Reese’s Peanut Butter Pancakes

ReesesPancakesBeing a breakfast junkie, I am always into trying new foods for my favourite meal of the day, which also happens to be my favourite meal to cook. Who doesn’t like breakfast for dinner? Come on! If you don’t, you’re on the wrong site. I’m only partially kidding.

Despite that, I do love a good French Toast more than pancakes. Granted I worked at an IHOP for years and that might have something to do with my general disdain of pancakes, I always found them to be lacking in flavour without the syrup and butter. Come on they’re flour, eggs, milk and maybe some sugar – if you make them from scratch!

Alas with Celiac Disease, my options for non-breakfast burrito options shrank drastically until I could find alternatives. And this alternative kind of hit me out of nowhere.

Simple backstory – I’ve always loved peanuts or peanut butter and chocolate in just about any combination. Peanut Butter cookies happen to be one of my favourite cookies that you can make completely flourless – add in a few chocolate chips and I will finish the batch before my kids can figure out that they were baked.

So when I was trying to figure out a good recipe for a special breakfast of pancakes, I remembered the Reese’s Peanut Butter in my cupboard and that I could do peanut butter pancakes – GF of course. Because as we all know Gluten Free Not Taste Free!

Reese’s Peanut Butter Pancakes

1 cup (240 g) GF flour
2.5 tsp (13 g) baking powder
.5 tsp (7 g) salt
.5 cup (120 g) Reese’s Peanut Butter
2 tbsp (30 g) sugar
2 tbsp (30 ml) vegetable oil
2 large eggs
a bit over 1 cup (270 ml) milk

  1. While your griddle heats to about 300 degrees mix your peanut butter, sugar and oil until smooth, then the egg and milk.
  2. Next mix in the rest of your ingredients. BTW – typically you are supposed to do dry separate, then wet and mix together; too many bowls in my opinion!
  3. Assuming you’re using a non-stick griddle, you shouldn’t need anything to get these flippin’ flapjacks to, er, flip. Just wait til you see a bubble and then flip.
  4. Remember you are only supposed to flip pancakes once, so make sure they are done on the top before you flip them.

As always, I use a store bought mix for GF flour up here in the Great White North. But if you are interested in trying your own, you can visit Gluten Free on a Shoestring. Nicole has some amazing mixes for different flour needs.

Drunk Monkey Bread

This version was missing the bananas and used Reeses Peanut Butter Spread. It was still amazing!

This version was missing the bananas and used Reeses Peanut Butter Spread. It was still amazing!

About 15 years ago I used to work in a breakfast cafe in Roswell, Georgia. It was just a bit more of a training ground for my favourite meal of the day! While I was there, I perfected the egg flip and most of the other classic staples of breakfast making. Not sure that I would want to go back to being a line cook, but there have been plenty of times that I do the short order deal for family and friends.

And while I love a good omelet, there’s a special place in my heart for French Toast. It was the first real thing I learned how to cook from my paternal grandmother, Nanny. And the love affair with cooking and breakfast in particular was born.

Now as a CD card-carrying member, making French Toast is a little hard now. However, you just have to really be willing to go with small bread pieces (think Udi’s) or make your own. In this conglomeration, that is the way I go since this recipe combines French Toast, bananas, peanut butter, Anglaise and chocolate sauce to make a decadent dish that really doesn’t need anything else with it. Who says Gluten Free is Taste Free?!

Since this one is a dish unto itself with multiple components, I will be putting links up to other recipes on site that relate to the whole of this dish. As a side note, this recipe can be nut free if you decide to use WowButter or SunButter as a substitute.

Drunk Monkey Bread

1 recipe Banana Loaf
1 recipe Baileys Anglaise
1 recipe Kahlua French Toast Batter
Chocolate Sauce (I use this recipe – it’s originally a chocolate fountain sauce but works really well!)
Peanut Butter
Bananas

  1. Once you’ve made all the components, you can start assembling sandwiches. Spread peanut butter on one side, layer with sliced banana and then top with another slice of banana bread.
  2. Dunk the sandwich in the batter and fry it up on a griddle until it’s golden brown.
  3. Ladle first your Anglaise over the top and then a bit of the chocolate sauce.
  4. Serve immediately!

Kahlua French Toast batter

Mix –

3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp (15 g) Cinnamon
1 tsp (5 g) Nutmeg
1 tsp (5 g) Ginger
2 oz Orange Juice
2 oz Kahlua

Dunk your bread in the batter once it’s completely mixed and cook on a medium heat until golden!

Huevos Nachos Italiano

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet, but I love breakfast foods and I love pork. Such a versatile meat, bacon, sausage, bacon, roast, chops – it’s all good. When I can combine the two it’s even better!

And one of the other things I like is breakfast casseroles. This is a fantastic new version – based on nachos and fused with Italian flavours. Featuring Italian Baked Potato Chips as the bottom layer, then some cheese and Italian sausage, it’s finally topped with eggs and more cheese. This could just as easily feature Mexican flavours – use Mexican Chorizo, Mexican Seasoning on the chips and Cilantro instead of Oregano.

It all sounds really good and really there’s nothing about this breakfast that doesn’t make me giddy and hungry!HeuvosNachos-2

Huevos Nachos Italiano

Italian Baked Potato Chips
8 oz. spicy Italian sausage
1 red onion
8 oz Pepper Jack
4 eggs
1 tbsp minced garlic
Oregano
shredded Cheddar
diced tomatoes
diced green onions

HeuvosNachos-1

  1. Make a recipe of Italian Baked Potato Chips.
  2. Fry the sausage out of its casing along with the diced red onions.
  3. Layer the chips on the bottom of a pie pan or small casserole pan and then put the sliced Pepper Jack on top of the chips.
  4. Next layer the sausage and onions on top.
  5. Scramble the eggs along with the garlic and oregano.
  6. Layer the eggs and then the shredded cheese over the top of the eggs.
  7. Bake at 475 for about 6 minutes.
  8. Once baked arrange the diced tomatoes and green onions over the top. Serve hot!

 

Breakfast Burrito

This particular concoction featured fresh jalapenos and a cold baked potato. Hearty to say the least!

This particular concoction featured fresh jalapenos and a cold baked potato. Hearty to say the least!

We’ve all heard the story about when I was a young warthog … OK, maybe you haven’t heard my version. Either way, I grew up on Mexican food and developed a taste for more spice.

However, in all that time I was never introduced to the delights of the Breakfast Burrito until later in life when McDonald’s of all places started serving them. Then I was hooked and of course that was BCD.

Honestly there is really not much of a difference between a good egg scramble and a good breakfast burrito. One you served with the “bread” and cheese wrapped around the scramble and the other you served with jalapeno jelly on your buttered toast. And frankly your scramble could be very different than mine.

ScrambleTallScrambles, burritos, omelettes – they all vary depending on your individual taste. Therefore, there will not be a down pat recipe for this one. It will be along the lines of a this is how I make my scramble or burrito. And while I can make a mean omelette, like my pizza, I tend to put too many ingredients in them to really call them pizza, er, omelettes!

Breakfast Burrito / Scramble

3 eggs
1 GF tortilla (Udi’s are the best I’ve found)
Cheddar slices
Pepper Jack Cheese
Crumbled Bacon
Cold Tater Tots/Diced Fries/potato
Red onion
Minced Garlic
Cilantro
Cayenne Pepper or fresh Jalapenos
Tomato

  1. In an 8-inch non-stick frying pan, saute your bacon, onions and spices in a bit of butter.ScrambleStart
  2. Once your onions are soft, add in the crumbled tots or diced potatoes. If need be add a little butter to ensure that the mixture doesn’t dry up.
  3. Crack your eggs right into the pan and add in your cheese slices. Mix and cook thoroughly.
  4. If you are using tomatoes, this is when you add them so they don’t put a ton of moisture into the scramble.
  5. Once this is all done cooking, pour it onto your plate and layer a healthy dose of shredded Pepper Jack over the top. Or if you are doing a burrito, pour the mix onto your tortilla that has had the cheese already melted on it!

Pig Sty

One of the first things I learned to cook for myself back in the day was French Toast. I learned that recipe from my Nanny. And that started a lifelong love of cooking but not of breakfast. That I can thank my mother for – she always loved breakfast. But her usual dish didn’t vary too much from toast, over easy eggs, grits and bacon.

Well as a person with Celiac’s, both the toast and the French Toast have become infinitely harder to manage, not impossible, but harder. One of these days I’ll throw on my Citrus French Toast recipe with a Bailey’s Anglais. And at this point, I can see I’m about to veer way off course. So I’ll just stop my digressing with – I love breakfast!

So this recipe is fun and easy to do. It’s called a Pig Sty because it’s got bacon and it’s messy to make and eat. But it’s so fun and good!

Pig Sty

1 very large red onion
7-8 strips of thick bacon
5 cups (1 kg) shredded hash browns
7-8 eggs (better if they are smaller)
Cayenne – to taste
Seasoning Salt – to taste
Pepper Jack Cheese

  1. Preheat your oven to about 425 F. While that is working spray down a lipped pan with cooking spray.
  2. Cut the onions so that you have about 7-8 really large rings about 3/4 inch tall. Place a piece of bacon on the inside of the ring creating a circle.
  3. Mix your hash browns with one egg and seasoning salt so that it just coats the browns. Fill the bacon-onion rings with hash browns and cook for about 25 minutes – the biggest priority is to ensure that the bacon is cooked.
  4. Making an indention in the centre of the hash browns, crack one egg into each ring and then cook the whole thing for another seven minutes.
  5. Top with shredded Pepper Jack and Cayenne, cooking until the cheese is melted (two minutes give or take).
  6. Serve with some gluten free toast with cream cheese and pepper jelly (this recipe will be coming soon as well!)