Poppy Seed Brioche French Toast with Honey, Lemon & Blueberries

Technically not a bread, brioche is a viennoiserie instead because of all the egg and butter used (hence more of a pastry, if you will)! It can be eaten plain, sweetened or even savoury and is characterised by the shiny, dark and flaky exterior, which is emphasised with a egg wash before baking. It tastes almost like croissant but is a lot easier and less time consuming to make.

After some searching, I found this awesome recipe for making brioche. It's super rich, delicate and melt-in-your-mouth. It freezes wonderfully and toasts very well in a toaster.

Once you've made your brioche you can prepare it for freezing (if that is your plan). Let it cool for a while before using an electric carving knife to cut through that soft, fluffy bread. You can store the slices in ziplock bags and then put them in the freezer in a spot where they won't be squashed. 

For the French toast slightly stale bread works best, so you can leave out a few slices to dry out overnight. Alternatively, start right away! One of my new favourite discoveries is The Sugar Hit, where you can get the recipe details on how to make this yummy French Toast (you can see from my photos that I added the poppy seeds into the bread rather than the French toast batter; and I used fresh blueberries).

Winter Salad Inspiration

For a crisp, sunny winter's day.

Ingredients:
1/2 of a medium roasted butternut, peeled
1/3 wheel of feta
A few salad leaves
Some watercress
1 tsp sunflower seeds
1/4 tsp linseed
1 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Method:
Lay out the salad leaves on a plate and lay the roughly chopped butternut on top.
Next, break up the feta over the butternut. 
Mix together oil and lemon juice, adding salt & pepper to taste. 
Then gently pour this dressing over the feta and the butternut and top it off with the seeds.You can even roast the sunflower seeds in a dry pan beforehand if you would like them to have a more toasty flavour.

Gourmet it: 
Add in squares of roasted beetroot, chopped pieces of fresh orange and maybe even some ripe avocado.
Perhaps a touch of chilli and a teaspoon of Bulgarian yoghurt in the dressing will go down well too.

Guaca mole

You might have noticed that if you mash an avocado and add salt and pepper you have a pretty good mole. Then you need to add some lemon or lime juice to stop it from browning. And that would be good and you'd be done.

But what if you wanted to make a really good guacamole, how would you do it? Well, this is my suggestion:

Ingredients:
1 ripe avo
Lemon or lime juice
1/2 red pepper
1/2 tomato
1 red or green chilli (optional)
1 cloves of crushed garlic
1 tbsp of sour cream (or greek yoghurt if you must)
1 rasher of bacon
Tabasco sauce
A few stalks of dhania / coriander
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Fry the bacon until crispy and then remove it from the pan and chop it up into tiny bits.
Finely chop your chilli, tomato & red pepper and fry that in the bacon pan. Afterwards you can also fry the garlic a little bit.
Mash your peeled avocado and mix in some lime juice to preserve the green. Add in the sour cream and the bacon pieces. Add the tomato, chilli and red pepper. Tabasco can be added just for the flavour if you already used a hot chilli.
Salt and pepper can add a great dimension, so do add that as well.

Go and enjoy that with some crumbed fish or a burger.

Fact: Avocados are also called "alligator pears" and they are classified as berries.

Easy Flapjack-Crumpets

2 cups plain flour
* 3/4 cup granulated sugar
* 3 teaspoons baking powder
* 3 eggs
* 1 cup milk
* 30 g melted butter

Direction
Mix everything, leaving butter for last.
Grease a flat bottomed frying pan or griddle.
Drop or pour small amounts of batter onto griddle.
Turn and cook other side when bubbles break on surface of crumpet.
Heat should be medium to get a deep, even golden colour.
Serve warm with butter and jam sandwiched together. "
OR WITH CREAM!! I had this for lunch today. It was very satisfying..and tasty! I only used a 1/2 cup of sugar though. They were sweet enough to eat plain like that. yumm. I'd like to make these with black berries in the batter!!!