugar and cook until it is soft. Then remove.
4) Mix the eggs and the milk.
5) Dip the bread into the egg and milk mixture (both sides).
6) Add to the same pan that the apples were in and cook until crispy, then flip.
7) Cook until crispy on the other side.

Plum Tart

 Continuing the use of the Boston Organics box, this uses the plums. The recipe was taken from here.

Ingredients:

• 7 TBSP chilled unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
• 1 cup flour, plus more for the pan
• 1/2 cup plus 2 TBSP sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4  tsp kosher salt
• 6 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 3 plums, pitted and cut into 16th (could use more and cut them into larger chunks, but we only had 3)
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

1) Heat oven to 400F/205C.
2) Grease a baking dish with butter and dust with flour.








3) Whisk together flour, 2 TBSP sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.








4) Add 4 TBSP chilled butter and rub into flour mixture with your hands.








5) In another bowl, mix together withe milk, vanilla and egg.








6) Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and mix until just combined.








7) Transfer dough to the baking dish and spread.








8) Arrange plum slices in rows on top of the dough.










9) Sprinkle the 1/2 cup sugar on top of the plums
10) Sprinkle the cinnamon on top of the plums.








11) Melt remaining butter (3 TBSP) and drizzle over the plums.







12) Bake for 30 minutes.
13) Allow to cool slightly before slicing into it.

Red Wine Poached Pear Salad

Continuing the use of the box from Boston Organics, by using the pears, red lettuce, onion, and sprouts. Recipe for the wine poached pears was taken from here.

Ingredients:

• Wine Poached Pears:
• 2 Peeled, cored and sliced pears
• 3/4 cups of red wine (I used Merlot)
• 3/8 cup sugar
• 1 TBSP lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Salad:
• 1 recipe of wine poached pears
• 1 head of red lettuce, chopped
• 1/4 of an onion, chopped
• handful of sprouts
• handful of mushrooms, chopped

Directions:
1) Combine the red wine, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and cinnamon in a bot and bring to a boil.








2) Add the pears and turn down the heat to a simmer.
3) Simmer for 10-12 minutes.
4) Stir and simmer for another 5-8 minutes.







5) Test the pears to see if they can be poked though with a fork, if so, they are done.
6) Let cool.
7) Combine the salad ingredients.
8) Serve with balsamic vinegar, or another dressing of your choice (could use the leftover wine from the pot, but that seemed a bit runny to me).

Apple Cobbler

I'm staying with friends in Boston right now, and they signed up for Boston Organics meaning that every Tuesday they get a box of veggies and fruit delivered that is all organic and from the Boston area, but some are from NY or as far as CA so you can get different types of stuff that normally doesn't grow in your area.

Anyway, one of the things we got this week was apples. The package also comes with some recipes that you can make with the items in the basket. I was just going to make apple pie, but my friend has the mini baking tins so we decided this was better (since the tins had never been used before).

This dish can be served warm or cold and with or without ice cream. If you want to reheat it (as I will be doing), preheat the oven to 350F/175C again and then heat the bowls for 5-10 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 4 apples, peeled, cored and cut into large pieces
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp apple pie seasoning (you can leave this out if you don't have it, the original recipe didn't call for this or cinnamon, but I figure it always makes it better)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2) Toss apples, sugar, salt, cinnamon and apple pie seasoning together.







3) Divide equally among 4 individual oven proof bowls.









4) Combine butter and flour with fingertips until mixture has the texture of oatmeal (I used the same bowl without washing it out).
5) Add brown sugar and mix in a bit, allowing for the mixture to be lumpy.





6) Distribute evenly over apples.









7) Bake for 30 minutes. I placed them on one tray so putting them in and taking them out would be easy.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

I wanted pancakes for about a week and was just too lazy until the weekend.

Taken from here and altered a bit

Ingredients:

• Filling
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 TBSP cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• Pancakes
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 TBSP sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 2 eggs

Directions:

1) Mix all the ingredients for the filling together and let sit aside. If you have a pastry bag or plastic bag you can put it in there to pipe onto the pancakes, but all I have is a funnel.






2) Mix the dry ingredients of the pancakes (flour, salt, sugar and, baking powder).









3) Mix in the rest of the ingredients (milk and eggs).
4) Grease and heat a pan.








5) Spoon 2-3 scoops of pancake batter onto the pan.
6) Put the cinnamon filling into a funnel if you do not have the pastry bag, using a spoon to stop the filling from coming out when going from bowl to pancake to pancake.
7) Swirl on the cinnamon filling.
8) Once bubbles start to show in the pancake part, flip the pancake. It will sizzle because of the filling but will be fine.
9) Check in a few minutes to be sure it is cooked though.

Banana Bread

Taken from here

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
• 1/3 cup + 2 TBSP butter, softened, plus more for greasing
• 1 ½ cup wholemeal self-raising flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¾ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 ½ cup mashed banana (about 3 bananas)
• ½ cup almonds
• 1/2 cup chocolate chunks
• 1 tsp brown sugar 
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon powder

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 180⁰C/160⁰C fan forced. 

2) Grease 14 cm x 21 cm loaf pan. Grease the other two sides with butter.

3) Add the lemon rind into a small bowl with the softened butter.

 

 

 

 

 

4) Sift flour and cinnamon into a large bowl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5) Add rind, butter, sugar and eggs to the cinnamon-flour mix and combine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6) Stir in banana, almonds and chocolate.

7) Spread mixture into pan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8) Meanwhile, mix the brown sugar and grounded cinnamon to make the topping. Sprinkle over the bread mixture in the pan.

9) Bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. 

10) Stand bread in pan 5 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool.

 Pac Man