Entertainment

May 2014 - Posts

  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: Mother's Day Breakfast in Bed, Baby!

    This is the second in a RED Hearts series of spring-into-summer recipes – things you can cook or bake, usually healthy things, always easy things – for the people you heart. Served up by Erika Kwee, 23, “the baker, photographer and typo-maker” behind vegetarian food blog The Pancake Princess.

    With Mother’s Day this Sunday, special brunch dishes have been on my mind. Starting from an age when the rest of us were so young that Dad had to do most of the cooking, my family has always served my mom breakfast in bed for the occasion. In recent years, my siblings and I have put together ambitious spreads of crepes and—at least we like to think so—perfected some experiments with eggs.

    I’m a firm believer that if there’s anything mom deserves on her special day, it’s something from you, made with love. If you too see the merit of presenting this beautiful gift so it’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up—and agree that eating is always a more exciting act than unwrapping—may I suggest for the morning of May 11, 2014, delivering a Dutch Baby to her bed?

    A Dutch baby is a type of oven-baked pancake, and it happens to be my favorite show-stopping but stress-free breakfast dish. It can easily be served hot for multiple people (unlike traditional pancakes that keep you in the kitchen, flipping each one individually). The batter is so simple to make and then the oven does all the work!

    In just under half an hour, it’ll puff up into a restaurant-status breakfast star. And it’ll puff you up as a star in the eyes of your mom as she enjoys a very special soufflé-esque pancake that’s crisp on the outside and custardy on the inside, studded with caramelized fruit.

    I used grapefruit in this week’s test run, but customize yours with whatever fruit you have on hand or your mom likes best: strawberries, mango, cherries or apricots are great seasonal options. (If yours is a more savory-than-sweet household, you can omit the fruit, cinnamon, vanilla and brown sugar and add 4 to 6 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese to the batter, or replace the fruit with sautéed peas or finely chopped kale or spinach.)

    2 tablespoons butter, divided
    1 grapefruit, peeled and segmented, or about 1 cup your fruit of choice
    2 tablespoons brown sugar, divided
    3 large eggs
    ½ cup milk
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    ½ cup all-purpose flour
    ½ teaspoon salt
    dash of cinnamon

    Preheat oven to 425 degrees. (You’ll be reducing the heat later! A brief, initial blast adds volume, desirable in a Dutch Baby.)

    Place an oven-proof skillet (anywhere from 9-12 inches) on the stove and melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat.

    Toss grapefruit in 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and add to the pan; cook for 2-3 minutes on one side before sprinkling with the remaining brown sugar. Flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat.

    In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla very vigorously—this is where you are incorporating air to help the pancake rise.

    Add the flour, salt and cinnamon, and mix only until the ingredients are combined: Don’t overmix or your pancake will be tough. Melt the second tablespoon of butter and gently whisk into the batter.

    Pour batter into the skillet over the grapefruit and immediately move the entire skillet to the oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

    Reduce heat to 350 and cook for another 10 minutes until puffed and brown. Carefully remove the skillet from the oven and dust with powdered sugar. Slice and serve to sleepy mother immediately!

  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: Bake A Giant Cookie of Love

    Bake A Giant Cookie of Love

    This is the first in a RED Hearts series of spring-into-summer recipes—things you can cook or bake, usually healthy things, always easy things—for the people you heart. Served up by Erika Kwee, 23, “the baker, photographer and typo-maker” behind vegetarian food blog The Pancake Princess

    Little brothers can often be annoying little buggers. But chalk this one up as a win for the buggers because I’m totally stealing this idea from my brother!

    After becoming fascinated by the gooey deep-dish pizza-cookies, or “pizookies” from a certain chain restaurant, my brother started baking up overgrown cookie cakes of his own and hauling them to school in pizza boxes to honor his friends’ birthdays. (Nice kid, right?) He got so into it, and they were so well received, he’s set up a little online bakery business.

    The best part of this pizookie business—aside from the fact that you, you know, get to share a giant cookie with people you like—is the personalization factor. My brother has spent many an hour decorating pizookies with everything from volleyballs and tennis balls to a Hunger Games mockingjay in chocolate and the deathly hallows logo from Harry Potter.

    You can order these from him, but as with most things in life, they’re so much better if you make them yourself. All sorts of cool stencils can be found on Pinterest, but you can definitely just let your imagination run wild.

    Here’s how you do it:

    Bake up your favorite chocolate chip cookies in an 8- or 9-inch cake pan (a recipe that usually yields 12-15 cookies works great for this! I love halving this one. Let the pizookie cool completely.

    Cut your desired stencil out of paper, place it over your pizookie and sprinkle on powdered sugar! Make sure to smear the powdered sugar around the edges of the stencil a bit so that the lines come out looking crisp.

    I filled in the “cut outs” on this Sweet 16 pizookie with an easy glaze of powdered sugar and milk topped with rainbow sprinkles, but you can leave them blank. For those with advanced decorating skills, the possibilities are endless. Among them is the deliciousness of melting down chocolate chips and drizzling designs onto wax paper (place a picture underneath the wax paper if you want a guide to follow—hello Divergent logos!). Let the chocolate cool completely before peeling it off and placing it on the pizookie.

    Have fun. Experiment. Maybe even show my little bugger of a brother how it’s done…