Coffee Crepes With Coffee-Yogurt Filling

In honor of #CoffeeDay, here is an interesting take on having your coffee with your breakfast - Coffee in crepes and in the filling.

Ingredients:

Crepes

1/2 cup coffee

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 room temperature egg

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling

1 cup coffee yogurt

1/4 cup white sugar

Topping

1/2 cup cream cheese

4 squares of white chocolate

Candied sweet potato strips

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl add sweet potato, eggs, milk, melted butter, 1 teaspoon of the vanilla, and beat until combine.

Add wet ingredients into the flour bowl. Beat until batter is consistently smooth.

Over medium-high heat, warm up a skillet and add 1/2 tablespoon cold butter. Spread butter around skillet. Add a scoop of batter to the center of the skillet. Lift skillet and tilt around so that batter spreads around the bottom of skillet. Sprinkle with sweet potato cubes.  Cook 1 minute or until lightly browned; flip crepe and brown other side. Repeat process with remaining batter.

Set crepes aside to cool. Crepes must be cooled before assembly can begin.

Mix topping ingredients in separate bowl.

Lay one crepe out on a flat surface. Spread over crepe and roll

Top with topping and candied sweet potato or whipped cream.

Sweet Potato French Toast

I was able to use this recipe as a demonstration at the Livingston Sweet Potato Festival and it was a hit! All the samples I gave out disappeared and then folks in the audience even asked for the leftover scraps as I was cleaning up.

Ingredients

French Toast:

6 slices of sweet potato bread

2 Tbsp. cooked sweet potato puree

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Butter (for skillet and for serving)

For the filling:

1 c cooked sweet potato puree

1/4 c finely chopped walnuts (reserve some for topping)

1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Directions

To make the batter, whip together milk, eggs, brown sugar, sweet potato puree and cinnamon.

Dip bread, one piece at a time, in the batter and coat both sides of bread. Place coated bread on a buttered skillet.

While dipping the toast pieces, be sure to stir the batter between dips – sometimes the sweet potato and spices settle at the bottom.

Repeat with other pieces of bread until the skillet is full. Work in batches until all of the French toast is made.

To serve, place one piece of French toast on the plate and spread a layer of filling. Place second layer on top. As a serving suggestion, top with a pat of butter and place a few walnuts on top for a decorative effect.

Variations

If you don’t have sweet potato bread, you can use regular toast. Texas toast makes a good substitute.

Top with maple syrup or powdered sugar makes a traditional French toast topping.

Why I would Make This Again

French toast was originally named pan Perduu meaning “lost bread,” because you can use the recipe to recover stale bread that you might otherwise have to throw away. At our house, we usually don’t have the problem of leftover bread, and if we do, it’s because it’s gone moldy, not stale. If, however, you have leftover stale bread, this works. Using sweet potato bread gives it a boost in texture and flavor.

I would make this again because not only is there a lot of flavor, you can double the batch and either freeze or refrigerate the French toast in plastic zip bags for use for quick breakfasts during the week – just pop the slice out of the bag and put it in the bread toaster.

Instant Sweet Potato Pudding Pie

This is a simple recipe that is fast, easy and very tasty.

The recipe is so easy, it’s surprising how good it tastes.

Basically, you just mix sweet potato mash into instant pudding and pour into prepared graham cracker crust.

I was able to use this recipe as a demonstration at the Livingston Sweet Potato Festival and it was a big hit! I topped it with a shot of whipped cream and all of the samples disappeared. Just to make sure I had samples that were chilled enough, I made two the day before. I took the pie I made in the demo home and it disappeared, too.

Ingredients

1/4 cup sweet potato puree

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 box instant vanilla pudding mix

1 1/2 cups cold milk

1 premade graham cracker pie crust

1 oz. chopped pecans (optional)

1 can whipped cream (optional)

Directions

Mix together sweet potato puree, spices and milk first until well combined. Do this before adding the pudding mix because once you add the pudding mix, it starts to set up quickly.

Stir in the pudding mix and pour into crust.

Chill covered in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to let the pie set up.

I like leaving the pie in the fridge overnight so that the crust softens up some and isn’t so crumbly.

When serving, top with chopped pecans and whipped cream, if desired.

Why I would Make This Again

This is a very easy dessert and with careful selection of the ingredients, you can get the calories a lot lower than, say, a cheesecake. By not using all the milk, you can also get a firmer pie with some people prefer. I like to make this when there’s a last-minute invitation to a dinner or party where I want to bring a quick and easy dish. Plus the dry ingredients keep in the cupboard for awhile so you always have them in reserve.

Variations

Use a chocolate pie crust for a different flavor.

Cut graham cracker triangles and place in each piece of pie for a decoration.

The swirl: Sweet potatoes come in different varieties. Make two batches of sweet potato puree out of orange sweet potatoes and yellow sweet potatoes, then split the milk and pudding mix in half to make two batches – swirl the yellow and orange batches in the crust to make a neat special effect.

Lemon Curd

This is a fantastic recipe to use when you have a whole bunch of lemons to use up. My mom's tree had a bountiful harvest and we needed to use up a whole grocery bag full of lemons.

Ingredients

3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice  

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest  

3/4 cup granulated sugar   

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 eggs 

Directions

Cube the butter into small pieces. In a 2 quart saucepan, combine lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and and the butter cubes one or two at a time while continually stirring. Cook over medium-low heat until the curd is thick enough to hold marks when you drag a spoon across the bottle of the pan and then the first bubble or two start showing up. This takes about 5 to 7 minutes. Do not overcook.

Strain through a strainer if you want to make sure you get out any bits of egg that may have coagulagted.

Cool and serve.

Put lemon curd on toast, cake, just about anything that needs a sweet pucker of lemon flavor.

Why I'd Make This Again
Once you get the process down, it really is quite easy. Plus it's amazing all the uses you can put this curd to once you see it sitting in your fridge, just begging to be part of your breakfast or dessert.

Banana Coconut Almond Cakelets

These are cupcakes like but they are hearty enough to be eaten and are filling.

We really made them for a morning pick-me-up but work well for dessert, too. The lack of wheat flour and the use of almond and coconut flour gives them a grainy texture but it’s one that differentiates itself from your traditional banana-nut muffins.

Ingredients

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup almond flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (the riper the better)

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 tsp salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Walnut pieces

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat together sugar and eggs. Stir in bananas and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mix together coconut flour, almond flour, baking powder, salt nd cinnamon.

Combine wet ingredients into dry and stir until combined.

Spoon batter into muffin cups, about 2/3 full. Top with walnut pieces.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until a toothpick entered into the center comes out clean.

Variations

This recipe can be put into  loaf pan and made  into  sliceable loaf.  Toasting the slices give the nut ingredients a deeper flavor.

Why It’s Worth Making This Again

This is a nice change of pace from banana nut breads and the increased emphasis on the nuts over the banana inverts the way these little cakes taste and feel.