Category Archives: Recipes

Posts pertaining to recipes. Also tips and tricks for making breakfast at home.

Recreating The Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich

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Donut Breakfast Sandwich

Eggs and bacon sandwiched between a sliced glazed donut… crazy or genius?  I can report that it’s insanely easy and it tastes amazing.  Therefore, I’m leaning toward genius.  This recipe is a recreation of the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich that was recently introduced by Dunkin’ Donuts.  Above, you can see my version.  Below, you can see the Dunkin’ Donuts version as it appeared in their press materials.  Believe it or not, their donut sandwich has only 360 calories.  Mine has a little more bacon.  I hesitate to recommend either version for your weight loss program.

Dunkin' Donuts' Version

The donut breakfast sandwich concept isn’t new. A few smaller donut outlets were doing them well before Dunkin’ Donuts put them in the news.  Buddha Belly Donuts in Sarasota, Florida offered a version with sausage.  Unfortunately, that shop is now closed. The Bleeding Heart Bakery in Chicago offered the Make-Your-Own Doughnut Breakfast Sandwich where you could choose any or all of the following ingredients to accompany the fried egg: bacon, ham, sausage, fried green tomatoes and Cheddar or Swiss cheese.  Strangely enough, that shop also closed recently.   Beware Dunkin’ Donuts!  There seems to be a trend.

Egg And Bacon Donut Sandwich

I decided to try something quite controversial… I recreated Dunkin’ Donuts Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich using glazed donuts from Krispy Kreme.  Let’s face it, a Dunkin’ Donuts glazed donut is good, but Krispy Kreme is the current non-disputed champion for exceptional glazed donuts.

How To Make A Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich

Step One:  Acquire a glazed donut and carefully slice it with a serrated blade, trying not to dimple the beautiful sugar sheen of the glaze.

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Recreating Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco

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Recreating Taco Bell's Waffle Taco

Taco Bell recently started testing a new breakfast product in 3 select outlets in California… The Waffle Taco.  I haven’t been able to try their version myself, but I’ve been fascinated by the product ever since I saw a photo circulating around the internet.  Unable to get my hands on the real deal, I decided to try making it at home.

Above, you can see the version I made.  Below, you can see Taco Bell’s version.

Taco Bell's Waffle Taco

My advice on making homemade Waffle Tacos is this… don’t do it.  It’s a huge pain in the butt.  For home use, the Pancake Taco is much easier to make and just as tasty.

Waffle Taco Test Kitchen

It sounds extraordinary easy:  Make a waffle, fry some sausage, scramble some eggs and throw it all together.  Not so fast.

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Granola You Make In A Skillet

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Easy Skillet Granola

If you have some oats and a skillet, you’re halfway to having homemade granola.   I was skeptical about this recipe before I tried it.  I’m a big proponent of oven-baked granola.  I’ve spent months trying to find ways to make prefect granola clusters in the oven.  So, the idea of just throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan seemed like a lot of hopeful thinking.  To my surprise and delight, this recipe actually works quite well.

You end up with a looser granola than the oven produces, but it’s every bit as flavorful.  As I was making it, I couldn’t help but think how fun it would be to make this over a campfire.  I’d like to see how a little smoke from the fire affects the oats.  I’ll let you know next time I go to the forest. But for now, I used the stove-top.  Here’s how it’s done…

Melt butter and add honey and nuts

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Banana Bread… So Easy, It’s Bananas!

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How To Make Banana Bread

There’s nothing quite like a warm slice of banana bread with a nice smear of butter.  It’s as if the heavens looked down on the creation of butter and said, “Now we must create a perfect platform upon which to show off this butter.”  When made properly, banana bread is moist and loaded with flavor.  It’s pretty much a big, bread-shaped muffin.  Best of all, banana bread is so easy to make… it’s “nuts!”   Just kidding.  It’s totally “bananas!”

Banana Bread... So Easy, It's Bananas!

In this article, I’ll show you my favorite banana bread recipe and share a couple of tips for getting great tasting bread every time.  I’m also excited to present my latest cooking video.  Last week, I watched the movie The Artist.  It was cute.  But you know what it was missing?  A good banana bread recipe.  Here’s a few scenes that would have made it perfect:

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Cuckoo For Coffee Cake: 18 Great Recipes

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Cuckoo For Coffee Cake: 18 Great Recipes

April 7th is National Coffee Cake Day.  So it seems like the perfect time to to share some of my favorite coffee cake recipes.  When you want a baked good for breakfast or brunch, you can’t beat a nice coffee cake.  They’re easy to prepare and ready within an hour. As they bake, your kitchen smells like a bakery.  If you have guests over, someone will always ask, “What smells so good?” If you need a dish to take somewhere, a coffee cake is the perfect, portable, party pastry.

The recipes here are all “quick bread” coffee cakes. That is to say, they don’t use yeast (which takes more time), but are made from scratch using flour as a base and baking powder or baking soda as their leavening agent.  (A couple of the recipes call for a store bought-baking mix like Bisquick which is basically flour plus baking powder.)

In a later post, we’ll address yeast-risen coffee cakes and short-cut coffee cakes (those which use dinner rolls, biscuits in a tube or some other time-saving base).  But for now, grab a coffee, sit back, relax and get ready to be hungry.  I present to you…

18 Awesome Coffee Cake Recipes

Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake

1. Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake – You can use any flavor jam that you like.  I’ve tried this recipe with both strawberry and raspberry jam and loved the results.

Cinnamon Flop (Coffee Cake)

2. Cinnamon Flop (Coffee Cake) – This easy-to-make coffee cake features soft fissures and cracks loaded with buttery brown sugar and cinnamon.

Raspberry Cobbler Coffee Cake

3. Raspberry Cobbler Coffee Cake – This colorful beauty has fresh red raspberries resting in a light vanilla cake.  Top it off with sliced almonds and a drizzle of icing and it looks like you bought it at an expensive bakery.

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How To Poach Eggs (New Video And Cheat Sheet)

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I’m really excited about a new technique that I’ve been using lately for poaching eggs.  It’s a trick from the great Julia Child.  Usually, you add vinegar to simmering water which helps loose strands of egg white cling to the cooking egg. It’s rare that the vinegar taste lingers, but when it does, there can be an unpleasant, unnecessary tinge of sourness in your finished dish.

Thanks to what I’m calling The Julia Child Pin Prick Method, I no longer use vinegar.  You bring the water to a full boil, prick one end of the egg with a pin and boil the egg in its shell for 10 seconds.  Then, reduce the heat to a simmer and poach as usual.

I’ve had fantastic luck with this technique, so I’m trying to spread the word.  I’ve just made a new cooking demonstration video (see above) and I’ve updated my article “How Do I Poach An Egg” with the information and included a cheat sheet which you can also find right here.

How To Poach An Egg (Without Using Vinegar)

I hope you’ll give this method a try.  Poached eggs are great on their own with some toast, but you might want to explore some interesting breakfast recipes that use poached eggs.  I’ve got that covered…

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Top O’ The Mornin’ Lads And Lassies

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Green Egg Casserole For St. Patrick's Day

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, many people are looking forward to healthy (size-wise) portions of corned beef, cabbage, Irish whiskey and Guinness.  While I plan to partake in all those great things, I’m most excited about St. Patrick’s Day breakfast.  Every year, I try to find new ways to incorporate green into my omelets, pancakes, waffles and other morning dishes.

One of my St. Patrick’s Day breakfast dishes was so green that it was literally unbelievable.  I submitted a photo of my Green Egg Scramble to the popular food picture site FoodGawker and they wouldn’t accept it.  They said it “looked overproccessed.”  I can see how they thought that, but seriously, it was food coloring and green peppers – not Photoshop.

Green Egg Scramble: Too Green?

Today’s featured St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast recipe is festive but not quite as over-the-top.  It’s a basic breakfast casserole with accents of distinct green from spinach, green pepper, green onion, chopped jalapeno and a garnish of parsley.

Ingredients For Green Egg Casserole

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A Reason To Be Crabby In The Morning

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Crab Meat Omelette

March 9th is National Crab Meat Day.  What better way to celebrate than with a rich, delicious Crab Meat Omelette.  It’s loaded with fresh crab, green onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic.  As with any respectable crab dish, this omelette has a generous amount of butter which is well known to bring out the sweetness and general tastiness of crab.

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