Roasted citrus compote with honey, vanilla, and cardamom. Served over plain Greek yogurt and sprinkled with pistachios for crunch!
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Roasted Citrus Compote
Category: Breakfast & Brunch
Bacon Hash Skillet with Runny Eggs & Harissa
This Bacon Hash Skillet with runny eggs and harissa will definitely be the highlight of my Christmas brunch this year. As a bonus, You can make them in advance! that way, all you have to do is pop on the coffee before everyone arrives.
Continue reading “Bacon Hash Skillet with Runny Eggs & Harissa”
Funfetti Pancakes
I have used more sprinkles in the past few weeks than I have over the course of my entire life. First, it was Molly Yeh’s funfetti cake, which my best friend and I decided to add extra sprinkles to, and then I unicorned it for my cousin’s sixth birthday. (Side note: The amount of effort it takes to make a unicorn horn that doesn’t look like a wiener is actually impressive, but I don’t think I did too bad for my first time?). The next notable encounter with sprinkles involved these pancakes. Back in the good old days of SSL, I made a ‘birthday cake pancakes’ recipe with ‘homemade cake batter’. As an avid anti-cake batter proponent, I was dead set on making the birthday cake pancakes that were floating around Pinterest but without boxed cake mix; at the time, this was downright impossible to find on the internet, and I went through a whole process of making homemade ‘cake batter’ that involved a food processor and a freezer. Overall, way too much time for Sunday-morning pancakes, and while they tasted like cake, it still wasn’t the perfect funfetti flavor that I was looking for. Continue reading “Funfetti Pancakes”
Vanilla + Cardamom Scones with Strawberry Curd
Yesterday, we had a rare March day with wonderful weather, and it was also the first day in three weeks that I haven’t felt like utter garbage. I am currently in the midst of the longest sinus infection of my life, but even so, it could not ruin my spirits prompted by warm weather. And by warm, I mean 45* F. But, still… the sun was out for a change! I had planned on spending the day cleaning my house after looking around and realizing that it looks like my closet threw up my entire shoe collection and I have a very impressive herd of dust bunnies breeding in my hallway. But life is short, and sunny, windless Sundays are rare in March, so I forced myself to put on pants and get out of the house. I got a coffee and took Bell to run around the dog park, and it wasn’t even muddy! It was freezing, but every once in a while, the clouds would clear for a minute, and the sun would warm everything up. The air smelled so good. I always forget how lovely early spring is until it comes back around again.
Other than toughing it through the freezing-warm weather for as long as I possibly could, I spent the whole day cooking up some new recipes. I love all the produce that’s out right now, and I’m taking advantage of it for as long as I can. It inspired me to make some roast chicken with lots of potatoes and fresh herbs and then watch Julie & Julia, because what else would you watch when food is inspiring you?
Another one of my spring favorites in the produce section is all of the fresh strawberries! Strawberry shortcake has always been a very Easter-y dessert in my family. We make our strawberry shortcake with biscuits instead of angel food cake, and I am convinced it’s the only way to even eat strawberry shortcake. Also, you have to absolutely drench it in whipped cream, it’s a rule.
Like I was talking about last week, I’m trying to take advantage of my very short weekends by getting up earlier and brunching more. Without some sort of goal, I have the tendency to sleep in and then lay in bed on my phone scrolling through embroidery instagrams for three hours. SO, instead of scrolling, I’m sconing. And eggs-benedicting. And waffling. If it’s brunchy, I want something to do with it.
But I digress. This is about scones. And strawberries. And mixing it all together to create some sort of strawberry-shortcake inspired scone. And also adding cardamom, because cardamom + strawberries = lalalala one of the best combos ever!! Why didn’t I do this earlier, it’s such a good idea? Cardamom is fairly expensive, but a tiny bit goes a long way, so you’ll definitely notice a little hint of it in these scones. The strawberry curd is a little extra step, but if you don’t want to go that far, you could always just serve these with jam or chop up some fresh strawberries to throw on top! These are perfect for Easter brunch, especially because they can be made a day in advance! Aaaaand they are best served with lots of fresh coffee, obviously.
Vanilla + Cardamom Scones with Strawberry Curd
Serves 8-16
Ingredients
3 c. flour
1/3 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cardamom
1 1/2 sticks butter, cut in 1/2 in. cubes
1 egg, whisked
3/4 c. buttermilk
1/2 c. whipping cream + more for brushing
2 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract, divided
1/4 c. powdered sugar
1 Tbs. milk or cream
Preheat oven to 375* F. In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom. Toss very cold butter in the flour. Using your hands, work quickly to break the butter into the flour until it is pea-sized. You may have some larger, flatter pieces.
Make a well in the center. Add the egg, buttermilk, cream, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Mix until just incorporated. The dough will be sticky.
Turn dough onto a floured surface. Press into a 1-inch disk. Cut into 8 sections. Alternatively, for smaller scones, you could press it into two 1/2 in. disks and cut each of those into 8 sections. Space on a baking sheet 2 inches apart. Brush each scone with cream. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cool.
Meanwhile, whisk the powdered sugar, 1 Tbs. of milk, and 1/4 tsp. of vanilla extract until smooth. Drizzle over scones. Serve with curd (recipe below).
Strawberry Curd
1 lb. strawberries, finely chopped
Zest + juice of 1 lemon
1/4 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 Tbs. corn starch + 2 Tbs. water whisked
6 Tbs. butter
Combine strawberries, zest, lemon juice, sugar, and eggs in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, or until bubbling. Add the cornstarch slurry and stir until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat. Whisk in the butter. Cool curd and serve with scones + whipped cream.
xo Sara Lynn
*Song of the day: Let it Happen by Tame Impala
Croque Madame Galettes with Everything Crust
It’s a rare Sunday when I’m actually human enough to have a proper brunch before noon. Beyond the mandatory sleeping in portion of Sundays, I also have to lay in bed scrolling through my phone, drink a cup of coffee, and snuggle my dog on the floor for thirty minutes all before putting on my face and some real pants. Luckily, I think Sundays always feel like morning until it starts to get dark and the anxiety of the next work day looms over me. So, brunch usually happens anywhere between 12:30 and 3 in the afternoon which means I get to sleep in and skip all the Sunday-brunch crowds. Win-win!
On the off chance that I have my shit together before noon on a Sunday and don’t think I can handle the weekend brunch crowds, I make breakfast at home and eat while cuddled up on the couch watching Friends for the hundredth time. Usually, it’s just a bagel or cheesy eggs + lots lots lots of coffee. However, every once in a while I will have my shit so together that I even have ingredients at home for a fancy brunch! Those are few and far between, but they are sometimes totally real and make me feel like an actual grown up.
I think I would like to make it a new goal to get up at least one Sunday a month and have a fancy brunch. Maybe I’ll even get into doing yoga on Sundays?! Would that make me an overachiever? It sounds a little meta….
This past week(end), I had probably the worst cold of my life. I felt like one of those wavy inflatable tubemen, but instead of being filled with air, I was actually filled with mud and also I was at the bottom of a swamp. I practically drowned myself in cough medicine and Gatorade, and I ate whatever I wanted since I was feeling sorry for myself. After watching approximately 200 episodes of The Office, I finally peeled myself off the couch and managed to get out of the house long enough to get some good coffee. Also, I’m sending many blessings to past Sara, because when I opened my freezer, I had some of these mini galettes wrapped up! (Ugh, past Sara can be a real MVP sometimes). Since it was the first warm day we’ve had in ages, I swigged some Dayquil and enjoyed these galettes with plenty of fresh coffee at our local arboretum.
These galettes are super easy and a fun play on the French croque madame. When I was in France this past summer, I was utterly obsessed with croque madames and ham and cheese baguettes. Why is it that the French can make a ham and cheese sandwich so amazing and mine taste like they came out of a vending machine? Anyways, I decided to take these ingredients and combine them with another one of my favorite French treats – the galette. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’m totally obsessed with galettes, so it was about time that I made a savory version.
Oh, and I put everything bagel spice on the crust, because I pretty much want everything bagel spice on everything in my whole life.
Croque Madame Galettes with Everything Crust
Makes 4 large servings or 8 small servings
Ingredients
2 – 9 in. pie crusts, store-bought or homemade
1/4 c. dijon mustard
8 oz. ham, thinly sliced
6 oz. swiss cheese, sliced or shredded
5 eggs
1/4 c. everything bagel spice*
Sliced chives, for topping
Preheat oven to 350* F. Divide pie dough into 4 equal parts, and roll them out until they are about 6 inches in diameter. Spread 1 Tbs. of dijon in the middle of each crust. Place 2 oz. of ham and 2 slices of swiss (or 3 Tbs. shredded) in the middle of each crust. Fold the crust edges over. It doesn’t have to be perfect since they are supposed to be rustic!
Mix 1 of the eggs with about 1 Tbs. of water. Brush each of the crusts with the egg wash, and sprinkle each galette with 1 Tbs. of everything bagel spice. Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, and break 1 egg over the top of each galette. Bake for about 10 more minutes, or until the white is set and the yolk is still fairly runny.
Sprinkle each galette with the chives and serve!
Notes
*To freeze, wrap each galette in tinfoil and store in an airtight container in the freezer. To reheat, throw the wrapped galette in a 350* oven for about 30 minutes.
*I have a jar of everything bagel spice in my cabinet, but if you’re not one of those people, you can mix together 1 Tbs. poppy seeds, 1 Tbs. sesame seeds, 1 Tbs. dried garlic, and 1 Tbs. dried onion together. Sometimes, I use a mix of black and white sesame seeds for fun!
xo Sara Lynn
*Song of the day: Heart in a Cage by The Strokes
Fairy Bread Muffins
Happy Monday!!
If you’ve been on Instagram any time recently, and you have some American friends, you’ve probably noticed a couple of trends within our posts:
- Women are really stepping up in our political climate (woo!!), and
- We’re obsessed with rainbow foods
While the first trend makes my heart soar, the second one is a big “meh” from me. Although rainbow food is probably the happiest food ever, and it look really nice on Insta posts with a NYC cityscape in the background, I don’t know if I could handle eating something with those colors. Does anyone know if those dyes do something funky to your insides? Do all those foods taste like chemicals? The amount of food coloring added to get those vibrant colors just has to be astonishing…
However, my opinion has insufficient impact on the subject, because people are rainbow-ing literally everything they can get their slippery food coloring into. U.S. restaurants and bakeries are a unicorn’s freaking dream – try as I might, I can’t get away from it. And what do you do when you can’t beat them? Join them! And what do you do when you refuse to add entire bottles of dye in your food?
SPRINKLES!!!
– which is a totally acceptable and subtle form of rainbow-ing food. (I would know. I have an expansive sprinkle collection).
Once the rainbow-food-trend got exponentially out of hand, and we Americans claimed it as our own, Australians were kind of like, “yo, wtf?”, because it turns out they’ve been eating a colorful treat called fairy bread basically this whole damn time. In case you missed it, fairy bread is strictly just white bread + butter + sprinkles, and oh, it also has the cutest name everrrrr. Anyway, I decided to do some extensive research on the subject, because these are the things that I care about, and I’ve learned a few tips from multiple articles that I have read – basically, Americans have a few things wrong:
- It’s never been called fairy toast, it’s fairy bread – a very important aspect.
- It’s not eaten as a snack or breakfast – it’s used as a birthday cake replacement at children’s parties.
- When making this treat, artisan breads, hand-rolled butter, and organic sprinkles are unwelcome. Seriously, it’s just white bread, a pat of butter, and nonpareils.
However, many Australians are really being good sports about it all, even complimenting some of the quirks we’ve added to our fairy bread in America – fancy sprinkles, thicker toast, and one article even mentioned that they think eating fairy bread for breakfast is GENIUS. So, I guess it’s not all bad.
After hearing about fairy bread, I felt the sudden urge to write a blog post about it before realizing that, hey, you guys are probably smart enough to figure out how to slather butter on some Wonder bread followed by a handful of sprinklies. And then I realized that muffins are a totally acceptable form of breakfast food and thought “Why not merge the two?”
Basically, I made a dense, slightly sweet muffin, filled it with sprinkles, and added a buttery glaze with extra sprinkles on top. Is it fairy bread? No. Is it inspired by fairy bread? Absolutely. Is it just an excuse for me to eat funfetti for breakfast in a socially acceptable manner? You bet your sweet ass it is.
Do you know any fun foods that are not well-known? Comment below, I’d love to hear!
XO Sara Lynn
*Song of the Day: Favorite Song by Kaiser Cartel
Homemade Bagels
About once a year, I get a strong yearning for summer. The long days off, laying on the beach at Lake Tahoe, wearing light sun dresses and messy up-dos to keep the hair off my face, the smell of beer & cheeseburgers on the grill, Slurpees, riding bikes, bonfires when it starts to cool down at sunset, going on holiday, fireworks. The time normally comes around late January/early February. The holidays are over, so the snow isn’t lit up by Christmas lights, and comfort food feels too rich and loses its appeal. Winter break has passed, and I’m back in school for “spring” semester, which is really just a tease, since it’s still 40* or below outside, and I’m tired of wearing the same sweaters and coats I’ve been wearing for months. I stare longingly at my bikinis and dream of taking a roadtrip and going on hikes.
After a few days of missing summer, I normally resort back to my usual cold-dreary-weather-obsessed self, snuggle in my blanket with some hot tea, and watch a movie while the rain patters outside. I indulge myself on the weekends with pot pie or roasted chicken, enjoy the cold Reno mornings surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and sip Guatemalas or Perus at the coffee shop. Once summer comes around, I’m already dreaming of the brisk cold that sneaks in mid-September.
A couple of weekends ago, I went to Tahoe with a *special human* to see the snow on the lake, which I had never done before. I took some pictures, and we climbed on rocks at Sand Harbor to watch the sun dip completely under the horizon, which was incredible, albeit slightly dangerous. Kings Beach was filled with cute kids in puffy snow onesies and dogs prancing after tennis balls on the beach. My faith in winter was restored, and bagels were consumed over coffee the next morning.
Which leads me to the bagels. Lately, with stormy clouds blanketing Reno on my days off, I’ve taken to trying out more difficult recipes that I’ve never attempted before. Oftentimes, I find that the recipes are not as hard as I initially thought, and they taste much better and cleaner than their store bought alternatives. Such was the case with these homemade bagels. Seemingly intimidating, but actually so easy, and they take no more than two hours to make.
I’ve been staying off of the internet lately, mostly due to a recent computer update from a certain tech company, let’s call them Schmicroshoft (no names please), that refuses to connect my computer with my wifi, essentially leaving it unusable, and leaving me to try solution after solution to no avail (but also because people keep talking about politics on social media). Long run-on-sentence short, I spent 2 hours on the phone with said company, and my computer still isn’t fixed, which is why I haven’t gotten the opportunity to share this recipe until now. But I promise, it’s probably one of the most successful recipes I’ve made, and it’s versatile enough to add whatever ingredients you want. Use an egg wash, and sprinkle the homemade bagels with seeds, garlic, onion, cheese. Mix in blueberries or chocolate chips. Take one straight out of the oven, toast in under the broiler for a few minutes, and smother it with a thick slab of butter or cream cheese.
Don’t forget the coffee.
*Bagels require high gluten flour, or they do not come out nearly as well. I easily found bread gluten at my local bulk grocery, but if you cannot find bread gluten, you could also use high-gluten flour.
*If you top your bagels with seeds, onions, garlic, or cheese, you will need to brush them first with an egg wash (1 egg mixed with a little water). If you want blueberries or chocolate chips, you can mix them straight into the dough!
XO SaraLynn
*Song of the Day: It’s Real by Real Estate*
Healthy Granola Bars
Aside from crying at IAMS dog commercials and avoiding all conversations involving politics or football, my most common past time of late has included attempting to make the best chocolate chip cookies e v e r.
I know this is a hefty task. Everybody has their favorite version of the best chocolate chip cookie, and somebody else’s favorite may not match mine. But if I’m going to own a bakery and coffee shop in the future, I just have to have the best chocolate chip cookies ever. It’s become an obsession of sorts.
I’m not going to lie, my favorite chocolate chip cookie has always been the Nestle Tollhouse recipe. They have magic within them. I don’t even know what they’re doing over at Tollhouse, but I want in on it. It’s the recipe I grew up with, so I will always love them. But what if I can make Nestle’s recipe even better?
Yeah, that’s what I’m going for.
Unfortunately, my cookie labs are only done on the weekends when I feel like my friends can stand trying another batch of chocolate chip cookies (about once or twice a month). This is also because 1. I don’t have time to bake cookies constantly and 2. Even if I did, I’m sure humans actually cannot function long term on a complete cookie diet. It’s a sad, but true, fact.
Therefore, I preoccupy myself with other kinds of projects.
Enter healthy granola bars.
I really love granola bars as a quick snack or breakfast. Sometimes I spend entirely too much time looking at myself sullenly in the mirror because I don’t want to put on makeup and I haven’t had breakfast or coffee yet. That’s a granola bar in the car morning. They happen more than one would expect.
Unfortunately, the nutrition facts on the back of granola bars terrify me. Oh my god. The mere amount of added sugars alone. And I don’t want to get into sodium, fat, and chemical additives.
It makes me realize why American food is banned in multiple countries around the world.
Additionally, I cannot justify spending $10 on a box of somewhat “healthy” granola bars that mostly taste like cardboard. Why is it so hard to get some quick, healthy food for a reasonable price?! Am I really asking for too much?!
Luckily for us all, healthy granola bars are super easy to make at home! They’re also way cheaper and freeze-able, and don’t have a bunch of sugars and icky gunk in them!!!
People who care about their bodies, rejoice!
Ingredients:
2 c. quick oats
1 c. raw almonds
1 c. dried cranberries
1/4 c. pumpkin seeds
1/4 c. sunflower seeds
2 Tbs. flax seeds
1/3 c. almond butter or peanut butter
1/2 c. honey
1/4 c. agave
1/4 c. coconut oil, melted
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch salt
*Optional step*: Toast oats, nuts, and seeds in an oven at 350* until you can smell nuts and everything is a nice golden brown. I left out this step, but you can totally do this if you want less of a “raw” taste.
In a large bowl, mix together the almond butter, honey, agave, coconut oil, cinnamon, and salt until smooth. Add oats, almonds, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds. Stir mixture until combined thoroughly.
Press mixture into a greased 9×13 pan. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the granola bars are golden brown on the edges. Remove from oven and let cool completely.
Cut into bars. You can do larger or thinner bars depending on your preference.
*You can do any mixture of nuts and seeds, dried fruits, etc. You can also do more agave, less honey, etc. Everything in this recipe is super easy to replace and adjust. You can make these however you want!*
Also, I’m just going to throw out there that a small amount of mini chocolate chips would be good in place of cranberries.
Chocolate chip cookie granola bars?!
I’m going to go ahead and stop now.
Song of the Day: Let Her Go–Mac DeMarco