Omnomicon

You guys, you guys. Have you ever been to a music festival? In addition to beats, good company, crappy camping and hippies, they also feature food vendors. And this is how I discovered The Skinny Pancake, a Burlington VT original. I haven’t yet made a pilgrimage to their restaurant (Vermont is kind of a hike from Massachusetts), but they have some incredible crepes that you can recreate at home without tie-dye bedecked strangers eyeing your breakfast.

First, we have The Heartbreaker.

I think you can see where we’re going with this. My crepes are not like those served by the Skinny Pancake, but they still benefit from nutella, strawberries and bananas. And apples too . . .

. . . but we’re getting to that. Now mix up your favourite crepe batter.

And let it stand, covered with plastic wrap, for 30 mins before go time. On a side note, I fucking hate whisks, but crepes are the one food item they serve well instead of becoming a clumpy hard-to-clean nuisance. When the time is right, heat up 1/2 tsp of butter in your largest skillet, and pour enough batter to cover the bottom without the batter on top being runny.

Do a little swishy swishy with your pan, and pour back to the bowl whatever isn’t stuck to the pan. When your crepe starts to bubble and the bottom of it is browned, give it a flip. This will happen a minute or two after liftoff.

Now immediately, I reiterate, immediately get about half a tablespoon of Nutella on there. You want this to get melty, and the longer it’s on your crepe, the meltier it’ll get.

And then toss on your strawberries and banana. You don’t want a lot of these, and you’ll see why, looks like I used about 2 strawberries and one third of a banana.

Now give that side a minute or two to cook, then begin the folding process.

You want a tri-cornered hat looking thing reminiscent of colonial America. And this is the reason you want to go light on your fruits, it won’t fold up right if you aren’t conservative. Now flip that monster over for about thirty seconds to let the oozy coat the other side of the crepe.

Serve to your favourite breakfast guests.

We’re almost done! The Green Mountain crepe was a big hit festivalwise as well, so I did that one too.

Your story starts out the same, and, as with the Nutella, you wanna get your sharp cheddar slices on there immediately after flipping and for the same melty reasons.

Now the apples.

Do your foldy bit.

And you know the rest.

Do you put anything cool in your crepes? Do you have an excellent crepe recipe to share? Please do! I have a feeling these are going to be a Saturday morning tradition for some time to come, and will try anything that sounds reasonably delicious.

As a wee lass, my mother would, from time to time, break out the box of lemon poppy seed muffin mix and proceed to make muffins on a Saturday morning. I never really understood *why* this was a big deal, other than it had these weird black things in them. At the same time, I ate these with some relish and with two visitors arriving Saturday afternoon (including Dano’s banjo teacher), I got the bug to make some muffins. These popped into my head, though I wouldn’t be doing it with a mix.

I got the recipe from eat me, delicious, and it’s her take on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe. I agree with her preference for sour cream (density) and personally, I like butter in muffins instead of oil–the latter seem to end up soggy.

Armed with a lemon, some poppy seeds and fat free sour cream from Stop & Shop, I set out to create heavenly lemony delight. This is a really beautiful recipe, start to finish.

Fun step #1: blending the zest with the sugar with little pinches.

Add some flour and leaven (this isn’t the pretty part yet, we’re getting there).

Wet stuff (shout out to fat free sour cream: Lookin good lady!).

Oh man, by now I’m impatient for the licking of the bowl ritual.

Enter poppy.

I bet you’re totally into this by now. I told you, heavenly! Like, when I think of heaven, this is what the clouds we’re all walking on look like.

Now I’ve always wondered what’s truly better: buttered muffin pan or muffin cups? I like the muffin cups at this stage . . .

. . . but the boys and I agreed that for eating, for eating specifically these muffins? They need to be au natural.

eat me, delicious’s adaptation of Dori Greenspans’s Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

So I generally stay away from baking recipes as they are very tempting and I can’t eat much of them, but I continually read Baking Bites as a vicarious way of enjoying baking. Nicole posted a recipe yesterday that I really couldn’t pull myself back from, and as my self control has improved to the point where I can enjoy one of something, I decided to replicate her recipe for Sugar Donut Muffins.

These are lighter than making doughnuts at home, as they are not deep fried, but they do have nutrition information that’s just barely lower fat than a Dunkie’s Sugar Raised Donut, so they’re not exactly health food. At the same time, these are delicate and divine, and will appeal to the snobbiest of food snobs (like me). They remind me of nothing so much as the sugar donuts you find in Chinese buffets. Classy, I know!

I followed the recipe to the letter for once, and the only change I recommend is waiting to brush the tops with butter until five minutes later, or leaving it out altogether. When it came time to eat these, the tops were a little soggy.

It’s go time! Check out this sugar and egg sludge I made! The texture was really cool, but unfortunately difficult to capture in photo form. So you’ll just have to make ’em to see.

The tiniest amount of nutmeg goes a long way with these.

The batter starts as a dough . . .

. . . then quickly goes back to being a batter.

Sloppily fill your clean, greased muffin pan that looks dirty no matter how many times you scrub it. Remember, no liners! These things still need an outside treatment.

After baking, these babies are so smooth, they almost look more like cupcakes than muffins. But they’re neither, they’re really doughnuts, promise.

Now take the muffins into your veiny old lady hands and roll them in sugar.

It’s a satisfying part of the process. Perhaps the most.

The one advantage here as opposed to hitting up the Dunkie’s drive-through is that you can enjoy these with a fresh cup of unburnt coffee.

Many thanks to Nicole at Baking Bites for posting a recipe I couldn’t resist. And I find myself resisting temptations CONSTANTLY, so it’s high praise.