Best Breakfasts

French Crepes with Cardamom Cream

Start your day off right with quick and delicious breakfast recipes from Michael Vyskocil's collection of Suite101 Recipes articles.

Recipes

• Old-Fashioned Pancake Brunch
• French Crepes with Cardamom Cream
• French Toast Stuffed with Blueberries
• Herbed Scrambled Eggs
• Cafe Style Coffee
• Breakfast Sweet Breads
• Scones for Teatime
• Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes
• Homemade Fruit Butter

How-tos

• Preparing Hard Boiled Eggs
• Brewing the Perfect Pot of Tea
• How to Make Homemade Pure Vanilla Extract

Popovers 101

Popovers are one of my favorite breakfast and brunch treats. Here are a few tips for achieving success with popovers:

• Always use large eggs when making popovers.
• Stir the batter lightly before filling the popover tins or custard cups to keep the mixture well blended.
• Bake popovers either in popover tins or in 6-ounce custard cups or ramekins
• Grease and flour the tins or custard cups well to make the popovers easy to remove after baking.
• Never open the oven door during baking. Just like souffles, cool air is detrimental to popovers, and the slightest draft can cause the popovers to fall.
• Prevent overbrowning by placing the oven rack in the lower part of the oven so that the custard cups or popover tins will be in the center of the oven.

Experiment with popovers by using the recipe below.

Popovers
MAKES 10 LARGE POPOVERS

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter and lightly flour 10 popover tins or custard cups. Set aside. Whisk together the butter, milk, flour and salt until smooth. Whisk in the beaten eggs, little by little, until incorporated. Do not overbeat the batter; it should have the consistency of thick cream. Fill the prepared popover tins or custard cups approximately three-fourths full with the batter. Transfer the tins or cups to the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Without opening the oven door, lower the heat of the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake the popovers for an additional 15 to 20 minutes. Serve hot.

Pumpkin Dinner

Join us for Halloween recipes for an Orange-Pumpkin Flan, Individual Chicken Potpies in Pumpkins and a Crunchy Pumpkin Seed Salad.

Although it predated the arrival of colonists, the pumpkin became associated with settlers from Europe during the colonization of the Americas. Today, it's a Thanksgiving tradition to have pumpkin pie with roasted turkey. However, pumpkins shouldn't be relegated to traditional dessert offerings like pies, which is why I incorporated pumpkin into the salad, main course and dessert of this holiday-inspired meal.

Inspired by the theme of thanksgiving for the growing season and harvest, we've used all parts of the pumpkin in these dinner recipes: the flesh, the outer shell and the seeds. Canned pumpkin puree is the base for the orange-pumpkin flan recipe, a twist on pumpkin pie. For the individual chicken potpies, use small sugar pumpkins for the serving containers. The sugar pumpkin has a sweet, firm flesh that won't become soggy when baked. Don't use large sugar pumpkins; small sizes work best to hold individual servings of a hearty chicken potpie baked inside the pumpkins' interiors. Pumpkin seeds, known as pepitas in Mexican and Latin American cuisine, add crunch and flavor to a healthy salad of fresh lettuce and crispy green beans.

RECIPES

ORANGE-PUMPKIN FLAN

In this custard-based dessert, pumpkin pie (a popular Puritan dish that traces its origins to Colonial America) combines with flan, a traditional Spanish dessert.

INDIVIDUAL CHICKEN POTPIES IN PUMPKINS

A family-dinner favorite everyone enjoys during cool weather, chicken potpie is baked and served inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.

CRUNCHY PUMPKIN SEED SALAD

Full of vitamins A and C, pumpkin seeds are nutritious and make a great snack. Called pepitas in Mexican cooking, the seeds are great when toasted and added to a salad.

Great Breakfast Ideas

What is your favorite breakfast? From scrambled eggs and bacon, to hash browns and pancakes, it seems everyone has his or her own favorite. Diane Laney Fitzpatrick, a contributing writer for Suite101.com, says, "Mine is a toasted English muffin with cream cheese and strawberry jam (with coffee, of course!)."

I happen to like the taste of pancakes. Plain pancakes are good, but every now and then, I like to incorporate either a fruit or a different flavor into the pancake. With summer quickly approaching, I'd thought I'd share a recipe for Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes that will certainly have all of your family up and around the breakfast table on a sunny Saturday summer morning. The recipe was adapted from a blueberry buttermilk pancake served at the Glen-Ella Springs Inn located just a few miles north of Atlanta in Clarksville, Georgia. This centuries old inn is actually on the National Register of Historic Places and first opened in 1988.

RECIPE
Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes
Serves 4

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 1 tablespoon, for griddle

1. Place a griddle pan or a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. Add the eggs, buttermilk, blueberries, and 4 tablespoons melted butter, and stir to combine. The batter will be slightly lumpy.
2. When the griddle is hot, using a pastry brush, brush the remaining tablespoon of butter onto the griddle.
3. Pour 3 tablespoons of the batter into the skillet or griddle for each pancake, spaced about 2 inches apart, and cook for 1 minute or until the pancakes have bubbles on top and are slightly dry around the edges. Flip over and cook until golden on bottom, about 1 minute.
4. Repeat with the remaining batter. Serve the pancakes with maple syrup or whatever favorite toppings you desire.

Food to Start Your Day

We've probably all heard the mantra dozens of times from many different sources: "Always eat a good breakfast; it's the most important meal of the day." Growing up, weekday breakfast usually consisted of cereal, perhaps a sweet breakfast pastry and a warm cup of tea. On weekends, pancakes, sausage, eggs, hash browns or homemade waffles were a welcome change of pace.

It seems everyone has their own favorite breakfast food, which may not always be eaten sitting at the kitchen table. Yogurt always seems to be popular; whether flavored or unflavored, with fruit or without. And speaking of fruit, summertime always brings with it the most delectable and freshest tasting fruits you'll eat. A juicy peach or a few tasty blueberries or raspberries with a bowl of cereal can really make for a flavorful start to the day. Then there are those purists who insist you must have eggs for breakfast. Well, you can have them poached, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, scrambled, shirred or fried to suit your particular tastes. Best of all, you get the protein you need to get you through the day. There are also those folks who enjoy a steaming bowl or cup of oatmeal for breakfast. This too is delicious on its own, but with the addition of fresh fruit or a drizzle of pure maple syrup, you might think about having a bowl every now and then.

Of course, I cannot forget to include those people who enjoy weird (well, not really weird, but unusual) items for breakfast. You know these types of people: the ones who eat a slice of leftover pizza cold from the refrigerator, the ones who grab whatever condiment they can find to slather on a bagel, the ones who think that chocolate cake is the hallmark of a morning breakfast. Yes, it seems all of us have our fondness for certain breakfast items. One of my favorites for a sumptuous breakfast feast is French toast, which for me is the ultimate breakfast comfort food.

What is your favorite breakfast item? Send me an e-mail here at Recipes and I'll post a few of your responses in a future blog.