cinnamon sugar french toast with brown sugared banana topping

Breakfast is one of those meals I don't plan out. It's so easy to experiment with the basics — waffles, pancakes, french toast — that Dave and I often end up inventing something on the spot. And it's actually really hard to screw up breakfast, we've found. Last weekend we impressed ourselves by whipping up some very tasty shredded apple and chocolate chip waffles in no time.

My friend Sarah visited from New York this weekend. It's always a relief when a long-distance friendship picks up where it left off. After showing her around Burlington and catching up on Saturday, we got into the kitchen this morning with breakfast in mind — and totally surprised ourselves with delicious french toast and a sweetened banana spread topping. Seriously... try this out for yourself.

Cinnamon Sugar French Toast

3 eggs

dash of milk (about 1 tablespoon)

cinnamon

sugar

thin slices of sourdough bread

unsalted butter

Heat a little butter in a frying pan on medium heat.

Whisk together eggs and milk in a shallow bowl. Add in a healthy dose of cinnamon and sugar and stir. Dip a slice of bread in the mixture, lightly coating both sides and letting any extra liquid drip off. Place in frying pan and cook until golden brown on each side; repeat until egg mixture is used up.

Brown Sugared Banana Topping

2 medium bananas, thinly sliced

2-3 tablespoons butter

roughly 2 tablespoons brown sugar

cinnamon

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a small frying pan. Add brown sugar and let them melt together; add more butter if necessary to form a smooth mix. Add in banana slices and stir until coated. Season with a few sprinkles of cinnamon, and let the bananas cook down on low heat until very soft and warm.

Serve banana topping over french toast. A dollop of vanilla yogurt on top is simply delicious.

apple cake

Nothing makes me happier than having a friend to bake with. One who can locate the flour and sugar on her own. One who will scrape out the batter while I hold the bowl. One who isn't afraid to lick the spoon. One who gets as excited as I do when the kitchen starts smelling like apples.

It doesn't seem like that person would be hard to find, but it is. Most people I know seem a little lost in the kitchen. That's why it made me oh-so-happy that my friend Laura visited for the long weekend. Amidst our busy days (highlights include catching a pumpkin regatta, visiting a cider mill, and — wait for it! — seeing Everclear in concert), we found time to bake this delicious apple cake ... and have fun while baking it.

This cake is awesome! It's super apple-y. It's not too sweet, but it's totally satisfying for dessert. Best of all, it's incredibly fluffy and moist. And it's a good way to use up your apples if, like me, you went crazy and went apple picking on two consecutive weekends.

Apple Cake

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil*

1/2 cup applesauce

1 1/2 cup sugar (or a little less)

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

4 medium apples, peeled and diced (I used 5 smallish apples.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat eggs 1 minute. Add sugar gradually, and then stir in oil and applesauce. Add vanilla and stir. Add flour and baking soda, making sure to mix the baking soda into the flour well. Add cinnamon. Fold in the apples.

Pour into a greased 13 x 9" baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

*I'm thinking you could use a full cup of applesauce and skip the oil. I'll try that next time.

rustic apple tart

Yesterday, I finally accepted the fact that it is fall. Nevermind that the season has been in full swing for over a month now; I've been in true denial. Without having school to go back to this year, it seemed all autumn meant to me was "winter's coming! winter's coming!" And um, I know most people in Vermont love, love, love the winter and hitting the slopes ... but I hate it. I hate driving on slippery, unplowed streets. I hate having to wear leggings underneath my pants every day to stay warm. I hate needing to sleep with two thick comforters on my bed for six months of the year (yeah, I've already started with that).

Basically, I was treating fall like it was a Sunday. I think you know what I mean: Sunday's are wasted because you're already dreading whatever you have to do on Monday, right?

Turns out all it took for me to embrace autumn was ... a good friend and some apple picking.

I am very lucky to have many things in common with my friend Danielle. We both write for newspapers, which means we both get exactly what the other person is going through when they have an awesome story lined up that week — and what it's like to be the youngest person in the newsroom. We'd both rather drive up Mt. Philo and picnic than walk the 45-minute climb. She was the only person I could call when I wanted to see Ingrid Michaelson in concert, and even though she'd never heard Ingrid's music before, she quickly became a bigger fan than me. We both hate winter.

Luckily for me, though, Danielle was feeling more upbeat about autumn and invited me apple picking. Rambling around the orchard with her, searching for Honeycrisps and choosing only the reddest of fruits, was all it took for me to remember what I like about fall: the smoky smell the air takes on, the buildup to Halloween, pumpkin carving, and ... baking. We jabbered on the car ride home about where our apples would end up. For Danielle, they'd become applesauce, apple cider donuts and apple crisp. For me, well, all I had my eye on then was Smitten Kitchen's simplest apple tart.

I love the look of this tart: crusty brown edges, thinly sliced apples arranged in groups, crunchy sugar baked on top. This was my first time making pie dough from scratch, and really — it was super easy. Besides getting flour all over the place (which I am wont to do), I'm not sure how you could mess up the recipe. And the final product — in addition to looking absolutely lovely — tasted great. The dough was buttery, just the right amount of flaky, and toasted up perfectly in the oven. The apples were really the star. Because you do so little to them — brush with butter, sprinkle with sugar — the tart really just emphasizes the fresh apple taste, but in a warm and soft form. Yum!

I used a mix of cortland, empire and honeycrisp apples because that's what I had on hand. You should use whatever baking apples you think taste good, because you'll be able to pick out the different varieties even after it's baked.

My favorite part of this recipe is that you save the peels and cores, and bake them down into a sweetened apple glaze. What it really is, though, is the pinkest and best apple cider you've ever had — and for me, the recipe yielded way more juice than I needed for the pie. Drink up!

Rustic Apple Tart

from Smitten Kitchen

for the dough:

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter (3/4 stick), just softened and sliced into 1/2-inch pieces

3 1/2 tablespoons cold water

for the filling:

2 lbs. apples (I used 6 large apples; 4 would have been enough), peeled and cored (save both), and sliced thinly

2 tablespoons butter, melted

5 tablespoons sugar (I used 4)

for the glaze:

1/2 cup sugar

Mix flour, sugar and salt. Add 2 tablespoons of butter. Blend with electric mixer until course, like cornmeal. Add remaining butter and mix until the largest pieces are about pea-sized.

Dribble in a tablespoon of water and stir. Dribble in more until the dough just holds together. (For me it only took 2 tablespoons.) Toss with your hands until you can form it into a ball. Flatten in a thick disk and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

Remove from fridge and let it soften. Smooth any cracks at the edges, then roll out on a well-floured surface into a circle about 1/8-inch thick. Dust with flour, and place either in a pie dish or on a parchment-covered baking sheet if you want to make more of a galette.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Overlap the apples and arrange tightly on the dough, leaving a 2-inch ring from the edges if you're making a galette. Fold the extra dough back over and crimp the crust.

Brush melted butter over the crust and apples, then sprinkle with the sugar until coated.

Bake about 45 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Make sure to rotate the pie in the oven every 15 minutes for an even brown.

For the glaze, simmer the reserved peels and cores (and any extra apple slices) in a saucepan with the sugar, with just enough water to cover it. This will take about 25 minutes. Strain out the apple pieces, and brush the cooled pie with the glaze. Save any extra juice for drinking!

You can't go to an orchard without getting fresh apple cider donuts, can you?