Bacon cornmeal waffles (p. 647)

Bacon cornmeal waffles (p. 647). Mmmmm....even the name sounds delicious.

This recipe is essentially the same as the basic cornmeal waffle recipe but includes everyone's favorite meat product, BACON.

I'm not going to go into much detail in this post because it's already been covered in the previous post on cornmeal waffles.

I mixed buttermilk, butter, maple syrup, and egg yolks together in one bowl, flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in another bowl, and I combined them (Don't overmix! Overmixing is your enemy!).



I whipped egg whites and folded them into the batter:



TJOC give a couple of options for how to incorporate the bacon. You can either place the bacon on top of the batter:



Or crumble it and mix it INTO the batter:



I do realize that not everyone can have a waffle iron as amazing as the one I got for my mother at a garage sale:



But hopefully you have a waffle iron that works just as well.

The waffles were good but they weren't as amazing as I wanted them to be. Granted, I wanted fireworks to explode, dogs to howl, and random strangers to break in to dance, so maybe my expectations should have been lower. Make sure to crisp your bacon as much as possible because floppy bacon is your enemy in this recipe. I thought the waffles with the bacon incorporated were better than the ones with the bacon just sitting on the top of the waffle.

There is something extra delicious about cornmeal waffles. Or maybe there is something extra delicious about cornmeal in general. These waffles are sweet enough that they don't need added maple syrup (which I don't like anyway) but not so sweet that they taste like a dessert. And they are certainly easy to make.

So, dearest readers, I have two questions for you:
1. Waffles or pancakes? Which do you prefer? There is an active debate going on the TJOTJOC Facebook page.

2. What is your favorite waffle topping? I just like butter on mine.

Lemon pancakes (p. 646) and Additions to pancakes (p. 644)

Somehow I hit "post" too quickly, so I apologize if you came to this blog and just saw a set of pictures. I hope you made up your own exciting copy to go with it.

On a whim, I decided to make pancakes for dinner. I always forget about the possibility of pancakes, which heat up amazingly, when I'm trying to figure out what is quick to make for dinner. I actually was in the mood for waffles but I don't have a waffle iron.

I wasn't particularly excited about Lemon pancakes (p. 646) but I wanted to knock them off the list. I mixed flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in one bowl and sour cream, milk, lemon zest, lemon juice, melted butter, an egg, and vanilla extract in another bowl:



The two were combined:



The batter was thick and bubbly, as TJOC said it would be. I totally missed the part about how each pancake should be about a quarter cup:



I was able to cut the pancake in half. At this point, I turned the pancake-making over to Josh and figured he could cook them more efficiently than I could. I have no picture of the finished product but it looked just like an average pancake.

I'm not big into lemon flavor, so I wasn't in love with these pancakes. They were certainly lemony and they had a strange tang from the sour cream. If you love lemon, make these pancakes. I think they would be really good with whipped cream on top and maybe raspberry sauce (sort of a Melba theme?). I also think they'd be good with vanilla ice cream and wrapped up like a burrito (am I the only one who does that?).

I also decided to make Additions to pancakes" (p. 644). Essentially, I just made pancakes and added raspberries.




The finished product:



Tasty! I like raspberries in pancakes, I think they are my favorite fruit addition. Now that I've worked out the teaspoon/tablespoon misprint in TJOC I'm having a much better success rate with my pancakes.

What do you like to add to pancakes?

Baked French toast (p. 648)

I don't love French toast. Everyone else seems to but I'm not very enthusiastic about it. Even so, I thought Baked French toast (p. 648) had the potential to be good and Josh was excited about it.

I mixed heavy cream, lots of eggs, honey (my stand in for maple syrup, which I didn't have), sugar (I also didn't have brown sugar, so my flavor profile was fairly compromised), vanilla and salt:



I dipped white bread in it (the recipe even says "white sandwich bread") and laid them in an 8x8 baking pan, layering in to a double layer. It was at this point that I realized it was supposed to sit overnight. Sigh. That's what I get for not reading through the recipe.



I pressed Saran wrap onto the surface and popped it in the fridge:



The next night it had soaked up most of the egg mixture:



Problem 1: The bread didn't want to come out of the pan, it was falling apart.
Problem 2: The bread was not shaped normally anymore

So this is what they looked like when I laid the bread on a cookie sheet:



Attractive, right? Something you would want to make for company, right?

I hoped they would get better with baking.



They did not. I flipped them after about 7 minutes:



Tell me that isn't the most pathetic thing you've ever seen. I mean, come on.

If you are going to make this recipe, I have some suggestions:
1. Don't use white sandwich bread, use a stronger bread like Italian or French bread
2. Grease the heck out of the pan.
3. Use maple syrup and brown sugar because these were rather boring

Honestly, these tasted okay, they were just really ugly and not worth waiting a day to eat. I'm thankful I only have one more French toast recipe to make.

Wikipedia says that some people eat French toast with ketchup. That horrifies me. Has anyone actually done that?
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Cornmeal pancakes I (p. 645) and Mixed shellfish in tomato sauce (p. 369)

Pancakes tend to be quick to make so I thought that Cornmeal pancakes I (p. 645) would make a tasty, quick meal, especially since I really liked Cornmeal pancakes II. The recipes were fairly similar.

In one bowl I mixed cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. In the other bowl I combined melted butter, milk, honey, and two eggs:



The wet ingredients were added to the dry ingredients and they were briefly mixed (DON'T OVERMIX! LUMPS ARE OKAY!).



I had Josh cook the pancakes, so I forgot to take any pictures of the finished product. These pancakes were good but they weren't nearly as good as the other cornbread pancake recipe. I don't really like foods that are sweetened with honey or maple syrup--these pancakes were just way too sweet for me. Only a few more pancake varieties left!

I haven't been making great progress on the shellfish chapter. Shellfish in Colorado is expensive and usually of questionable freshness. That being said, Josh is a huge fan of shrimp and I adore scallops. I stumbled upon a few packages of shrimp and scallops on sale at the grocery store and thought Mixed shellfish in tomato sauce (p. 369) looked tasty.

I sauteed red pepper flakes, garlic, and olive oil.



TJOC says to discard the pepper and the garlic, so you are left with the infused olive oil. I thought that sounded silly--I love garlic and red pepper, why would I discard it? I skipped that step. I added tomatoes, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Once the tomatoes started to break down, I added a mixture of peeled shrimp and scallops.



After a bit more simmering to cook the shellfish, it was done! I poured it over pasta (although it doesn't have to be a sauce--you can just eat it straight).




Delicious! I really liked this recipe and it was extremely simple. It tasted even better the next day after the flavors had time to meld. Every Christmas Eve we have a no-meat all-shellfish dinner and I honestly think that this sauce could stand up against most of our holiday fish sauces (it would be even better with some squid in it). It was nicely spiced, too, so I recommend ignoring the line about discarding the spices.

Buttermilk pancakes (p. 644)

I needed to make plenty of food for the week. I don't know how I feel about the nocturnal schedule I'm currently on. I get a lot of work done during the night. I go into the office from about midnight until about seven am when it's entirely empty. There is nothing online to distract me. And I work, work, work. The problems with the schedule are that it's really difficult to cook because Josh is either sleeping (and I don't want to stomp around in the kitchen right above the bed) or I just woke up. It's also difficult to run errands to places like the bank because they are only open during my sleeping time!

So I've been trying to cook a lot all at once so it can just be heated up. And I thought Buttermilk pancakes (p. 644) fit the bill. Buttermilk pancakes are essentially the same as pancakes but with buttermilk instead of regular milk, a little more baking soda, and a little less baking powder.

Dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in the other:

Mix them together, being careful not to overbeat:

And cook in a medium pan until bubble start to rise to the top, flip, and finish cooking.

Delicious! I really liked this recipe. The buttermilk lent a nice slightly sour flavor to the pancakes and they were light and fluffy. I made a big pile of them and then heated them up over the week. I like to make little pancakes instead of big ones.

I will absolutely make this recipe again--I like pancakes and they are so easy and fast.

Deviled ham or chicken spread (p. 180), Broiled shrimp or scallops with persillade (p. 387), and Cornmeal waffles (p. 647)

First of all, don't forget to enter the contest!

Mom had leftover ham in the fridge when I got to her house. I thought it would be the perfect time to make ham salad--mom likes ham salad whereas I find it absolutely disgusting (something about pink paste just doesn't make me hungry). I thought Deviled ham or chicken spread (p. 180) would be perfect (especially since I had just been to Penzey's and some terrific paprika on hand).

The recipe was simple--diced ham, mayonnaise, chicken broth, some fresh parsley out of mom's garden, paprika, and a bit of salt and pepper went into the food processor (I halved the recipe because mom didn't have enough ham for the full recipe).



And processed it:



I found it horrifying but mom thought it looked delicious. If you like ham salad, it's a good use of leftover ham. The paprika gave it a more robust flavor than most meat salads (doesn't that sound disgusting? "Meat salad"?).

Mom also had a bag of frozen shrimp she wanted me to use during my visit. While looking through the shellfish recipes, I spotted the perfect recipe--Broiled shrimp or scallops with persillade (p. 387). I figured it was perfect because it used fresh parsley and mom had a fecund parsley plant right outside (fecund--now there's a GRE word!). A persillade is apparently a mix of chopped parsley and garlic and is often mixed with breadcrumbs.

I spread the shrimp on a jelly-roll pan and sprinkled them with some olive oil.




In a bowl I mixed breadcrumbs, parsley, and (more) garlic (than the recipe actually asked for). I covered the shrimp in the breadcrumb mixture.



And into the oven it went. It's only supposed to broil for a couple minutes on one side and a couple of minutes on the other side. After the first couple minutes, I thought "uh oh":



As you can see, the shrimp started to burn (or rather, the breadcrumbs on the shrimp started to burn). So if you make this recipe--keep your eye on it! I think it would be much easier in my electric broiler than it was in mom's gas oven (easier to watch, at least). The shrimp was still really good though and I loved the breadcrumbs--delicious and easy. I will make this again but I really need to watch it better next time!

For some mysterious reason, I thought Cornmeal waffles (p. 647) would be the perfect accompaniment to the shrimp. It probably had more to do with the fact that I didn't want to leave mom with a bunch of leftover buttermilk and thought I should knock out another recipe that requires a waffle iron than that I thought the two foods went together. The recipe started similarly to the other waffle recipes. I mixed buttermilk, melted butter, maple syrup, and egg yolks in a bowl. Flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt went into another bowl.

(This picture isn't totally accurate, obviously the garlic, parsley, and breadcrumbs weren't involved in the waffles and the melted butter was added to the wet ingredients):




The wet ingredients were mixed into the dry ingredients...and then...

I needed to whip up the egg whites in another bowl. Whipping egg whites was (embarrassingly) something I've been really afraid of--which was one of the reasons I decided to start TJOTJOC. First I tried to whip the egg whites by hand, which was never going to happen (it takes several minutes of fast whisking--apparently I don't have the stamina!). Then I put the whisk attachment on mom's Kitchenaid hand mixer and *bam* there it was! Not very difficult--I think I may have moved past my fear!

The egg whites were then added to the batter:



And folded in. I didn't know how far to fold them, so there were still lumps of egg white when I finished (this picture is pre-finish but not much):





The waffles were AMAZING. OMG they were delicious. They were light and fluffy and cornmeal-y (and I LOVE cornmeal muffins/bread/pancakes/etc). Since the maple syrup was already included, a little (or a lot) of butter and they were ready to go. I actually wanted to continue eating these long after I was full. Plus they froze perfectly (as waffles should). I can't recommend these enough!

Buttermilk waffles (p. 647) and Eggs baked in a muffin tin (p. 199)

First of all, don't forget to enter the contest! I'm extending the deadline because I'm so behind in posting. I was in Des Moines visiting my mom so one of my best friends, E, came to visit from Kansas City. We stayed out (late) catching up and decided to get some breakfast before going shopping. I decided to make Buttermilk waffles (p. 647) and .

The waffles were really simple. The wet ingredients (eggs, butter, and buttermilk) were mixed together:



In another bowl, the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt) were mixed and I made a well in the center. At this point I thought that it would have been a good idea to read this recipe before starting so I could have used a bigger bowl--it wasn't much of a well.



The wet ingredients were poured into the dry and it was briefly mixed. Don't worry if there are lumps--there are supposed to be lumps, overmixing the batter will ruin the waffles. I used a measuring cup to transfer batter to the waffle iron.



Several years ago, my mother kept complaining that she wanted a waffle iron. I knew full well she wasn't going to use it more than once a year so I refused to buy her one. Then, one day, I was out with my friend Ben at garage sales and we found a waffle iron for two dollars. It works perfectly, even if it is rather ugly:



The waffles were tender, fluffy, and delicious. They were easy to make, didn't stick, and were terrific. I think they were better than the waffles that I made earlier. I would (and will) make these in the future--and it made six waffles, exactly like it said (so if you are making waffles for a big group, make sure to at least double the recipe).



I thought that I should make something else to go with the waffles and the recipe for Eggs baked in a muffin tin (p. 199) jumped out at me (OT--I hate when people misuse the word "literally" as in "it literally jumped out at me". Unless words are attacking you, in which case you may want to seek medical attention, it didn't literally do anything).

I greased my mother's thousand-year-old muffin pan with some butter and then sprinkled some grated Parmesan and diced ham into each cup.





I cracked an egg into each of the spaces.



The recipe recommends a water bath but mom didn't have a big enough pan, so I didn't bother.




It didn't matter--they were absolutely perfect. And adorable! This may be the cutest breakfast item I've ever made. Plus they were delicious with bread. The Parmesan and ham were a great addition and it was a terrific way to make portioned eggs for a group.





And I'm sure that all of you are wondering what I bought when we went shopping :) I found my outfit for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner! I found a BCBG dress for 70% off!



And I ABSOLUTELY LOVE these Calvin Klein shoes. LOVE LOVE LOVE them. These shoes were amazingly on a double sale and then mom also had a coupon! Perfection.