Roasted Banana Cinnamon Rolls

Even though I'm not a huge breakfast person, I do love to make something good for breakfast on at least one day of the weekend.  My biggest dilemma when deciding what to eat for breakfast is whether to go with sweet or savory.  Do I have some french toast or an omelette?  Do I have waffles with some kind of sweet topping or eggs benedict?  What a tough choice!

As soon as I saw this recipe on Picky Palate, I knew that I wouldn't be having the sweet or savory dilemma in my head during the upcoming weekend because I had to make this right away!  I absolutely love bananas (in the past, I have really enjoyed these bananas foster waffles for breakfast), and I had never even thought about how good they would be combined with cinnamon rolls, but this combination of bananas and brown sugar with cinnamon rolls sounded amazing to me.

These did take a little longer to make than I expected (since you first roast the bananas then assemble and bake the cinnamon rolls, this will take you over an hour), but it was worth it.  The flavor was incredible and this combination tasted just as good as I imagined it would be!  I'll definitely be making these again sometime.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 roll Pillsbury Crescents (the original recipe called for Pillsbury French Bread Loaf, but these Pillsbury Crescents worked well for me or you could also use homemade dough)
4 tablespoons softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cup powdered sugar
3-4 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place banana slices and cut up pieces of butter into a small baking dish. Sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for 25 minutes or until golden and bubbly. Remove and let cool for 10 minutes. Next, use a fork to smash roasted bananas until well combined.

Reduce heat to 350 degrees F. Unroll Pillsbury Crescent dough - do not tear crescents apart.  Press perforations together to seal so that the douugh is one large rectangle. Spread with softened butter and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Place dollops of roasted banana mixture evenly over top. Starting from long end, roll up into log shape. Using a sharp knife, cut 1-2 inch slices and place onto a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until just turning golden brown. Remove and let cool for 10 minutes.

Whisk powdered sugar and heavy cream until combined; drizzle over top of warm rolls.

Blueberry Muffins

These may not be the prettiest blueberry muffins (and I apologize for the really bad picture), but they tasted great!  This recipe is from Ina Garten, and her recipes never disappoint.  Even though these didn't have the nice, pretty, rounded muffin tops, they had a great flavor and texture.  The sweetness of the batter balanced out the tartness of the blueberries perfectly.

We had these muffins for Sunday brunch a few weekends ago, and then we snacked on them for a few days afterwards.  I will definitely be making this recipe again.  Next time, I might add a little lemon zest to the batter.

Ingredients:

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature (I know, I know, this is a lot of butter)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (I used 2 teaspoons, I always like a little extra vanilla)
8 ounces (about 1 cup) sour cream (don't skip this!  It makes the texture perfect)
1/4 cup milk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 half-pints fresh blueberries, picked through for stems

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place 16 paper liners in muffin pans.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, then add the vanilla, sour cream, and milk.  In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt (I was too lazy to sift). With the mixer on low speed add the flour mixture to the batter and beat until just mixed. Fold in the blueberries with a spatula and be sure the batter is completely mixed.

Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin pans, filling each cup just over the top, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the muffins are lightly browned on top and a cake tester comes out clean.

I was hesitant to fill the muffin cups over the top with batter, but follow the directions and do this because these muffins don't rise like most do.  They will have a flat muffin top, which might not be as pretty but once you bite into these you'll forget about the flat tops because they taste great!

Eggnog French Toast

Growing up, I never really liked eggnog.....well, I can't really say for sure that I didn't like it because I was picky back then so I don't remember ever actually trying it.  I think I was turned off by the thick texture, and I thought the name of it didn't sound very good to me.

Fast forward to today and (luckily) I'm not very picky at all so I decided to give it a shot and buy a carton of eggnog for the holidays to decide once and for all if I liked it or not.  Well, I tried it and the texture is a little different than what I'm used to, but I really liked the flavor a lot.  Although I will admit that I've been drinking a few sips at a time right out of the carton because I don't think I could drink a whole glass in one sitting since it's so rich.  There's something about the nutmeg in it that I really like.  I actually have been on a nutmeg kick lately so I'm going to have to find some more recipes to use nutmeg in. 

Anyways, we were running a little low on food the other day, and I decided we would have breakfast for dinner so that I could put off going to the grocery store one more day.  I saw someone post about eggnog french toast on a message board, and I knew I had plenty in the refrigerator so I decided that would be perfect!  Most of the recipes I found were overnight recipes, but I did find this recipe on http://www.allrecipes.com/ that I adapted for our dinner tonight.  This one was definitely a hit and I will be making it again next year during eggnog season :)  I would definitely recommend using thick slices of bread for this.  The flavor was amazing and even those who don't like to drink eggnog would like this french toast.

Ingredients:

1 loaf bread, sliced into thick slices (I actually had some Rhode's bread dough in the freezer so I baked this up and sliced the bread into 6 really thick slices.  After slicing, I let the bread sit out for an hour to dry it out a bit so that it wouldn't fall apart when I dipped it in the eggnog mixture.)

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups eggnog

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon nutmeg

butter for greasing pan (I added more butter between each batch so I probably used 3-4 tablespoons)

powdered sugar and syrup, for serving

Directions:

1. Whisk together the eggs. eggnog, vanilla, and nutmeg in a mixing bowl until well blended.  Pour the mixture into a shallow dish (I used a glass pie pan).

2.  Preheat a large skillet over medium heat and grease the skillet with butter.

3. Dip one slice of bread at a time into the eggnog mixture, being sure to coat each side of the bread thoroughly (but be careful not to leave it in there too long otherwise your bread will get too soggy and fall apart).

4. Place the prepared bread slices into the preheated skillet, and cook, turning once, until golden brown on each side. I would recommend adding more butter to the pan for each batch you make.  Place cooked slices on a serving plate and cover with foil (I kept the plate warm in a 200 degree oven) to keep warm until all French toast is cooked. Serve immediately with powdered sugar and syrup.

Bananas Foster Waffles - Our Christmas Morning Breakfast

This year, we spent the week before Christmas with my parents and my sister on a Caribbean cruise aboard the Norwegian Pearl.  Every morning, we would all sit on the back patio of the pool deck on the ship and enjoy eating breakfast outside.  On one of the mornings, both Kevin and I had waffles with a banana topping that reminded me of bananas foster (which is one of our favorite desserts!).  The banana topping went really well with the waffles so I decided to make this for our Christmas morning breakfast. 

To go along with the waffles, we made mimosas (I even squeezed fresh oranges for the orange juice and we also had some fresh pureed strawberries to add a twist on the mimosas).

And of course, we had to have some bacon to go with our breakfast.

But getting back to the delicious bananas foster waffles that I made.....I adapted this waffle recipe from http://www.allrecipes.com/, and I used Paula Deen's bananas foster recipe for the topping (which I have used with much success in the past for dessert, which I serve over some vanilla ice cream).

Ingredients:

Waffles-

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Bananas Foster Topping-
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 bananas, sliced into 1 inch slices
1/4 cup dark rum (I used Myer's dark rum)

Directions:

For the Waffles-

In a large bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder and sugar; set aside. Preheat waffle iron to desired temperature.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Stir in the milk, butter and vanilla. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture; beat until blended.

Ladle the batter into a preheated greased waffle iron. Cook the waffles until golden and crisp. Keep waffles warm in a 200 degree oven until you are ready to serve.
 
For the Bananas Foster Topping-
 
Melt butter in a large skillet. Add brown sugar and stir together. Add the bananas and cook until caramelized over medium-high heat. Pour in the rum and catch a flame off of the gas stove or a long lighter. Stand back when ignited and flambe. Be careful; a flame will shoot up above the pan. Let flame die down. Serve over your waffles, and garnish with a little whipped cream.
 
These were soooooo good!  They were perfect for a special occasion breakfast.