Apparently yesterday was National Pancake Day. Who knew? Well, actually I knew after I saw about 50 foodie blog / recipe / retail references to it. But not knowing before hand, I wasn’t really with it. Oh well. Anyway, after seeing those fifty or so references, I had a craving, so I made this for breakfast. The pancake for lazy people. Pass the syrup please.
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I could make “Energy/Protein Bars that don’t break the bank”. A box of 12 of the kind that he likes costs $25, which is $2.08 per bar. To be honest, I didn’t think that it was possible, and this experiment pretty much proved it: cost per bar ended up at $1.88, not including my time. Nuts, dried fruit, coconut butter, cocoa powder and nibs … all very pricey. I could probably bring the price down for 10 or 15 cents if I bought in huge volumes / bulk, but seeing this was an experiment, I went with normal sized purchases. Also, never having made energy bars before (and to be honest, I never really even thought about making them before now), I didn’t know how they would turn out, or if he would like them. If you like energy bars, these are pretty good. If you are “eh” on the topic of energy bars, you might not like them. I think that they are “good not great”.
Recipe 1000. One thousand. A one with three zeros after it. Wow. Ugh. Holy Cow. That’s a lot of food. Yes, this French-style Apple Custard Tart marks the 1000th recipe on this here website. I had wanted to hit 1000 at the 4 years mark, but I am a few weeks late. Oh well. I have a day job afterall.
This tart uses the smallest Pink Lady Apples that I have ever seen. They were really only about 2 inches in diameter. They were even sold as mini apples. You could, of course, use “normal sized apples” but as I had these, I used these instead. Note that this tart isn’t overly sweet, so if you are an “a la mode” person, definitely scoop on the ice cream!
Everyone has their own way of cooking bacon. In the pan, in the oven, even in the microwave. My method involves the oven, covering the pan with aluminum foil (for easier clean up), but also by placing the bacon on a wire rack placed on the prepared baking sheet. Why? Well, two reasons: 1. by raising the bacon away from the pan, there is better airflow, so the bacon crisps from the bottom as well, leaving the bacon nice and flat and 2. also because the bacon is raised from the pan, it causes less splatters (the reason bacon splatters is because the heated grease under the bacon doesn’t have any place to go with the bacon on top of it, so it eventually “pops” to have the air/grease escape, causing splatters. I don’t know that this is the “best” method, but it is the one that I use. Onwards: