Sausage & Egg Biscuit Sliders

We all love sliders. I mean, how can you not love a miniature burger? Honestly, I made them small because the only breakfast sausage patties at my closest grocery store are small, but I am really keen on the idea of making them small from now on. What an adorable breakfast!

I actually have another, slightly larger batch of these biscuits in the oven as I type this, while my boyfriend makes some thick-cut bacon to go with them. We love breakfast food around here, even (especially!) around mid-afternoon on weekends.

There are 2 keys to making these biscuits turn out beautifully.

1) I'm serious about the butter & milk being very cold.

2) Do not overmix, follow the kneading directions. It's worth it, and it's not difficult.

Best Flaky Biscuits

makes 10-12 depending on size.

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons butter (7 for dough, 1 for brushing on top)

3/4 cup very cold milk + 2 tbsp for brushing on top

Preheat the oven to 425º.

Slice off 1 tbsp of butter and set aside. Cut the remaining butter into thin slices and place in the freezer for a few minutes.

In a medium/large bowl, whisk together the flour, paking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the frozen thin butter and cut it in with a pastry cutter. When the mixture looks like lumpy crumbs, pour the milk in and stir with the pastry cutter until it just barely forms a dough. Dump out onto a clean surface and press into a solid rectangle. Fold it in thirds (like a letter), press out to the original rectangle's size, and repeat 3 or 4 times until the dough is fairly smooth. Roll or press out to about 1/2" thick and cut with cutters. Brush the tops with a mixture of milk & melted butter before placing in the oven for about 10 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Now to make them into breakfast sliders!

While the biscuits are in the oven, cook some sausage patties (I used 8). Crack 4 eggs into a bowl and lightly beat them with salt & fresh ground black pepper. Cook them in a skillet omelet style with some butter. Cut out egg rounds with the same cutter you used for the biscuits.

Assemble the sandwiches as soon as everything's cool enough to touch.

Banana Pancakes

What, more pancakes? Look, if you have people over for brunch as often as I do, you have to have more than one pancake trick up your sleeve. This is my basic pancake recipe (the sour cream ones I posted last week are my basic recipe now) with an over-ripe-spotty-but-not-solid-black-yet banana thinly sliced and added to the uncooked side just before flipping them over. If you have a little butter in the pan, the bananas caramelize ever so slightly and get sweetly fragrant. Way better than just slicing some bananas on top of the pancakes after they're finished.

I learned this method of banana pancake making from one of my former roommates, Yves, who also happens to be the person who schooled me on plantain frying. Go figure. I wonder if I still have a photo of her huevos rancheros... they were to die for!

Banana Pancakes

serves 2-3 people, makes roughly six 8" pancakes.

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tbsp melted butter

1 or 2 overripe bananas thinly sliced

In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream, and melted butter. Stir gently into the dry ingredients, leaving the batter a little lumpy. Add more milk if needed to make the batter pourable.

Use a 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup measuring cup to pour batter onto a hot, lightly buttered griddle. When the large bubbles start to show up, lay a few slices of banana on the batter before flipping the pancakes over. If you put the bananas down too soon the batter underneath never cooks.

Best. Pancakes. Ever.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm a breakfast fanatic. These are the best. BEST. pancakes I have ever had. I've been on a kick lately of putting sour cream into quickbreads of all kinds, after a really successful experiment involving waffles a few weeks ago. I somehow always seem to be out of sour cream now. Small price to pay for fluffy delicious breakfasts, if you ask me. The quesadillas can live without it, right? Err... not really.

Often with thick pancake batter, you end up with really nice pancakes with a bit of uncooked batter in the middle. It's always so disappointing, and I hate serving pancakes to friends only to find halfway through brunch that they've found themselves a glob of uncooked batter on their plates. That doesn't happen with these. That's only part of why I'm so in love with them, though. You'll understand when you try them.

For the record, since the first time I made this recipe, 2 weeks ago, I've made them 5 times. Damn! I also discovered that pancakes are really really awesome with Nutella and sausage and apples. Not that I'm surprised.

Amanda's Favorite Pancakes

serves 2-3 people, makes roughly six 8" pancakes.

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tbsp melted butter

In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream, and melted butter. Stir gently into the dry ingredients, leaving the batter a little lumpy. Add more milk if needed to make the batter pourable.

Use a 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup measuring cup to pour batter onto a hot, lightly buttered griddle.

You know how to make pancakes, do I really have to explain? Nope. :)

Apple Cider Donuts

My friend Haley recently got married in Vermont, and while I was there for the wedding I had my first-ever apple cider donut. I was instantly hooked, of course, and had to try making them myself as soon as I had time - which was yesterday. I think the best thing about these donuts is that they're as quick as biscuits or pancakes, but look soooo much more decadent.

Overall, the recipes I read online called for about a cup less flour than my recipe below. I found the dough impossible to work with without this added flour, very loose and wet. See how it goes for you, add the last cup gradually. The temperature of the oil is important, if too hot the outside of the donuts will be dark brown and the middles will still be doughy. If too cool, the dough gets oil-logged and crispy (which isn't such a bad thing, when it's only a little). If you don't have a thermometer (I don't), you can test the oil temperature using donut holes. The oil is the right temperature when a donut hole cooks slowly, taking a minute or two before getting gold around the edges.

Also, if you don't have a donut cutter, you can use a large cookie/biscuit cutter and a shot glass or jigger to cut out the middle. (I have this one, and it's great for donuts or for cutting the center out of sliced pineapple!)

Apple Cider Donuts

1 cup apple cider
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup shortening
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Apple Cider Glaze
1/2 cup apple cider
2 to 3 cups confectioners' sugar

Boil the apple cider in a small sauce pot until reduced by half, about 9 minutes. While it is cooling, whisk together the dry ingredients (minus one cup of flour!) in a bowl. Set aside. Start heating your frying oil to 375º.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and shortening until fluffy, then beat in the eggs, then the buttermilk, then the cooled reduced cider. Add the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until incorporated, adding the additional cup of flour as needed. The dough should feel like loose biscuit dough, too tough is bad but you have to be able to handle it without it falling apart.

Move the dough to a floured surface and pat out to 1/2" thick. Cut into donuts & holes and fry a couple at a time. Donuts should be flipped when the sides are golden, holes should be rotated as needed to brown evenly. Remove from oil and drain over paper towels, then dip or drizzle with glaze.

To make the glaze: whisk cider and confectioners' sugar until smooth. That's it!

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

I recently made a new friend who was silly enough to think she could say "I want to learn to make bagels" and not be dragged to my house and apronned. (If the act of putting an apron on a person isn't a verb, it should be.) She was thoughtful enough to bring another friend with her, and so, over the making of these bagels we new friends bonded. Awwwww. We also got a lot of flour all over ourselves.

It's basically the same recipe as the everything bagels I posted in January. If you want photographic references for the process, check them out here: Everything Bagels.

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
4 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp barley malt syrup
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups raisins
1 tbsp honey

In your largest mixing bowl, combine the flour, barley malt, and salt with a pastry cutter. In a small bowl, add the yeast and vanilla to the water, stir well, then pour into the flour mixture. Stir with the pastry cutter until the dough becomes too dense to stir, then start kneading it into dough, rotating the bowl as you go. It will take several minutes for the dough to become smooth, and once it is smooth keep kneading for at least 4 more minutes. Knead in the raisins (good luck!).

Separate your dough into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball then roll each ball out to a 'snake' about 11" long. Shape the dough into a circle and pinch it together with 1-1/2" dough-overlap. Again, this will not be easy. You can put your hand in the middle of the bagel and knead the seam under your palm.

Set the rolled bagels on a cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. They will rise slowly in the fridge, which is what gives them that wonderful texture inside.

12 to 18 hours later, preheat the oven to 425º.

Boil a quart or two of water and the honey in a wide deep pot (I use my wok). It should have room for 4 bagels in it at a time. Take the bagels out of the fridge and set them on the counter to relax while you wait for the water to come to a full rolling boil. Now might also be a good time to get out the wire cooling rack to rest the bagels on after boiling.

Carefully place 4 bagels at a time in the water. Boil them for about 30 seconds, dunking them with a slotted spoon from time to time. Remove them from the water to the cooling rack, let drip for a minute before placing the bagels on the cookie sheet. Bake for about 14 minutes, or until you start to see a hint of browning on top.

Strawberry Waffles

You can't see it, but there are about a dozen chopped strawberries in this plate of waffles. If you don't believe me, well, look really closely and you'll see some dark red bits. The recipe I based this on was the "Oh Boy" Waffles from my grandma's copy of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1951. I strongly recommend spraying your waffle iron with nonstick spray before each waffle is poured. The oil in the spray helps a lot with crispy edges. The ones in the photo, for example, were made with no cooking spray, and you can tell they're not very stiff if you really look close. But don't do that, kthx.

Strawberry Waffles

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 to 1 cup chopped strawberries

Heat your waffle iron.
In a medium bowl, sift the flour, salt, and baking powder and set aside. In a small bowl with a wooden spoon or whisk, combine eggs, milk, vegetable oil and sugar. When the waffle iron is hot, add the wet ingredients to the dry and beat until smooth. Pour about 1/3 cup (up to 1/2 cup, depending on the size of your waffle iron) at a time onto the center of the waffle iron. Bake until lightly browned. Serve warm.

Brown Sugar Coffeecake Muffins

Let's be honest, we all want to eat cupcakes for breakfast. These muffins look like muffins, sure, but they taste like cupcakes. The recipe makes 16 muffins or one 13"x9" cake. if you don't have any sour milk handy, measure it out and squirt a little lemon juice into it.

Brown Sugar Coffeecake

cake:
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 cups brown sugar
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup sour milk

crumble:

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons margarine

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line muffin pan with paper cups or grease cake pan. In a small bowl, mix the crumble ingredients with a whisk and set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the brown sugar and butter. Add the flour and baking soda, mix in completely. Add the eggs and milk and combine, mix until smooth. Drop into muffin pan, 2 tablespoons of batter per cup. Add a heaping tablespoon of crumble mix to the top of each muffin.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes or until browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Pecan Waffles with Honey Butter

If you don't have a waffle iron, it's time to buy one. Waffles are so quick, easy, and versatile, your weekends will be forever changed for the better. You substitute the chopped pecans for chocolate chips, blueberries, chopped ham or bacon, or any number of other things. They're also good plain with just the standard butter and syrup, or berries and cream, whatever floats your boat.

Pecan Waffles
makes 5 waffles, 20 minutes start to finish

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat your waffle iron.
In a measuring cup, add the lemon juice to the milk and set aside.
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, brown sugar, and chopped pecans.
Add the egg and oil to the milk, then pour into the dry ingredients and stir until combined.
Pour 1/3 cup of batter on the center of the waffle iron, close it and bake until golden brown. Serve with honey butter sauce:

Honey Butter Sauce
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Melt butter in the microwave, add the honey and spices and stir (preferably with a tiny whisk) for about 2 minutes until they are well combined.

Blueberry Scones

This morning, Chicago was doing its best London impression, and there's nothing to warm you up after a walk in the cold rain like a scone and some tea. These are so fast and easy to make, you'll probably find yourself making them all the time once you've tried it.

If you don't have buttermilk handy (who keeps that around?), you can put a few teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar in the milk and let it sit for a few minutes and it'll work the same as buttermilk. I'm sure you can find a precise ratio of vinegar to milk online, I just pour a little and have never measured. Now you know my lazy secret.

Blueberry Scones
3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup brown sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup cold butter
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1/3 cup granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 375º.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Cut the butter into small pieces and mix with a pastry cutter (or your hands for messy fun) until it looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk until just combined, and add the blueberries.
Knead just enough to evenly distribute the blueberries and place on a greased cookie sheet. Spread the dough out to a rough rectangle, about 1 1/2" thick and sprinkle granulated sugar all over the top. If you have coarse sugar, use that.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until slightly browned.

Home Fries

Home fries are a Sunday brunch favorite at my house. Perhaps it's because they're savory and filling and heavy enough to satisfy the serious hunger of such late breakfasting, or perhaps it's because they do such a good job of stamping out symptoms of a hangover (paired with coffee, of course). It always feels like this dish is taking forever while I'm making, but it's really only about 30 minutes from prep to finish. I blame the aforementioned hangover.

If you happen to be making bacon for the same meal, you can make that in the same pan before you start the potatoes and they'll be extra crispy and flavorful, though certainly less healthy. Of course, I'm not the kind of girl who lets a thing like that get in the way of a perfectly delicious breakfast.

Home Fries
serves 3 to 4, prep time 30 mins

1/2 of a small onion, chopped or diced
1 tbsp butter
1 to 2 tbsp olive oil
3 potatoes, cut into roughly-1/2" chunks
1/3 cup water
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp mustard powder (optional but yummy!)
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp seasoned salt
salt to taste
fresh ground black pepper to taste

In a skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter and olive oil and throw in the onions. Sautée for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and clear. While the onions are cooking, microwave the potatoes on a plate for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Add the potatoes, water and seasoning to the skillet, stirring well to evenly coat the potatoes in spices.
Continue to stir the potatoes occasionally as you sautée another several minutes until the potatoes are brown and crispy, adding a little oil along the way if the mix looks too dry.

Quick Biscuits

Breakfast! A biscuit with apricot preserves and an unholy amount of butter.
I didn't actually eat it this loaded up, but aren't biscuits pretty with too much butter & jam on them?

Though I have previously professed my love for bagels here, I have to admit that my first love was definitely biscuits. I am a descendant of North Carolina farmers, biscuit making is in my blood. They take no time to make, so they're great for a quick, warm, filling breakfast or last-minute pot luck offering, among other things.

Other options:
Put the dough in a 9x9" square pan (greased) and cut the biscuits into squares or rectangles to serve. You can also use this recipe to make pigs in a blanket, but they're pretty crumbly. I don't mind.

Biscuits
Makes 6 biscuits, Takes about 25 minutes.

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, cut into cubes
2 cups all purpose flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

Preheat the oven to 425º.
Add the lemon juice or vinegar to the milk in a measuring cup. Set aside.
Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the cubed butter and combine by smashing with a wooden spoon or your hands until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Add the milk and stir until just combined. Turn out onto a piece of parchment paper and press the dough out flat, about 1/4" to 1/2" thick. The thicker the dough is, the thicker the biscuits (duh). Cut with a circle cutter and place on a cookie sheet, either touching or spread out. Bake about 10 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges.

Serve immediately. They have a shelf life of about 24 hours, and are lovely when toasted the 2nd day.

Banana Bread

Isn't it sad when bananas go black before you have a chance to eat them? NO! Cause that means you have an excuse to make banana bread! Delicious warm moist sweet banana bread. My boyfriend insists on calling it banana cake, no matter how many times I correct him. If you have any banana bread left the morning after it's made, it's heavenly when toasted and buttered, though I recommend keeping a close eye on it if you've got a butter-fiend cat around. I do, as you can see:

That is a Mummy mug, but it's for the Mummy rollercoaster at
Universal Studios, which is totally badass, unlike the movies.

Alternative recipe options: The nuts are, of course, optional, and you can put in any kind of nuts you want but I like pecans the best for most recipes. Walnuts are the second favorite choice. You can leave out the sugar if you're minding your health, it's still plenty sweet from the bananas themselves. You can also substitute 1/3 cup brown sugar or 1/4 cup of honey in place of the sugar. If you use honey, mix it in with the wet ingredients instead of with the dry. Also, if by some miracle the bread goes uneaten for a few days, it makes really wonderful bread pudding. I've only had the opportunity once, but I look forward to making it again. When I do, I'll share it here, of course.


Banana Bread
Prep time 15 minutes, ready in about an hour

3 very ripe black speckled bananas
2 large eggs slightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup plain yogurt
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp dried ground ginger (optional)
1 handful of whole nuts (1/2 cup?)

Preheat the oven to 350º and spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray (or grease it with butter).
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger.
In a medium bowl, mash and stir the bananas with a fork until they look kind of like baby food. Add the yogurt, eggs, vanilla and butter and mix with a wooden spoon.
Dump the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir just until the flour is incorporated. Add the nuts and mix in. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for about an hour. Check for doneness at 50 minutes. It is done when the crust is brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
I recommend serving it immediately with butter and coffee.

Classic Pancakes

This pancake recipe is brought to you by my grandma's 1951 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, and the phone call I got a few days ago from a good friend who was interested in making pancakes from scratch. Figures she'd call me - I've got a strict No Boxed Mixes rule, so of course I have a tried-and-true pancake recipe handy. I have made some adjustments from the original recipe, because a) for some reason the amount of milk called for in that cookbook leaves you with thick almost doughy batter that never cooks all the way through, and b) I can't ever leave a recipe how I found it.

Pancakes
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup + 2 or 3 tbsps whole milk
2 tb vegetable oil or melted butter
1 tsp butter for the skillet

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and oil.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined. Batter should be slightly lumpy.
Heat your skillet over medium/high heat and add the tsp of butter. When this butter is bubbly, you're ready to go.
Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, pour one pancake in the middle of the skillet. How this one cooks will determine whether you need to add more milk or not. If it doesn't spread out sideways, or if the bubbles don't show up for several minutes, you need more milk to thin it out. If it cooks too fast, turn your heat down a little.

Once you know your batter's the right consistency, you can put one or two pancakes onto the skillet at a time. They will be about 5" or 6" so leave room for them to spread. When the pancake has bubbles all over the top, it's time to flip it. Each side should only take 2 or 3 minutes.

French Toast

This is my mom's recipe. She never measured it, and honestly I don't either, but just for you I actually measured when I made myself this hefty stack of French toast for brunch today.

Serves 2, takes about 10 minutes. You can double or quadruple this recipe with no trouble. If you start to run out of the eggy mixture before you're out of bread, add a little milk and whisk it in.

French Toast
6 slices of wheat bread (or white)
3 eggs
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 pinches of salt
2 tbsp butter for the skillet

1. Heat your skillet while you whisk together all ingredients except the butter.
2. Add about 1/4 of the butter to the skillet. It should sizzle and foam up a little. If it doesn't, wait another minute or two before cooking, and add more butter.
3. Dip a piece of bread in the egg mixture, covering both sides. Hold by a corner and let drip a little, then carefully place in the skillet leaving room for another piece. Dip and place another slice in the skillet.
4. After 2 or 3 minutes, lift up one corner with a spatula. If it is browned, flip both pieces of bread over and let cook for the same amount of time. You may want to add a little more butter when you flip them, I always do.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you've cooked them all.
6. Top with maple syrup, chopped nuts, sliced bananas, butter, powdered sugar, brown sugar, whatever you want. It's also really good without any toppings.