The Joy of Cooking

Simple French Toast Casserole

12.25.2012 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I should have been more on top of Christmas this year, but I wasn’t.

In years past, I’ve had lots of shopping to do: The Departed, his children, his extended family, my mother. All of them impossible to shop for, and rather disheartening too, given how many heartfelt gifts were greeted with either blank looks or sighs that said “It isn’t really what I wanted, and I needed you to know that in an indirect way so that you can’t accuse me of being rude or ungrateful.”

I’m too sensitive, you see.

This year, there was much less buying to do, but so much more socializing I spent my free moments in December catching up on my rest. Tinsel did not appear on our tree until December 23. We use photo-frame stocking hangers, but the frames for each of our new cats remains empty. There’s no star at the top of our too-tall tree that projects up into the skylight – because I sent the old star to The Departed with his stuff and then forgot to get a new one.

I’m still working on a Christmas gift for my father. I sent him gifts, yes, but the one I was making? I finished it on Christmas Eve, and unlike Amazon, I can’t manage the logistics of same-day delivery.

Early for next year, I say. Top that, Amazon.

It’s all very different. I used to be on top of Christmas and felt in control of it all, even with all the people and stuff involved. It was very pretty.

This year, Christmas feels chaotic and joyful.

One thing is the same as last year, though, and the year before that: Christmas breakfast. It’s good for any day, really, that you want something a little bit special and not a lot of work. I got the recipe from a Cooking Light cookbook
that I received for my 40th birthday, with came with heartfelt wishes from my girlfriend that I should “enjoy it along with my slowing metabolism.”

Needless to say, I modified away all the “light” elements of it. I’m sure it was fine before, but it’s fabulous and yummy now. The caramel sauce at the bottom of the pan turns into a vanilla-caramel syrup, so when you’re done baking it, just scoop out the french toast and spoon a bit of the pan syrup over it.

I couldn’t get a decent picture of it because we ate it all too fast. Yes, it serves six people. But, to be more precise, it serves one person, one dog, and one Yeti.

Simple French Toast Casserole

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

45 mins

Author: adapted from Cooking Light

Serves: 6

Ingredients

⅔ cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons dark corn syrup
¼ cup pecans (optional)
1½ cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon grated orange rind
5 large eggs
6 slices French peasant bread

Instructions

Combine first 3 ingredients in a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cook 5 minutes or until bubbly and sugar dissolves, stirring constantly. Pour sugar mixture into bottom of a greased 13 x 9-inch baking dish. Spread mixture evenly over bottom of pan. Chop pecans and scatter on top of sugar mixture. Set aside.
Combine milk and next 5 ingredients (through eggs) in a large shallow bowl; stir with a whisk. Dip bread slices in milk mixture; arrange bread slices over sugar mixture in dish. Pour any remaining egg mixture over bread slices. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, preheat oven to 350°, and bake for 30 minutes. To serve, dish out slices with a spatula and turn upside down (caramel side up). Serve with butter or dusted with powdered sugar or just as it is.

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Gingerbread Caramels

12.22.2012 by J. Doe // 12 Comments

The Child wants to give gifts to her teachers and friends. We do this – like most people – every year, distributing things on the day before winter break. In years past, we have gotten quite elaborate with teacher gifts, as The Child was fortunate to have a superb teacher – the same one for three years, in fact – and we couldn’t help but want to do something very special for her. I would have sent her to Hawaii if it was in my power and budget to do so.

The Child started middle school this year, though, and what that means – apart from more homework – is that she now has eight teachers, an advisor, and assorted other school staff that she considers to be gift-worthy. She wants to give something to the head of school, she tells me, because sometimes he joins her gaggle of girls at lunch in the cafeteria. You get the idea. It’s a long list.

I ask her what she had in mind to give people, and as I’m headed out to Costco, she tells me: Gift cards. For everyone.

Everyone like Starbucks, she says. Do that.

I actually consider this a viable option until I spend a half-hour wandering the gift-card section at Costco and discover there’s not one gift-card bundle available at all for Starbucks, or for less than $25 per card for anything else.

I come home and suggest to The Child that maybe it’s better if we make something. She likes that idea and remembers the Spiced Apple Cider Caramels I made last year.

My class loved them and my teacher did too, she says. All my teachers this year will love them.

It’s a great plan, and I pick up some heavy cream and plan to make the caramels the day before, so they’ll be fresh. There’s only one small hitch: The recipe was from another blog, and it isn’t there anymore. I’m sure I printed it out, but I can’t find it, and I don’t have tons of time.

If only Google could search my house for me.

I find another recipe for Spiced Apple Cider caramels, but it seems, I don’t know – off. So I search Pinterest for “caramels” to see what appears that looks workable and doesn’t involve another trip to the store. Someone has pinned a Martha Stewart recipe for Gingerbread Caramels, which sound delightful and seasonal and involve four cups of heavy cream – which I have, but, really Martha? – as well as a vast amount of corn syrup, which I don’t.

This time, Google is more helpful, and I find this recipe for Gingerbread Caramels on Good Life Eats. The recipe was simple enough, and the caramels were soft and chewy with the perfect notes of molasses, ginger, and warming spices. It was hard to send them all off to school, but send them I did, in little baggies trimmed with Christmas paper.

I’ve made some minor adjustments to the original recipe, giving the exact spice quantities I used; my cooking times also varied from those originally stated, but what’s important with candy-making isn’t the time, but the temperature.

I learned the temperature lesson when I made a batch of the Spiced Apple Cider caramels from the new recipe. It indicated cooking the syrup to a temperature of 255 degrees, resulting in a too-hard candy, which was also unfortunately a bit too sugary-sweet.

I finally found the original Spiced Apple Cider Caramel recipe buried under a pile of recipes I’ve been meaning to try. I’d blame the Elf on the Shelf for hiding it there, but I don’t have one, as far as I know. They kind of scare me, and it’s not like I need any help misplacing things.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Thank you for joining me this year!

Gingerbread Caramels

Author: adapted from Good Life Eats

Ingredients

1½ cups heavy cream
8 tablespoons butter
¾ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon allspice
⅛ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1¾ cup granulated sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup molasses
½ cup water

Instructions

Line a 9-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.
Bring cream and butter to a simmer in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.
Pre-measure the spices and salt out into a small bowl. Pre-measure the vanilla into another small bowl. You will need to access these ingredients very quickly at the end of the recipe.
Combine the sugar, molasses, and water in a large heavy saucepan over medium high heat. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until all of the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is a deep amber color.
Turn heat to low. Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up). Return heat to medium to medium-high and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel temperature registers no higher than 248°F on thermometer. Turn off the heat and immediately whisk in the vanilla, salt and spices. Pour into prepared pan.
Once the mixture has cooled slightly but is still tacky to the touch, sprinkle the tops very lightly with additional kosher salt, if desired.
Allow the caramels to completely cool before cutting. Wrap in squares of parchment or wax paper.

Notes

There are lots of suggestions out there for how to make cutting caramels easier. Here are mine: 1) sharpen your knife, then 2) run your knife under very hot water before each cut.

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This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other sweet treats await? There are no calories if you just read. I hope.

Apple Jellies

12.15.2012 by J. Doe // 12 Comments

Alice Waters is one of my culinary heroes (I guess technically, she’s a heroine), her laurels mostly resting on her superb and simple recipe for roast chicken. I found it in the early 1990’s in a cooking magazine that was full of complex, multi-step recipes involving asterisked ingredient lists with notes about where you could mail order all the unique things you would need to be a true gourmet home cook.

Her recipe was the one thing I clipped from that magazine: so simple and to the point that I only referred to it once or twice before I had it memorized. I’ve served it dozens of times over the years, always to raves.

I love simple cooking, and being so busy this year celebrating my newfound freedom and packing what remains of The Departed’s possessions, I didn’t have tons of time to make anything elaborate for my annual cookie exchange party in any case. I found Alice Waters’ recipe for Apple Jellies at the back of The Art of Simple Food, and it seemed ideal: Three ingredients, cooked on the stove. What could go wrong?

Everything, it seems. The road to hell is paved with Apple Jellies.

I cooked down the apples together with the water, ran them through a food mill, and then cooked the resulting pink puree down for an additional hour. I checked that it held a mounded shape before I stopped cooking. I spread the resulting thickened pink mass into a baking pan lined with parchment paper.

After letting it sit overnight where the cat – who apparently likes apples – couldn’t get at it, I inverted the mass onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, to let it dry a further 24 hours. The instructions seem to indicate it should be possible to cut it into squares at this point.

It wasn’t, but the instructions helpfully tell you what to do if this happens: Stick the baking sheet into a 150-degree oven for an hour “or more” until you have a nice mass of jell that you can cut into squares that will stay that way.

I let it set in such an oven for an hour. I tested it. I inverted it onto another baking sheet so the bottom could dry, and put it back into the oven. I tested it again, I inverted it again.

I took it out of the oven when I went to bed, hoping it would be cuttable when I woke up the next day … which it wasn’t … so I started the process over again. At one point, I put the jell-that-wouldn’t in the oven, left the house to retrieve The Child from a slumber party, had a cup of coffee with the other parents, and returned home to find the jellies … still not jelled.

Five hours in the oven later, they were sorta-kinda done.

I tossed the squares in sugar and served them that day at my annual cookie party. The guests all liked them but agreed: these are not worth five hours of oven time. None of us could come up with anything that was worth five hours of oven time apart from, say, a Christmas ham.

The next morning, I was sorting all the extra cookies into gift boxes, and there was my plate of apple jellies, sitting in a sort of syrup, which was tasty but not exactly appealing to look at. The jellies no longer sparkled with sugar, but glistened with ooze.

I didn’t take a picture, because I like you and no one should have to look at that, unless they buy a ticket to see The Blob with a complete understanding of what they’re getting into.

I’m providing the recipe in case you’re feeling intrepid and or perhaps can see where I might have gone wrong. Maybe cameo apples were a bad idea. Maybe my climate is too moist to begin with. Or maybe … you have some idea?

Update: I tried the recipe again and found the problem.

Apple Jellies

Author: Alice Waters, from The Art of Simple Food

Ingredients

8 medium apples (3 pounds), washed, quartered, and cored
1 cup water
1½ cups sugar
juice of one lemon

Instructions

Lightly oil an 8x8 baking dish with flavorless vegetable oil. Line the dish with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.
In a large heavy pot, cook apples and water, covered, until apples are soft, about 20 minutes.
Pass the mixture through a food mill.
Return the puree to the pot and add sugar and lemon juice. Simmer over low heat, stirring often, about an hour. As the mixture cooks and reduces, it starts to bubble and thicken. Be careful of spattering.
The puree is done when it holds a mounded shape (in theory). To be sure, briefly chill a small amount on a plate in the freezer. It should look and feel jelled.
Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared dish. Cool for several hours or overnight. When completely cooled, invert onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Remove the top layer of parchment paper. Leave to dry uncovered overnight.
The paste should be firm enough to cut. If not, put the paste into a 150 degree oven for an hour or more until firm. Maybe even five hours. Or more.
When it's done - if ever - cut the jellies into squares, toss with sugar, and admire how pretty they are, if only briefly.

Notes

When I say be careful of spattering, I'm serious. This stuff gets HOT and spatters a LOT. It's just really uncooperative, if not downright mean.

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This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see if the other participants had better luck?

Simple French Toast Casserole

Gingerbread Caramels

Apple Jellies

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