Double Recipe Test: Crescent Rolls and Kentucky Hot Brown Bake

This crescent rolls recipe is a very frequent pin. I was totally excited to find that it's from the Nomemade blog, from my way-back-when hometown of Nome, Alaska.

Less frequent, but still intriguing, is a pin for "Kentucky Hot Brown Bake" a casserole-style take on the Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich from Eat at Home. The recipe calls for canned crescent roll dough, so I thought I would try the homemade version and do a two-fer recipe test. These are the images I pinned:

The crescent roll recipe is a simple yeast bread recipe. It calls for powdered milk, and I've heard that you can't sub fresh milk. Something about the powdered variety makes the rolls really tender.

The Kentucky Hot Brown Bake is dough layered with turkey, bacon, tomatoes, and Swiss, with beaten eggs poured over.

The crescent dough came together really easily. One issue: the dough was waaaaay too sticky. I ended up adding almost an entire additional cup of flour.

Once that was resolved, everything went smoothly. I made crescent rolls out of half the dough, and saved the other half for the bake. 

Size discrepancies due to lots of "helping" by a certain 3-year-old. 

They came out GREAT! They were absolutely delicious, tender and fluffy. They just disappeared off the table at dinner. The batch that you see above was eaten in one sitting by three adults, two preschoolers, and two babies.

Next application: Kentucky Hot Brown Bake.

The recipe is simple: layer uncooked dough with sandwich ingredients, pour over beaten egg, repeat layering, pour on more beaten egg, then bake. This is it before I baked it:

I was leery that it might be overly rich and greasy or soggy, but it actually turned out quite well. I think it might be best suited as a brunch dish.  At the very least, you want a nice green salad on the side to make a more balanced meal.

Verdict: Crescent rolls = delicious, a real keeper. Kentucky Hot Brown Bake = A tasty and different brunch dish.

Double Recipe Test: Nutella French Toast and Nutella Hot Chocolate

Nutella's a big Pinterest favorite, for obvious reasons. I'm a huge fan of Nutella, and have tried a couple of pinned recipes recently.

First, this Nutella French Toast recipe from The Kitchen Life of a Navy Wife.

Second, Nutella Hot Chocolate from The Hungry Housewife.

I didn't make these to serve together - that would be way too much.

For the french toast, I used frozen defrosted raspberries - winter in Alaska means no good fresh strawberries. It was a very easy variation on regular old french toast. Just make a Nutella sandwich before you dip the bread into the egg mixture.  I used the whole grain "white" style bread.

And of course, it was delicious. It was extremely sweet, though - the kind of breakfast where you're hungry again in an hour. I think it would be far better as a dessert, perhaps as part of a brunch buffet. Here's what mine looked like.

The Nutella cocoa recipe is also very easy. Just whisk together Nutella, a tablespoon of cocoa powder, skim milk, and a pinch of salt. Heat on the stove top. The original recipe includes homemade whipped cream, but I skipped that part.

In case you were wondering what a cup of cocoa looks like:

It was good. Of course. But I don't think it was a whole lot better than stovetop cocoa made with cocoa powder/sugar/milk, especially if you spice it up your standard stovetop recipe with some cinnamon, pinch of cayenne, etc.

Verdict: I'd call these successful, but I still think the best use for Nutella is spread on a warm crepe or piece of good French bread.

Bacon and Egg Cups

This easy breakfast recipe for bacon and eggs in a cupcake pan from Fat Girl Trapped In a Skinny Body looked good. Like one of those "why didn't I think of that!" recipes that becomes the new go-to. The pancakes in a cupcake tin recipe I reviewed a while back worked wonderfully, so I thought this was a sure thing.

It's very easy indeed, just beat some eggs with milk, and pour them into the bacon-adorned cupcake tin. Top with cheese and bake.

Here's how mine looked before baking. 

And right after they came out of the oven. The tops looked overdone while the bacon still seemed mushy.

And sure enough, the eggs were undercooked and the bacon was overcooked. There's a suggestion in the comments to pre-cook the bacon. But at that point, it just seems easier to make scrambled eggs and bacon. And look at the cupcake tin - it's a mess! I hate scrubbing those things.

Verdict: Not worth the hassle. Maybe if you're set on these for a brunch dish, you could play around with pre-cooking and either lining or greasing the tins. But I wash my hands of this recipe.

Pancake Muffins

This pancake bites recipe comes from The World According to Eggface.

Basically, you throw together your favorite pancake recipe (mine is temporarily dairy-free), then bake it in muffin tins instead of frying on the stovetop.

I feared that this might result in muffin tins filled with stuck-on pancake batter. But I hate standing at the stove for 40 minutes flipping flapjacks. So I forged ahead.

Uncooked, the pancakes looked like this:

I just sprinkled on some wild blueberries I had in the freezer, and some chopped walnuts. The recipe calls for baking 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

My preferred bacon method is baking, and it seems to take about 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. So I had put the bacon in about 10 minutes earlier, then popped these in.

Then I went and finished my coffee on the couch. WAY easier than standing over a skillet.

They came right out of the pan, no sticking problems at all. And they were fantastic. Really delicious, and not at all heavy or greasy. This has become our go-to pancake method, the guys love it. It works perfectly with baked bacon.

 
The one change I've since made is to pour in some batter, then put in the add-ins, then pour more batter over. It puts the fruit more in the middle of the muffin.

Verdict: Perfect! Why haven't I been doing this all these years?

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Oh, these looked so good. Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Recipe Snobs.

The basic idea is to pour pancake batter into the pan as you normally would, then pipe in a butter/sugar/cinnamon mixture in a spiral. Flip once, then you have cinnamon roll pancakes.

The problem I had is this: once you flip it, the mixture all melts out and coats the pan in sticky sugar mess, leaving sort of flavorless plain pancakes that look like this:

I didn't make the cream cheese glaze, and made some substitutions because we're dairy-free right now (vegan butter substitute, almond milk). Still, I don't think that was the problem. I don't see this turning out any different with real milk and butter.

It might be possible to make it work by pouring only part of the batter, then the sugar mixture, then more batter. But I can't be bothered to try it again.

This was not any better than regular old pancakes with some banana and blueberry mixed in.

Verdict: Not too bad, but SUCH a disappointment compared to the picture.