Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast

Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast
Two year old tested. Mother approved.

This recipe was so easy and delicious. I will most definitely add this in my rotation of meals.  I have always liked stuffed french toast, but all of the stuffed french toast recipes that I know take a lot of time and effort. This one was so simple and easy, and had the basic same results.

My little 2 year old son absolutely loved this! He got really excited when he saw that I was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for him.  When I told him that he was going to have to wait just a little bit longer, and that Mama was making him something special, he automatically started crying.  I don't know what is more sad, the fact that my poor little baby is crying, or that I think that he is so cute crying that I have to take a picture of it. :)  Oh man, the things that we have our little ones do.  I will try not to post any pictures that are too embarrassing for him though.  At least pictures that won't be embarrassing until he's 16. 


Here is the recipe. I highly recommend that if you already don't make this at home, that you try it for you next breakfast/lunch/ brunch. It was so delicious! Grilling the peanut and jelly made the peanut butter all soft and warm. It completely changed the inside texture into something a little bit more appealing than standard peanut butter.  I hope you all enjoy!


Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast - 1960's

 Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Clean Up Time: 5 minutes

3/4 Cup Peanut Butter, Creamy
6 Tablespoons of your favorite Jelly ( I used strawberry)
12 slices of bread
3/4 Cup of Milk
3 Eggs
Dash of Cinnamon
Non stick cooking spray

1. Make your peanut and jelly sandwiches as usually. I used creamy peanut butter and strawberry jelly. 


2.  Mix together eggs and milk for french toast solution. I always add just a little dash of cinnamon to my french toast.  This was especially good here because it brought out more of the peanut butter and jelly flavor.


3.  Dip sandwich tops in egg mixture.  Flip around and dip sandwich bottom in egg mixture.

4.  Apply non stick cooking spray or butter to pan that you are using. Turn on stove to medium heat. ( The sandwiches are a little heavier than your usual french toast. It may cause your sandwich to stick to the pan.  I have really nice non stick pan and it still got stuck a little bit.)


5. Cook each side of the sandwich evenly. This will take about 3 minutes on either side. Each side will be done when it appears slightly brown. - Not black, black means burnt.  JK.

6.  Enjoy! The peanut butter and jelly inside the sandwich will be HOT. STEAMING HOT !So be careful before giving it to any small children.

 

My son really loved this sandwich. It really combined two of his favorite meals into one : PB & J and french toast. 

I hope you all enjoy this recipe.  Also, if anyone has a good recipe for stuffed french toast with cream cheese, I would love to have it. 

- Virginia

Apple Dilly Cake - It's a dilly of a cake!

Apple Dilly Cake-

Very similar to Carrot Cake in texture and sweetness.  Extremely aromatic.

I have been really excited to get started on my blog project. Fortunately, my parents stopped by and gave me one last ingredient to make this delicious cake - apples!  I also learned that most of this collection of recipes came from my grandma's bridge club.  All the ladies would get together and cut out and share their recipes with each other.  I think this is very nice. My grandma was a very pretty popular party lady back in the day.  She was also a strong Hungarian woman with a wild streak a mile wild and a talent for cooking.  lol.  Knowing this about her, I can completely see her with her lady friends smoking a cigarette and drinking a scotch. 

This recipe came from 1963, and I had some questions about what could be different in the past 45 years.  First of all the recipe calls for flour.  Is my all purpose flour the same as the flour on the recipe card?  That sent me googling - for the first time.  I couldn't exactly find when all purpose flour began being sold. Maybe I was just over reacting and all purpose flour is as old as time.  Maybe the cave men used all purpose flour.  The only thing that I found on google was that there are two types of flour 'bread flour' and 'all purpose flour'. Bread flour is for, as the name suggests, for making breads. It contains a lot of glutten that will make the dough more chewy.  All purpose flour contains more wheat flour. The wheat flour is low in glutten. This makes the dough more light and fluffy.  Alright, good to know. So, I dumped in my 'all purpose flour'.

The second problem I came into is the ingredients for the frosting. It says to make a boiled frosting with egg and apples.  What? Where's the boiling? How the heck do I cook this? What does it mean boiled frosting with egg and apple? I googled- for the second time.  I had no idea how to make real frosting besides cream cheese frosting.  I couldn't find a good boiled frosting recipe that where I had all of the ingredients (some required corn syrup.) I decided to just get the can of vanilla frosting from my cabinet out and add apples to it. LOL. This whole baking thing will require BABY STEPS.  

I thought about the whole frosting thing out. Is it possible that women of the 60's just baked so much that they could make a boiled frosting with just the mention of apples and eggs? Probably. I really wish that I knew how to bake like that. 

On  my last blog post, I added some pictures of the some of the funny and historical papers that I found in my grandmother's collection. I have a really great 'vintage' cigarette ad that was on the back of the recipe at the bottom of this post. If I were in the 1960's I would completely smoke a pack of day just looking at it.


Here is my first recipe! I hope you all enjoy!





Apple Dilly Cake

The cake is very light and fluffy, not to mention extremely aromatic! The recipe calls has an apple cake and a boiled frosting type of frosting. 

Prep Time: 12 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes
Clean Up Time: 10 minutes

1/2 Cup butter or margerine
1    Cup Sugar
1    Egg, well beaten
1 1/2 Cup sifted flour
1 Tsp. Baking Soda
1/4 Tsp. Nutmeg
1/4 Tsp. Salt
1 Tsp. Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp. Cloves
1/4 Tsp. Nutmeg
1/2 Cup coffee
1 Cup chopped apples
1/2 Cup chopped walnuts
1 Cup chopped raisins

1.  Cream together butter and sugar

2.  Add beaten eggs and blend well

3. Sift together dry ingredients and add to the mixture

4. Add coffee to ingredients

5. Stir in Apples, nuts, and raisins.

6.  Turn into greased and floured 11 x 7 x 1.5" pan.

7. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool.

8. Frost with boiled frosting recipe mixed with 1 Cup of chopped apples that consists of eggs. (I frosted it with vanilla frosting with chopped apples mixed in.)

Since the cake was only about 1.75" tall i decided to cut it in half and frost it on top of each other. 

The vanilla frosting that I substitued was really sweet.  I think if I were to make it again, that I would learn how to make a boiled frosting recipe. The combo of the sweet baked raisins and sweet vanilla frosting was just a little bit to sweet for my tastes.

I have to say that this cake really reminds of carrot cake.  It has the same texture and consistency. It has the same amount of sweetness that carrot cake has also. 



Every one of these recipes is a little adventure. I think this cigarette ad- from 1963- is great. I really wish I was that lady.

Yummm.... the "cool air softened" taste of Salem. I think I will pick up a pack ---- JK.

Virginia

Grandma's Cookbook

When my Grandma died about ten years ago, I inherited her recipe collection. Even though I was just 16 at time, I have taken them with me everywhere I have moved.  I have felt bad looking at my Grandma's life recipes sitting in a large plastic Tupperware cake holder.  Since I have a little more free time, I am have decided to finally sort through her recipes, and try them all out. It will take quite a while.  There are thousands of recipes in here. Also- about 75% of them are desert recipes! YUM!

So step one is to separate all of these recipes into categories

So the main categories consist of: Cakes, Cookies, Desert Bars, Pies, Jello molds, Salads, Dinners, Jams, Dressings, Misc. Deserts, Candy, ... and there are probably some more yet to come.



I just spent around the past hour doing just that much. It's gong to take a long time get through them all.  But, I do have to admit, I have found some pretty funny things.  Some 'nostalgic' things I should say

Deserts men like! Oh man!  I  love the 1960's little icons of the smiling men. lol Oh they're so happy. 

I also came across this

It's a letter from the UAW (my grandpa worked for GM as a welder). "We personally believe Jimmy Carter should be America's next President." What a great piece of history!   I actually received a letter from the Sierra Club telling me what I should vote for too. So, I guess its not soo crazy. But this is a wonderful piece of history.

So what are my plans you should ask? My plans are to bake or cook my way through this entire box.  It's time to liberate the recipes. I'm going to post the recipe and pictures from everything that I make.   This really sounds like something fun to embark upon. 

Much Love,

Virginia