Apple Cinnamon French Toast (Visually)

I've been on a warm fall foods kick in our house. Last weekend it was baby cinnamon rolls. This week it's Apple Cinnamon French Toast.  The apple flavor is subtle but a great way to gussy up the french toast if you aren't normally a fan of the whole grain flavor.

If you prefer your recipes in standard layouts that are easier to read (or print), this recipe has also been posted on BakeSpace here. If you are a newbie or just like watching the process, read on!

Panda Pancakes!

I've been seeing pictures floating around pinterest of some awesome pancake art. Most of them are from Jim's Pancakes - who has brought pancaking to an art form. Amazing stuff. Check it out if you are looking for awesome pancake inspiration!

I'd had the idea in my head to do panda pancakes for a while. I tried the "blob" technique where I just blobbed the batter onto the pan, and while it looked okay on the griddle:

It did not look so great when I took it off. So un-great in fact, there is not even photographic evidence of it's existence.

For my next attempt, I decided to try watered down batter in squeeze jars. These turned out much better:

Here is how I did it:

Recipe Review: Mango Sticky Rice

A few weeks ago, a crafter I follow on twitter, Reese Dixon (whose name is actually Tresa), tweeted about this Mango Sticky Rice recipe that she absolutely adores.  Normally I am not a coconut mango sticky rice kind of gal (for starters, I'm not a huge coconut fan) but I had a thai food night coming up with hubster so decided to try it.  At the very least, I know that hubster likes coconut.

It was A. Mazing.

I didn't make the sauce to pour on top because I felt the rice was already a bit on the saucy side after pouring the coconut milk mixture over the top.

This rice, though, is the stuff. The recipe is super easy to make and it can kind of do it its thing in the background while you work on the rest of dinner.

Check out the recipe on the Reese Dixon blog  here.

Cooking MacGyver Style

There is a special place in my heart for doing things differently. Like when Joe and I moved from Boston to Portland and drove cross-country, we utilized what we had (a car) to make lunch a la Manifold Destiny. You can check out our blog entries on this here: Our Little Lunch Experiment Take 1, lunch experiment take 2 and Mmm burrito.

So today, when I was scouring the internet for something completely different but happened upon a post about how to make chicken and cous-cous in your coffee pot I thought it was BRILLIANT. It almost makes me want to go acquire this kind of coffee pot just to experiment to see if it might work.

What about you? What kind of creative cooking (or otherwise) exploits have you undertaken to do things just a little differently than the rest?