Honeyed Apricot-Peach Cream Cheese Tart

Yesterday I kept toying with the idea of whether I was really in the mood to make something or not. I have these lovely apricots and peaches and pears I bought last week at the produce market that are in need of being used before they go bad.

Gorgeous right?

So, this morning, I made a tart for breakfast. With scrambled eggs and sausage of course, because, well, it's Saturday which means I have to make a decent breakfast before running off to work. Any other day of the week would be an egg on toast. Weekends, working or no, I feel the need to make breakfast.

Maybe I should have waited until Sunday. I'm off Sunday. Oh well.

Assemble thine ingredients:

Fruit (I ended up using 3 apricots and 2 peaches very thinly sliced)

flour

sugar

1 stick butter

1 block cream cheese

honey

ginger

coffee. It's saturday morning. Coffee is a necessity.

Get out your handy dandy food processor. Attach normal blade that can take off your fingers and the flat top with the hole in it. Grab the cap too, because we are playing with flour and well, the whole kitchen does not need to be dusted...unless of course you want the family to think you slaved all morning, then by all means, dust away.

 Throw in butter(cold) and 1 1/4 c flour and 1/3c sugar. Keep the butter wrapper. 

Why?

Why, why, why. SO many questions!

Prepare for history lesson... commencing in 3-2-1...In the depression era, there was little money and little food. You had to *gasp* make use of every tiny part of the things you had because there was no room for waste. Think pinching pennies to the max. Using things like the part of veggies you trimmed off for broth, water for boiling used for bread or other meals, and butter wrappers are excellent for lubing up pans and dishes before baking in them. 

Keep you butter wrappers in a plastic baggy and use them, instead of a cooking spray to lube up your bakeware. Not only are you saving money, but the environment (less waste).

..End of lecture for today...

Turn on food processor and make lots of noise until it is blended and crumbly looking and the butter stops clunking around. No clunking is usually a good sign.

 Turn off noisy machine. Add water through the top hole 1 Tbs at a time, pulsing between each. Wow. That sounded dirty.

Keep adding water until it just barely comes together to form a dough.

Drag out a small baking sheet or jelly roll pan. Lube up with butter wrapper. NOW you can recycle it. It is paper after all.

Turn dough out onto pan and scrape together and fold once or twice, just enough to make it into a solid dough. 

You are supposed to chill the dough for an hour before using it. I spread it out onto the bottom of the pan and threw it in the freezer for 10 minutes while oven was heating.

If you have some extra butter (or wrapper), baste over top of dough. Toss in oven for 5-10 mins just enough to get the dough to harden a little. The butter will make it a pretty pale goldenish color.

While dough is in oven, thinly slice your fruit. And I mean thinly, or it will take too long to cook and you'll have burnt dough and raw fruit. No good.

Nuke your cream cheese in a microwave safe bowl for about 30 seconds. Enough to make it squishy enough to work with. Add 1 Tbs honey and 1/8t (pinch) of ginger. Mix.

Pull dough out of oven and dump on cream cheese mix. Spread evenly over crust with back of spoon. Layer on your fruit slices in whatever arrangement is aesthetically pleasing to you. 

I did rows... because I did. 

Toss back in over on TOP rack for 15-20 mins or until fruit is starting to shrivel a little. Using your fancy basting brush, baste honey (heated works best) over top about 10 mins into cooking.

While in the oven, scramble your eggs and fry up your sausage. And have more coffee. We need coffee.

And you are done. This one takes about an hour start to finish, so if you are working, make sure you start it more than an hour before work so you actually get some. 

Damned computer. Always get sidetracked...

Cherry-Peach Sticky Rolls

This is one of my grandmother's recipes. She makes it only for Easter and Christmas brunch, so it's a rare treat. The original, hand-written recipe is for orange-caramel sticky buns. I am fresh out of marmalade, but had some beautiful peaches and cherries from the produce market, so as I cannot leave anything alone, I altered her recipe just a tiny bit.

There are actually a lot of different things you can use instead of marmalade or peaches if those are not available to you when the urge to make something sweet and sticky for breakfast arises.

Options:
Any jelly or fresh fruit will work. Berries especially. Pineapple and cherries would be good, apples and walnuts, pumpkin and pecans, blueberries and a squeeze of lemon juice, shaved chocolate and hazelnuts. Note: if you use fresh fruit it will be not as sticky, but more like a traditional cinnamon roll that isn't rolled.

The other ingredients:

• 2 cans biscuits. I use Grands, but the smaller ones work too.
• Brown sugar
• Cinnamon
• nuts of choice; pecan bits, walnut bits or sliced almonds.
• butter, because you can't have good baked goods without it!

Equipment:

Bundt pan or if you don't have one, a loaf pan or other deep dish container will be fine. 

2 bowls: one for melted butter, one for cinnamon/sugar mix.

Cutting board and knife if you are using fresh fruit.

Ok got everything assembled? Fantastic. This will save you 42 trips to the pantry/cabinets getting stuff.

Assembly is easy. Cooking takes awhile, so plan at least an hour for these puppies to get all happy in the oven. 

First, slather some soft butter all over your baking container of choice.

Chop your fruit and sprinkle on bottom or drop tablespoons full of jelly/jam/preserves/marmalade along bottom so it covers in nice layer.

Sprinkle over nuts.

Melt butter in one bowl.

While it is melting, mix brown sugar and cinnamon in another bowl.

Get your biscuits unwrapped. I like the Grands style but you can use the smaller ones too.

Dip biscuits into butter then dredge in sugar mix. Place biscuit upright in pan.

Repeat a million times, or for, you know, however many biscuits you have.

Throw it in the oven at 300F for 45 mins then raise temp to 400 for 8-10.

Every oven is different. Mine is retarded so it takes awhile. 

When they feel firm on top, pull out of oven and place pan upside down on plate.

Let it sit for a few minutes. This will make all that yummy sticky juicy stuff run into the rolls.

MMMMMMMMM.

Ok stop drooling now. It's ok. It's almost ready. You can handle it!

Remove pan.

I wallop mine a couple of times to make sure everything is loose. 

Now you are all done! Isn't that easy? And it's pretty too!

Quick, take a picture of your accomplishment and post to facebook! your 1428 friends will be drooling on their screens!

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Peaches and Cream Pancakes

I know its been awhile. I deeply apologize. Life takes its twists and turns and well, I have had little time or gumption to write anything.

To kick off the weekend, I ended up in the E.R. for back issues. My daughter of course, was up by the time I returned home and as such announced she wanted pancakes. Here's the sucky part...I can't stand up straight and I am in the mood to cook. These 2 things do not go together well.

I did it anyway. I'm a stubborn bitch. End of story.

So this mornings breakfast, since I had 2 lovely white peaches with absolutely no flavor, is Peaches and Cream Pancakes.

The pancake recipe is mom's. I alter it with add-ins to make it fun. The basic recipe makes fat, fluffy, dense pancakes.

Now I am not a huge fan of pancakes.

I know. Blasphemy.

But my kiddos are, so I indulge them.

So first off, warm up you griddle or skillet. I use my cast iron. Ok, I use my cast iron for darn near everything.

Looks yummy right?

From scratch pancakes are super easy, I promise. Even you bachelors can get this.

You need:

2c Flour

1Tbs Baking POWDER

1tsp salt

1Tbs Sugar

and these...

...plus a little milk. I usually end up using about a cup, but it depends. 

So first off dump the dry ingredients into a bowl.

Add Egg.

My daughter loves to help me with this part. She is an egg-o-holic like me and her specialty now is breaking and adding eggs.

Add milk. Start with a little and keep adding until blended and a thick batter forms. You wan it to be gloppy, not runny.

Like this. 

I would like to apologize for the not well lit pics. I hurt. I am not feeling camera mode today :-(

Add into your batter a splash of vanilla and if you have it a tiny amount of maple extract. Almond works well too if you have it.

Next, chop a peach into bits.

No! Don't put them in yet! I didn't tell you to do that and I am the boss right now! Got it? 

Ok good. Geez. Thinking your a pro and all. ;-)

Dust the peaches with a little flour. A tablespoon works pretty well.

What? Why?

Because the flour helps fruit or any watery, chunky additions to suspend in the batter instead of floating to the bottom. 

Wait. Can you float to the bottom? Uh...fall, coagulate, have a meeting in the depths of the batter. 

This way you have even peachiness in every cake. 

Now that your batter is all happy and peachy, coat your skillet with an oily substance (I use butter)

and pour batter in small circles. about 1/4 c per cake.

Whilst they are cooking slice up another peach.

Why? Again you ask why? 

'Cause you can't have enough tasteless white winter peaches, that's why.

And your gonna coat them in sugar too. 

Turn the cakes over when they get bubbly on top and start to look dryish on the edges. Depending on your skillet, heat level and stove, 1-2 minutes per side. I cook on medium when using cast iron.

See pretty peach slices.

Coated in sugar.

Flip over your cakes.

Put them on a plate.

Top them with your peach slices and a dollop of your favorite yogurt flavor (I used banana 'cause that's what I had). I also added this peach-mango compote stuff I get at Costco. It's yummy on vanilla ice cream too.

Voila! Peaches and Cream Pancakes.

See that was easy!

Fry an egg, cook up some sausage and bacon, pour a cup of the nectar of the gods and enjoy on the front porch. Make sure you wave at the neighbors!