TODAY was my morning to host our budding writing group.  After a week of painful miscommunications in the office, general anxiety over life and the Future (the horror!), a spate of late nights and later mornings (which also contributed to the office snafus), I realized that what I really wanted, even perhaps more than writing itself, was to bake.

And I also realized that I wasn’t going to be satisfied to bake one thing and leave it at that.  I wanted grandiosity.  Über fabulousness. Worlds and foods and flavors and scents.  I wanted the hallway outside my door to be a fragrant wonderland, and I wanted my home itself to be the Gingerbread House: alluring, enchanting, utterly irresistible.

I started last night.  If this was going to be a Production, then it was going to take time, energy, and stamina.  I knew I wanted to experiment with the 2 last honey crisp apples I had in my kitchen, and muffins seems the ideal medium for their use.  But I also wanted to work with challah bread as a base for french toast, but still with a heavy oven influence.  So I started with the challah french toast, as that requires an overnight marination period.  The pumpkin butter was a well-timed suggestion from foodista, and paired really well with the apple muffins.  Because I wasn’t sure how big the writing group was going to be, I doubled the recipe for the muffins, and (naturally) ended up with waaay more than I needed.

Care packages for everyone at work!  (As in, potentially, to apologize for my out-of-sorts-ness this week?)

Apple Streudel Muffins

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup butter, room temp or melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups apple (1/2 cup grated, 1 cup chopped) I used Honey Crisp apples, and they were amazing!

For the Streudel

• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat oven to 375F.  Grease your muffin pan (I have a giant 6-muffin pan, which with the doubled recipe ended up making 14 muffins; this recipe should make 12 regular muffins or 6 giant ones).

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, butter and sugar until smooth.  Mix in vanilla.  Stir in apples, then gradually add in the flour mixture.  Fill muffin cups.

In a small bowl, mix the streudel topping.  Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until your muffins pass the toothpick text.  Enjoy!  Slather with pumpkin butter for added flavor.

Pumpkin Butter

• 1 can pumpkin
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup apple juice
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spices

Simmer all ingredients together in a pot until the liquid has evaporated and the pumpkin butter has thickened.

Pairs very well with apple muffins!  Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Baked Berry Challah French Toast

For this, I pretty much followed the exact recipe.

• 1/2 loaf of challah bread, cut or torn into chunks
• 5 eggs
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups milk
• 3 cups fresh strawberries, chopped into bite-size pieces

For the Topping

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup quick oats
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

Grease a 9×13 baking dish and lay out the challah bread chunks inside; they should fill about 3/4 full.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla.  Add the milk, then pour over the challah.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In a medium bowl, cut together the crumb topping ingredients and cut together until a coarse crumb mixture forms.  Place in an airtight container (ziploc bag or tupperware) and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, stir up the bread mixture again.  Layer strawberries on top, then cover with the crumb topping.

Bake at 375 degrees for 50-55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Enjoy your own morning inspirations!  The combination of these three are pretty much guaranteed to make your guests gasp, swoon, and then pass out in food-comas in your living room.

-bisoux

FAIRY TALES have long been objects of mild fascination for me.  My particular tooth fairy didn’t believe in leaving coins under my pillow; I’d wake up, gap-toothed and sleepy-eyed, to find editions of Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrated fairy tales or volumes of folk tales from various cultures.  Celtic tales, Italian tales, Aesop’s fables…these were my tooth fairy’s idea of wealth.  To this day, I’m convinced that the heart of any culture lies in its stories.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain is a fairy tale built upon details: cups and saucers, extended frames where characters stare off into middle distance and consider the world around and inside themselves, reflections in glass windows, colorful vignettes of life in a busy corner of the world.

Parc, on Rittenhouse Square, is much the same.  The attention to detail is exacting.  You step through the corner door and find yourself transported.  Jessie and I, seated at a small round table by the window, kept finding ourselves throwing in small French phrases, simply because it felt right.  The atmosphere is so perfectly attended to that you’re swept up, as if in a modern fairy tale, and phraseology is just one of the symptoms.

In the midst of an embarrassing series of voilàs and je ne sais quois, Jessie and I noticed a Strange Trend.  We were sipping our coffees — hers a café au lait and mine a café vietnamese with a layer of sweetened condensed milk — and beside us on the street were strangely garbed people, walking mostly in groups, but all following the same path.  They wore large bunny-eared head pieces; some had backpacks, and most had pink water bottles.  Some waved, some peered into Parc, others marched right past as if on a ritual quest.  Circling the pack on a bicycle was a man in a spiny-fish headress.  (I still don’t understand that one; better visibility from a distance?)

It turns out they were part of Philly’s three day Breast Cancer Walk (sponsored by Energizer‡, hence the bunny ears).  So as we ate our egg white omelette (with herbes and raclette cheese) and omelette espagnole (featuring a scrumptious ratatouille), and dipped the excellent pommes frites into the accompanying sauce, we waved to the walkers and wondered where we’d been when the sign-up sheets had been posted.  Sigh.  Next year.

The thing about Parc is that by entering the restaurant’s doors you are not only stepping out of your own century, but you are also sidestepping the city and peering out from behind your café with eyes brightened by wonder.  The interior is spell-binding.  Lace curtains, floors tiled with mosaic-sized stone, yellowed lights, and long bistro-style menus only add to the sense of enchantment.  The addition of the pink bunny-eared Breast Cancer Walkers only added to the sense of mystique; it was a rainy Philly day, but inside Parc was a magical wonderland where everyone — from our waitress to the people outside — could be new friends, and every moment was filled with laughter and new realizations.

And like every good fairy tale, the ending was as satisfying as the beginning.  The two heroines — Jessie and I — snaked our way out of the restaurant, and began to make plans for the next adventure.  Apple picking, anyone?  Because if there is anywhere a fairy tale heroine goes after an enchanting afternoon of making new friends, it has to be going after the enchanted apple.

À la prochain!

-bisoux

‡ Here’s a piece of trivia for you: this year is the Energizer bunny’s 20th anniversary!  As the website says, “Keep (the party) going.”

THERE’S decadence, and then there is decadence. There are curtains with valences; and there are curtains with velvet valences.  There’s hot chocolate, Swiss Miss style; there’s Ghirardelli hot chocolate, invigorated with one or two shots of espresso and covered with a froth of chantilly cream.  (In fact, pretty much anything with chantilly cream is, by definition, decadent.)  There are sparse, simple movies like Revolutionary Road; but there are also glossy, well-defined, lush productions such as  The Brothers Bloom.

Max Brenner (Chocolate by the Bald Man) makes decadence its trade.  Truffles, Mexican hot cocoa, oozing chocolate cakes, chocolate-dusted crepes, pure chocolate licks…. Mmmm.  Eating here is a feast for the eyes, the nose, the taste buds–even your ears.  Fingers, too, can be dipped into the chocolate lick, luxuriating in the soft warm delight.  And, of course, there are the “hug mugs”–vessels designed to warm your cold hands in the winter even as they allow the nose to partake of the aroma of your hot chocolate or mocha cappucino (milk chocolate? dark chocolate? white chocolate? your choice).

The occasion of brunch at Max Brenner was twofold: we had a break in both the heat wave  and accompanying inexplicable rains that have been taking over the East coast, and my father flew into town just a few days ago.  This was his first Saturday on US soil in something vulgar like two years.  So naturally we had to go seek out the most luxurious brunch we could and let him seep into a culture of perks, delightful aromas, and understated presentation.

And Max Brenner delivered.  Good Lord, did it ever…!

We were ushered into the main body of the restaurant by our waif-like hostess and were presented with two menus.  One for brunch, one for the usual odds & ends offered by the chocolatier (cocoas, mochas, frappes, crepes, chocolate cakes, coffees, etc).  Our waiter came a moment later, and assured us that everything goes with chocolate.  We hemmed and hawed; but ultimately, upon his suggestion, I chose the decadent french toast; my mother ordered the “well-mannered omelet” and my father picked the grilled chicken panini.

Let me take a moment to address my parents’ choices.  There’s no need to go into my own; if the words “decadent” and “french toast” appear in the same sentence, you can bet your eyeteeth I’ll be having that.  My dad picked the panini mostly for the accompanying fries: “waffle fries dusted with chili and chocolate powder,” and they are heavenly.  My mom’s  really into goat cheese and is trying to eat more healthily, and the omelet with creamy spinach seemed ideal.  It was embellished with spiced homefries, a “diamond dusted sugar buttermilk biscuit,” and a “pure melted chocolate lick.”  G0t that?  Chocolate goes with everything.

The french toast, I am happy to report, was opulence defined.  Topped with cinnamon apple and white chocolate truffle bits, it was liberally covered with warm toffee sauce and brown sugared pecans.  I drizzled it with the accompanying white chocolate and milk chocolate.  Each bite was a novelty; every taste was a dream come true.  If you can handle that much sugar, this is the french toast to end them all.

One of the things I love about The Brothers Bloom (and I loved plenty about that film) was the detail to background, color, and sound.  In a similar way, Max Brenner has created a complex and layered experience.  The decor is done in muted colors, all collected around the central, signature chocolate brown hue.  A good portion of the restaurant is dedicated solely to selling chocolate: cases are full of small square treats, there are bags of delicacies to take home, and a staff is on hand to walk you through the offerings and samples.  The music, too, is designed to create an atmosphere of comfort and vaunted luxury.  Classic cover songs are mixed with the suave tones of Frank Sinatra; we enjoyed a line-up that included Roberta Flack, a Nina Simone knock-off, and “Is You or Is You Ain’t My Baby” covered by some husky-voiced ingenue.

All told, I’m impressed with the experience at Max Brenner.  If this was a DVD I could own, I totally would.  The next best thing, of course, is returning.  Again and again, because there’s simply so much there to sample.  Chocolate fondue, anyone?  Or how about the “Three Layer Chocolate Concoction with Toffee Bananas”?  Lord, the options are endless!  And I am just getting started…

-bisoux

]]> http://breakfastquest.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/max-brenner-philadelphia/feed/ 2 breakfastquest http://breakfastquest.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/bread-alone/ http://breakfastquest.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/bread-alone/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:00:29 +0000 thatwasdelicious http://breakfastquest.wordpress.com/?p=324 ]]>

I HAVE been sadly remiss in joining in the documentation of The Great American Breakfast Quest. I certainly have had my fair share of amazing breakfasts in the past several months, but have not been faithful to my quester status. A shame, I say, a shame….

But no longer….

So, to re-enter the fray I will tell the tale of a breakfast brunch. There is something so special about brunch: lazy weekend days, taking our wakings slow, and tantalizing the tastebuds. For my mom, a woman who has eaten the same breakfast everyday for as along as I can remember, brunches are most definitely a treat.

We (my sister Claire, my mother, and I) decided that this year we would celebrate my mom’s birthday in upstate NY. Claire has recently moved into her first apartment in the tiny town of Red Hook and it was on a rainy Saturday that we all converged and headed out to the next town over, Rhinebeck. After some debate we chose Bread Alone over another equally tempting option (Another Fork in the Road).

The decor is a warm red and there are nice, solid wooden tables lining the walls. This is a place for fall afternoon cups of endless coffee and rainy day brunches. The heat had been unbearable the day before but the gray morning brought the wet cool of late summer showers–making the enjoyment of the brunch that more possible.

We all opted for pots of tea.  The tea was blended in the small town of Millerton by a family owned tea shop Harney and Sons. I had the simple breakfast of over-easy eggs, toast, and morning potatoes. The toast was a chewy dense whole grain smeared with fresh creamy butter and the morning potatoes has been fried with rosemary and red and yellow bell peppers to add some sweetness and earthy muskiness to your standard homefry. The eggs were done perfectly with the yolk spilling out from the thin white skin in a cascade of deep orange-y yellow. My mom had the Toad in the Hole–perhaps the more fun way of eating over-easy eggs. Claire chose the special omelette of the day: fresh scallions with melted brie. The scallions were sauteed just enough to sweeten them but not enough to take away their sharp, fresh, green bite. Claire’s boyfriend ordered the Bread Basket–a selection of muffins, scones, croissants, and toast from the bakery. The Bread Basket is an option I would love to see on more menus–there is something delighful about having a whole basket of bread, pastry, and butter presented to you.

We sat for a couple of hours lingering over our pots of tea, stories of the past several months, and snatching bites from each others plates. The wait-staff was patient and let us be.

When the last sweet crumbs of blueberry muffin and lick of butter had been consumed, Claire and I gave our mother her presents and sang a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday.

Then it was time to push back our chairs, give a big sigh of contentment and head out into the watery light of mid-morning.

So, if you are ever in Rhinebeck, NY and are hankering after simple, well-done breakfasts, turn your feet to Bread Alone.

Quest on, quest on.

-D

JESSIE and I’ve been planning a brunch getaway for a while, and somehow have been continually forced to postpone the adventure.  Either I’m not in town, or she has play rehearsal; one of the dogs she’s dogsitting gets sick, or I’m double booked.  Sigh.  Anyways, we finally made a plan for today and, in honor of Jessie making it all the way out to Philly and devoting a whole morning to brunch and me, I made the executive decision to pick up blueberries at one of yesterday’s farmers’ markets.

We wanted a quick, satisfying, fruity recipe that would both fill us and give us leave to reminisce and invent.  Pancakes, that great childhood equalizer, seemed the prime choice.  I like my pancakes fluffy, D likes hers soaked in maple syrup, and Jessie enjoys hers pungent with the aromas of fresh berries.  The obvious choice was blueberry pancakes, with a summer fluffiness.  And the best option for that, of course, is beaten egg whites.

And so, without further ado, here it is: our summer-style pancakes, fresh from the farmstand and soaked in thick, ropy maple syrup.  Divine!

Blueberry Pancakes, Summer Style

• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 cup blueberries

In a small bowl, beat egg whites until stiff; set aside.  In another bowl, beat egg yolks, then mix in milk and butter.

In  medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.  Add in the egg mixture; mix until smooth.  (Whisks are particularly useful in taking care of the odd lump or two.)  Stir in blueberries.  Fold in egg whites.

Bake on a hot greased griddle.  Serve with maple syrup, warm laughter, and bright slabs of sunlight.

-bisoux