Pandoro French Toast

When we were in the US back in November, I made a stop at Williams-Sonoma for a bottle of vanilla extract and some harmless browsing (it's harmless because though I always find a million gadgets and cooking equipment I'd like to have in this store, I know I would never be able to bring it all back home in my suitcase, much less find space to store it in my kitchen).

Walking out with my extract and a cupcake corer (that'll fit in a suitcase!), I grabbed a recipe card for Panettone French Toast. I decided that since we'd be at home on Christmas Day this year, it would be perfect to have for breakfast. I've also always wanted an excuse to buy a panettone, a sweet Italian bread studded with raisins and / or candied fruit that you see pop up in the stores around Christmastime.

Well, I went to the grocery store looking for a panettone and ended up coming home with a pandoro, which is not exactly the same thing -- no raisins or other fruit involved -- but works fine as a substitute. It is excellent just plain and reminded me alot of a kugelhopf or a brioche-esque bread. I liked it so much that I bought a second one for dessert on New Year's Eve.

I regret to say that I lost a good part of the pandoro trying to make the French toast. Some pieces soaked too long and fell apart while others stuck to the bottom of the pan. The bread being rather large in diameter, cutting it into managable pieces unfortunately meant not having a sturdy crust on all sides. All in all, three slices came out ok, which was perfect to share between the two of us.

I served the French toast-ed pandoro sprinkled with powdered sugar and with maple syrup on the side. Like on New Year's Eve, I also made cranberry-orange sauce to accompany the dish. This recipe is a keeper -- I loved the addition of orange juice and zest to the egg mixture and plan to try with on other types of bread.

Pandoro French Toast

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma’s recipe for Panettone French Toast

Yield: 6 servings

1 pandoro

3 eggs

1 cup milk

Grated zest of 1 orange

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste

Softened unsalted butter for brushing

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Warm maple syrup or other accompaniments for serving

1. Preheat your oven to 200°F. Cut the pandoro into horizontal, 1-inch thick slices (discard the end slices). Cut each slice in half.

2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs until just blended, then whisk in the milk, orange zest, orange juice, granulated sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour the egg mixture into a large, shallow dish and add the bread slices. Soak, turning once, about 5 seconds per side (do not oversoak!).

3. Heat a griddle on medium heat and brush with butter. When the butter foams, add a few of the bread slices to the griddle. Cook, turning once, until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes per side. Turn the slices over again and cook for a few minutes more per side until browned. 


4. Using a spatula, transfer the French toast to serving plates and place them in the oven. Cook the remaining bread slices.

5. If desired, sprinkle the French toast with confectioners’ sugar. Serve with maple syrup or other accompaniments.

Le réveillon de Noël

Over the years since I've moved to France, people on both sides of the pond often ask me food-related questions: what do the French eat for breakfast, what is the typical Thanksgiving meal, do you really get to take 2-hour lunches (no!)...and the question I get asked most this time of year, what do you eat at Christmas?

When we're stateside, we get together on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My family does the big formal meal thing at Thanksgiving, so Christmas is lower-key. We do hors-d'oeuvres on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day, we have ham and potato salad and all the shrimp cocktail you can eat. We've celebrated this way for as long as I can remember, and I always look forward to spending this time of year with my family.

This year we spent Christmas in France, celebrating on Christmas Eve with "le réveillon de Noël", the traditional French Christmas Eve dinner, prepared by my mother-in-law (who, by the way, is a great cook). I'm happy to say that I had the presence of mind to take pictures of the meal so that I could share them with you. We normally start off with champagne and hors-d'oeuvres, toasting the events of the past year and those to come in the next.

We then move onto the first course, fois gras and salad. In December 2009, I was pregnant and couldn't eat fois gras, so I was very excited to be able to indulge this year (though not without a certain degree of guilt, and I'm not referring to fat content...).

The main course was capon with chestnuts and sauteed apples.

On the plate, accompanied by carrot puree and stuffing ("farce").

After the main course comes the cheese tray. I didn't take a picture, but I'm sure you can use your imagination. We had camembert, goat cheese, old Gouda, Saint Albray and a couple of others I'm forgetting.

For dessert we had a chestnut-flavored bûche de noël (yule log), accompanied by chestnut ice-cream and candied chestnuts. As you can see, chestnuts are quite popular at Christmastime in France.

Afterwards there's tea and coffee for anyone who is game. And presents, of course!

Eating cake in Budapest

Every year in December my husband and I try to spend a long weekend in a new European city. There are always good flight deals in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and though the weather can be chilly, it's usually a fun time to be out and about because the holiday season not only lightens everyone's mood but also ensures that you'll have some pretty decorations to look at.

This year we went to Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is a very large, beautiful city with amazing architecture. We went to Vienna, Austria, a few years back and you can definitely see the Austrian Habsburg influence on some of Budapest's most prominent buildings.

On our second day, we awoke to discover that it had snowed heavily overnight, blanketing the city and causing the airport to close. It was all very beautiful but also very cold, which gave us the perfect excuse to take refuge in cafés in between our visits to the sites. I love coffee and cake and Budapest did not disappoint. Here are some of the local specialties that we tried:

- small individual cakes: the cake with the white tree on top was chocolate with a hazelnut filling, the one with the yellow bell was chocolate with coconut and the cake decorated with holly was actually two hazelnut cookies sandwiched together with berry preserves (it tasted a bit like a linzertorte).

- Dobos torte: a well-known Hungarian speciality made up of multiple layers of sponge cake and chocolate buttercream, topped with caramelized sugar

- Gerbeaud "Valrhona" torte: chocolate cake with chocolate filling / icing, flavored with candied apricot (my favorite of them all) (the second dessert in the picture is an apple strudel)

We enjoyed both the Dobos torte and the Valrhona torte at a Budapest institution, Gerbeaud cafe. This cafe was very elegant and reminded me of some of the coffee / cake shops we went to in Vienna. They were out of the sachertorte on the days we went or else I probably would've forced down a slice of that too...

- kurtoskalacs: a Hungarian pastry that tastes like a sweet, thin but dense bread and comes in a hallowed-cylinder form (we bought the cinnamon and sugar flavored version)

- Gundel palacsinta: yet another Hungarian specialty, these are crepe-like pancakes filled with ground nuts, dried fruit, cinnamon and rum and topped with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar

Wow, only in doing this post did I realize how much pastry we consumed over the course of four days. We did a lot of sight-seeing too, I promise!

Gumdrop Bread

Ready for some more retro holiday baking? During our trip to the US a few weeks ago, I picked up two bags of Christmas-themed red and green gum drops ("spice drops" to be precise) thinking that maybe I'd use them as decoration for the gingerbread house I had intended to make last year but couldn't (first trimester nauseousness and a sudden repulsion to spices derailed my plans). But once I got home and I started putting up our holiday decorations, this crazy idea to make gumdrop bread instead popped into my head.

I remember making gumdrop bread only once -- also around Christmastime -- when I was very young and still in preschool. I took home a slice for my mother, but my sweet tooth told hold and I ended up eating all of the gumdrops out of it before giving it to her. Funny how our tastes change, because this time around I picked out the gumdrops to get to the bread!

I loved looking at the cross-sections of the bread and seeing where the gumdrops ended up. I'm not too surprised that I haven't seen gumdrop bread outside of my preschool days because it seems to be a dessert that kids, moreso than adults, would enjoy. A version using multi-colored gumdrops would be fun for a child's -- or a candy addict's -- birthday party.

Gumdrop Bread

Adapted from Cooks.com

Yield: 10-12 servings

3 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 1/2 cups milk

2 tablespoon grapeseed oil

1 cup cut-up gum drops

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg, milk and oil.

3. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined. Add in the gumdrops and pour into a greased loaf or bundt pan.

4. Bake for approximately 1 hour. Bread is done when an inserted toothpick or skewer comes out clean.

Star Sugar Cookies

I'm really excited that the holiday season has arrived. We celebrate Christmas, and I love putting up the tree, listening to Christmas music and, of course, holiday baking. For me, the Christmas season kicks off today, the day after US Thanksgiving.

I just love sugar cookies at any time of the year and am always looking for an excuse to use my cookie cutters. Last year I bought some Christmas-themed cookie cutters at a John Lewis store I stumbled upon on Sloane Square in London (and what a fortunate stumble it was -- it was a real pleasure to be able to shop without fear of being stampeded by fellow shoppers, unlike another London department store that shall remain nameless...).

(Nevermind the tea towels, though I love them just as much -- this was a picture that didn't make the cut for my Loot from London post)

I have to come clean here -- I actually made these last July smack dab in between the American Independance Day and France's Bastille Day. I was going for a patriotic red, white and blue theme but found that the result was more retro Noël instead -- kind of like something you'd expect to be served at a Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Christmas party.

I held onto the photos and figured I'd keep them in my back pocket for a later post. This ended up being a good idea because today I'll be bride and bridesmaid dress shopping with my recently engaged sister. So I guess it's best that I made the cookies a few months ago and am not currently chowing down on them.

I used the recipe for Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The cookies are topped with my go-to cookie frosting recipe: powdered sugar + a small amount of any liquid such as milk, water, etc. (this time I used lemon juice).

I really like this sugar cookie recipe -- though they were supposed to be crisp and buttery, the cookies turned out very soft and just sweet enough. As usual, I think this is due to the US recipe / French ingredient combination, which can sometimes be disastrous but this time actually worked out quite well.