Sometimes you just need to change your average pancakes up and give ‘em a little extra something. In this case that extra something is tasty delicious Ovaltine.

ingredients:
1-1/2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup Ovaltine
1 egg
1-1/2 cups milk
2 Tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and Ovaltine. I add A LOT, 1/2 cup, but if you don’t want the flavor that strong, a 1/4 will be fine. Chocolate or malt, choose your poison. I like to go old skool, malt all the way, baby.

Stir in the egg, milk, melted butter and vanilla. Just until combined, don’t overdo it!

Make pancakes as you normally would (if you want to see a good vs. bad pancake, go here.)

Serve these with Brown Sugar Bacon twists and your kids will jump for joy.

Brown Sugar. Cinnamon. Bacon. They are the three best friends you could ever have.

ingredients:
1 pound of bacon (1 slab)
1/8 cup brown sugar (approx)
1 Tablespoon cinnamon (approx)

As you know I hate frying bacon – so the oven is a good alternative with minimum clean up. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Line the bottom of sheet pan with foil. On top of that, place a wire rack.

Take the bacon and cut it in half. Essentially you will have double the amount, in small half pieces.

Take the bacon piece and twist it, laying it on the rack. It’s a little more difficult with these small half pieces, but just work with it and it will stay. I like to do this because I think it crisps evenly without having to turn it (I hate taking the time to turn things – lazy).

Now sprinkle the brown sugar and the cinnamon evenly over each piece. Be as heavy handed or as light with the ingredients as you want. The amount is just an approximation.

Bake for 20 minutes, then serve.

The kids love these and I like to serve them with Ovaltine Pancakes. And since they are smaller pieces that means you can eat more, right? Right.

We believe in ‘breakfast anytime’ around here. Waffles are one of the Kid’s absolute favorite foods. I’m sure it’s just a vehicle for syrup.

So why not have waffles packed in his lunch too? A few strawberries, a side of potatoes – breakfast, er lunch, fit for a king! It made him so happy he asked if he could have them for lunch everyday. Uh, not quite kid.

Chocolate Chip Waffles
Mochi Waffles (moffles)
Cinnamon Vanilla Waffles

A pocket of Nutella right in the middle of your pancake would make your day so much better, don’t you agree?

ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 cups milk
Nutella

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add the egg and milk and stir until just combined. If you need more milk, add by the Tablespoonful.

Make pancakes as you normally would, then add a dollop of Nutella right in the middle. (Feel free to ignore how disgusting this picture looks:)

Top with a little more batter to form a pocket. Once the bubbles start to pop and the bottom is browned, carefully flip the pancake over. (If you want to see my dissertation on Good pancakes vs. Bad pancakes, go here.)

The fun part is seeing the kids faces as they bite into these, however if you are the Baby he angrily demands why the entire thing isn’t make out of Nutella, no pancake necessary…

Just like last year, the Lemon Fairy left a big bag of lemons on my porch. I’ve been working my way through them, so you know what that means, it’s Lemon Week!
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I made these up on a whim, they came out really good, then I realized I needed to write down the recipe. Oops. So I had to make them again. And again. And again…not to test the recipe…just because they were so good – YUM. Lemon-y. Moist. Soft. And muffin-y. I’m sure those aren’t words, but let me tell you, they’re delicious. The secret? Lemon sugar, of course!

ingredients:
1-3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup lemon sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup oil
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
juice of one lemon
zest of one lemon

more lemon sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prep a muffin pan with liners. (you will only get about 10 muffins out of this)

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, lemon sugar and baking powder, whisk to combine.

Add the oil, egg, milk, lemon juice and lemon zest. Oh. So. Lemony. This is the kicker here, peeps. Lemon juice, lemon sugar, lemon zest. Don’t skimp, you’ll be rewarded in the end! Stir until JUST combined. Not too much – you don’t want a tough muffin!

Fill the muffin cups about 3/4 of the way full. Top with a sprinkling of even MORE lemon sugar.

Bake for 15-18 minutes depending on your oven. Let cool on a wire rack.

These are for true lemon lovers. Flavorful, not overly sweet – just the perfect muffin for a morning snack.

I always end up with waaaay more sweet bread than I need when I have a party. No matter – the kids love it.

This time I had a full bag and since it was too dried out for child-consumption (i.e. after sitting out for 2 hours it was hard and they wouldn’t touch it) I cut it up and made a quick baked french toast out of it. Sweet bread as french toast is the best – and when you bake it up nice and custardy, it’s perfection.

ingredients:
1 bag of sweet bread (approx 12 ounces) *dried out
5 eggs
2-1/2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons maple syrup
pinch of salt
butter for pan

1 Tablespoon sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Butter a 9″x13″ baking dish.

If your sweet bread is not already dried out, leave it out for a few hours and that’ll do it. You don’t want it hard as a rock, just a little crispier than bread should be…

Once it’s a little ‘hard’, slice it into 3/4″ pieces. Lay it in the pan sort of overlapping however you like, just so the pan is full and there isn’t too much movement for the bread.

Now mix up the custard. In a medium bowl stir the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, maple syrup and salt.

Pour the custard mixture over the bread – carefully! – getting all the bread nice and soaked. Turn them upside down and up and over if you need to. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

When you are ready to eat, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Take the prepped pan out of the fridge, and sprinkle with the 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 TB of sugar. It just adds a nice little topping, not too heavy. This ain’t dessert people, it’s still breakfast.

Bake for 30 minutes until the top is nice and crispy and the custard has set. Serve nice and hot with syrup. I like to serve it to the kids with a side of Maple Bacon and lots of fruit!

Sunday morning is my favorite time to cook. No school to rush off to – just a leisurely morn – except that the kids wake up at 5:30 and demand breakfast. Oh yeah. That part. So I start it, set it up and by getting them involved they happily entertain themselves. Good. Clean it up too while you’re at it, I’m going back for some zzz’s…

ingredients:
pancakes, obviously – this recipe is the kid’s favorite.
anything for toppings – shredded coconut, fresh fruit, chocolate chips, nuts

You can just use a plain old pancake of course, but here’s a trick my mom used to make for us when we were kids: On a hot buttered pan take a spoonful of pancake batter, make eyes and mouth.

The idea is to the let the face components cook a bit, to get a little dark.Then go ahead and ladle a spoonful of batter on top of the face, to cover, making a circle. (Well, attempt to, at least.)

When you flip it – HELLO FACE. This just really serves as a template, you don’t need to do it, but it’s fun.

Now gather all of your toppings and let the kids go at it with the decorating. I like to use a mini muffin tin because it portions things smaller and also keeps everything pretty neat.

Every night the kid’s and I do an “After Dinner Art” project, and this is sort of the same idea…but with food! It’s really cool to see the ideas they come up with!

I hate frying bacon, mostly because of the clean up. Also when I make breakfast I have a lot of pans going at one time, so cooking bacon in the oven is an easy alternative. I thought drizzling the bacon with syrup would give it a little kick, and it sure did – it made bacon even better, if that’s possible…

ingredients:
1 pound of bacon (1 slab)
1/3 cup of maple syrup (approx)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Line the bottom of sheet pan with foil. On top of that, place a wire rack.

Take your bacon by the piece and twist it, laying it on the rack. I like to do this because I think it crisps evenly without having to turn it (I hate taking the time to turn things – lazy) and it picks up the syrup evenly.

After you’ve twisted all your bacon pieces, drizzle them with a touch of maple syrup.

Bake for 20 minutes, then serve.

Goes GREAT with French Toast!

Hey! Make french toast fun again! Wait, when wasn’t it fun? Nevermind. Cookie cutters allow you to make cute toasty shapes to amuse your friends and family. Give it a go!

ingredients:
4 pieces of bread
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
1Tablespoon butter

Start by arranging your cookie cutters on the bread. Try and get the maximum use out of the piece, as you can. No one in my house eats the crusts anyway and this cuts out the middle man!

Put a pan on medium-high heat and add a pat of butter.

Mix the eggs, milk, cinnamon, sugar and salt together in a shallow dish. When you put the bread pieces in, don’t leave them too long, or they will break down quickly! Just coat one side, flip it over and soak the other – then put it into the hot pan as soon as possible.

Flip the toasties when they become a nice golden brown.

Any shape will do, familiar ones look best, obviously – recently I used bats for Halloween!

Yummy and oh so cute!

My kids love waffles. So much that they were asking for them everyday for about two months. Talk about boredom in the kitchen. I try to liven them up when I can (hello, moffles!) , but something about a nice chocolate-y Hello Kitty just sounded good…

ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons sugar
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 Tablespoon melted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

In a bowl whisk flour, salt, sugar, cocoa powder and baking powder.

Carefully stir in the milk and the eggs. Then add the butter and vanilla until you get a nice batter. Don’t overstir. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.

Make according to your waffle maker directions.