[RECIPE] Peanut Butter and Bacon French Toast Sandwich
Because every week is sandwich week, really.
This recipe works best with some nicely staled challah - we get ours from Costco. Don’t make any plans to do anything for at least a few hours afterwards.
Serves 2-3
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- ground cinnamon
- 300ml of whole milk
- 50ml of double cream
- Skippy Smooth peanut butter
- 6-8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
- 1tbsp of vanilla extract
- at least half a stick of unsalted butter to hand at room temperature
- icing sugar
- blueberries
- maple syrup
- 2/3 stale challah rolls (or other white bread)
Method
Preheat the oven and throw the bacon in on a baking tray.
Beat the eggs, milk and cream together lightly. Add in a good dash of cinnamon and the vanilla extract.
Pour the mixture in to a flat bottomed dish.
Halve your rolls and submerge them into the dish for a minute, flip and then do the other side too. Try to get as good a covering as you can so the mixture has really soaked in.
Melt a healthy knob of butter in your favourite pan.
Batch fry the toast, making sure the pan doesn’t get too hot and brown the butter too much. 2-3 minutes per side should do it but you can flip pretty regularly. Keep going until they’re a pleasing golden brown.
Once the toast is cooked, let them cool a little and then add a healthy dollop of peanut butter. Smooth works best with this recipe since it’ll melt quickly and is easier to spread without ruining the finish of your toast.
The bacon should nicely crisp by this stage - wipe off any excess grease with some kitchen towel, snap them in two and put them on top of one half.
Apply the top half, add a liberal dose of maple syrup, a cursory handful of blueberries on the side and sieve a layer of icing sugar on top.
Cancel your plans for the rest of the day.
- Simon.
I’m not even going in to what Agave syrup is because I don’t care.
- A review of Long White Cloud in Shoreditch, from the excellent London Review of Breakfasts
Is a tumblr site a pre-requisite for new cafes then?
[REVIEW] Eggs Benedict / Austin Java / Austin, TX
Austin is blessed with a plethora of fine breakfast emporiums, and as American coffee goes, Austin Java is pretty good. There are a few different locations around the city (including a kiosk at the airport) but our favourite is the Parkway spot; it has a lovely deck out the front where you can enjoy a sunny Eggs Benedict.
Great muffins and a serviceable hollandaise make this worth the stroll out of downtown proper, and if you’re in Austin during SXSW, we can guarantee this is far enough away from the throng of more central breakfast spots.
Their breakfast quesadilla looked pretty special too, and stick to filter coffee. Espresso round these parts isn’t anything to write home about.
★[BREAKFAST] Hawksmoor / Guild Hall / A Sausage Sandwich to Die For
So good I had to write it up twice.
I’d just like to make a quick concession to the Sausage Sandwich with French dip. What is this French dip you ask?
A French dip sandwich, also known as a beef dip, is a hot sandwich consisting of thinly sliced roast beef (or, sometimes, other meats) on a “French roll” or baguette. It is usually served au jus (“with juice”), that is, with beef juice from the cooking process. Beef broth or beef consomme is sometimes substituted.
Source Wikipedia
This is the second French Dip I’ve had in London, the first being from Yianni at the Meatwagon when he was still in Peckham.
What you need to know is that they are great. The Hawksmoor sausage variant is one of the best sandwiches of the year, and just adds to the arsenal that is the Guild Hall breakfast menu. The bread, sausage and gravy are an incredible morning combination.
Another quick mention for the boiled eggs with anchovy soldiers - perfectly soft and the soldiers are perfectly crisp sticks of umami. And also those baked goods are still incredible.
Best breakfast in town.
[REVIEW / ON TOUR] Vanilla dipped French Toast / Tupelo Junction Cafe / Santa Barbara, CA
This stuff shouldn’t be served for brunch, it is so moreishly dessert-like.
With deceptively soft ‘n fluffy French-baguette-style bread, the perfectly heavy-but-not-too-heavy whipped cream and jammy sweet blackberry sauce welded together at the bottom of the plate like a soup. Mopping it up with the bread was like eating a decadently syrupy bread and butter pudding.
It was filling as all hell as too: the perfect follow up to the previous Four Loko’d evening.
A fine breakfast option if you’re passing through Santa Barbara.
- Rob.
★[ON TOUR / REVIEW] Clinton Street Baking Co. / Eggs Benedict Biscuit Brunch / New York City
When it comes to a benedict, serving it on a buttermilk biscuit is just an enormous no-no.
Hype.
Hype hypey hype.
In a city that breakfasts and brunches with the very best of them, Clinton Street Baking Company is right up there on the must-visit lists. The weekend queues can be legendary. We, however, showed up mid-morning on a Monday. We didn’t have to queue, to the point where merely asking for a table and getting one immediately seemed to piss off the Maitre d’.
So we were in, nestled at the back near the kitchen window, and we were hungry. For me, the eggs benedict is always the quality benchmark, especially in such a celebrated environment. It’s worth noting at this point that Clinton Street are all about the biscuits and gravy throughout the menu. When it comes to a benedict, serving it on a buttermilk biscuit is just an enormous no-no.
Biscuits are effectively scones. Imagine a scone with a slightly overcooked poached egg, some fairly flavourless hollandaise and some inexplicable shavings of red pepper and, er, spring onion. Sorry, scallions.
And then, when you cut into it, the biscuit (scone) immediately disintegrates. Because that’s what they do. It ruins the dish, makes a huge mess and you’re left picking out the inexplicable bits of spring onion from your teeth.
Compared to a muffin or toast-based benedict, this was a huge disappointment. I don’t mind a good biscuit when used in the right context, but here it was being different just for the thematic sake of it. One of the worst dishes on this trip in a place that seemed like it would be a slam dunk.
Oh and the pancakes were fine, but the maple butter was weird. A greasier, claggier version of syrup that had a slight burnt aftertaste. $13 is a bit punchy.
I don’t think we ordered right, but I just can’t suffer through another of their buttermilk biscuits, so won’t be back for another go.
Don’t believe the hype, and leave the queues for everyone else. Katz’s Deli is only round the block.
- Simon.
