Peaches and Peanut Butter Stuffed French Toast

Mmmm... French Toast. One of the best breakfast foods out there. Everybody has "their way" to eat French Toast. I used to be very stuck in "my way", until a dear friend of mine introduced me to A NEW WAY. Gasp.

I grew up eating french toast with nothing but a massive mound of icing sugar plopped on top. No, I can't even say dusted or sprinkled... it was a real life mound or powdery goodness. I can't believe my mother let me put that much sugar on. But it was the best way!
I (obviously) think of French Toast as being a sweet dish, as opposed to savoury. I think that many people do too, however not my Ma. She thinks that French Toast should be savoury, not sweet! How bizzare! How not fun. She puts salt and pepper on her French Toast... which still baffles me to this day.
What baffles me more is that my Pa DOESN'T EVEN LIKE FRENCH TOAST.
Why family?! Why?! At least my brother knows what's up about icing sugar too. Two people have got it right.

Oh yeah, the new way! So, friend tells me his way to eat French Toast is with Peanut Butter and Syrup (Aunt Jemima's brand is ideal). Or, if they're available, PB+Syrup and fresh peaches.
When I first heard this, I thought, eww weird. Then I tried it and life changed forever. Now I have noticed that my powdered sugar policy is a thing of the past, and peanut butter is my new present. Try it, you may just fall in love.

In da pan.

One of my most favourite (in fact, probably my favourite) blogs, A Beautiful Mess, featured a post about Peaches and Cream Stuffed French Toast. This totally made me think "Yes, I do want to make Stuffed French Toast" as it is something I have not yet done. I adapted the recipe to use peanut butter instead of cream cheese because HOLY GOODNESS do I love me some peanut butter. And it being my "New Way" to eat French Toast, it just makes sense.

 Peaches and Peanut Butter Stuffed French Toast

Recipe adapted from A Beautiful Mess

Makes two sandwiches

• 4 slices french bread
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 peach, sliced
• peanut butter
• butter for the pan

In a shallow dish, whisk together egg, vanilla, cinnamon and milk. Heat a pan on medium high heat with a bit of butter in the bottom. Spread peanut butter on one side of two of the bread slices. Dip the non-peanut butter side into the egg mixture, then place in the hot pan eggy-side down. Place peach slices on top of the two slices of bread in the pan. Meanwhile, spread peanut butter on one side of each of the other two slices. Dip the non-peanut butter side in the egg. Place this top slice (eggy-side up this time) atop your peach covered slice in the pan. When the bottom of the sandwich is nicely browned, turn the whole shebang over and cook on the other side.
Serve with more peach slices on top, and a generous drizzle of syrup. YUM in the tum.

What is your way to eat French Toast? Maybe I will discover a new one :)

<3 Lari

The. Best. Waffles. Ever.

There are few things I love more in the world than these.

Yes, this post's title is four words, and also four sentences. I believe that it adds seriousness to the subject. And boy, is it a serious subject. When it comes to waffles in my family, we don't joke around.

I can honestly say that me, along with the rest of my family, and everyone who we have served our waffles to, can all agree that these waffles are THE BEST WAFFLES WE HAVE EVER HAD. Which is why I have some trepidation in sharing our family's recipe... Sometimes you want to keep all the good things to yourself, you know?

But then again, it is technically not OUR recipe, although it kind of feels like it is after making it so many times. This waffle recipe has been around for 18 years, and I have been around for 19 years. I can proudly say that I have been raised on this waffle recipe. It all begins with a Christmas gift from my Aunt to my parents in 1993. The was a book called "Waffles: From Morning to Midnight" and contains a plethora of various waffle recipes. Breakfast waffles, lunch waffles, dinner waffles, savoury snack waffles, and over the top dessert waffles. What a brilliant book.

The sad thing? I only just today discovered that this book contains all of this. You may be thinking, "But Larissa, if this book has been around nearly all your life, how could you not know  it had all those delicious recipes until today?"

WELL. Time for honesty. We started with the first recipe, which is a super simple, quick, easy recipe for basic waffles. No frills or fancy flavours, just your regular fluffy waffles. ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! My family fell in love immediately with the recipe, and since 1993, we have not ventured through the rest of the book and tried any of the other recipes! I hadn't even read them... AND I LOVE READING COOKBOOKS. So that is weird. This means we have only ever made the one recipe from the book. We may have thought about trying something new, but then again, what is the point? We would probably just end up wishing we had made our favourite waffles instead.

Today I sat down with the book, and actually briefly took a look, before I had to run to work, at what else it had to offer. A lot! That is what it had to offer. I found myself very inspired by all these variations on one of my favourite breakfast foods. I love trying new things, and putting spins on old classics. So someday I might actually try one of these other recipes (Pumpkin Pie waffles for autumn? Yes please!). But my family is still hesitant to make anything other than our favies.

Sorry for the extra long rant, but guys! This is waffles we're talking about here! We take our waffles seriously, man.
My family will not order waffles in restaurants, because we like ours more. Is that stubborn? No, it is a simple fact of life.
We had some friends over for brunch one day and made waffles. These friends liked our waffles so much, that they went out a bought a waffle iron the next day, so they could make them too.

They really are that good.

We had said waffles for brunch today! Which is the best start to the day.

So here we go, sharing the best waffle recipe in the world. Use it wisely. Make them often. Have them for breakfast, lunch, dinner. Serve them warm with butter, syrup, and bacon OF COURSE!

I truly hope you like them after I have made all this hype! Otherwise, that was rather anti-climatic. But if I'm confident about anything, it is the wonderfulness of these waffles.

I give all credit of this recipe to our Waffle Book, because we never make any changes to it. 'Tis perfect just the way it is. (And ridiculously simple at that.) The only adaption we make is to double the recipe everytime, because we devour these babies. They also make fine leftovers.

Hope you like these as much as me! :)

Waffles. The Best Ever.

Recipe from Waffles: From Morning to Midnight

Serves: Not enough. Double it. You'll thank me later.

DRY:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
• pinch of salt

WET:

• 2 tbsp melted butter (cooled)
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg

Mix together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients. Mix the dry with the wet until thoroughly combined. Cook in your waffle iron according to it's instructions... mine usually take about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes to get to golden brown perfection. Just a tiny crisp on the outside, with a fluffy, warm and buttery inside.

Spread with butter and watch it melt. Pour on generous amounts of syrup. And do like I do and crumble bacon bits into every little hole in the waffle so that each bite gets a bit o' bacon.

Perfection.

<3 Lari