On hosting brunch

Deb of SmittenKitchen has a wonderful post about how to cook brunch and still sleep in. This is inspired by her.

The menu:

• Tomato and goat cheese crostata with rosemary crust
• Kale frittata with spicy (soy) chorizo, sharp cheddar and tomatoes (adapted from David Lebovitz)
• Raspberry cornmeal muffins (from Mom's Big Book of Baking, probably one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks)
• Baked french toast with berry sauce (from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook of course!)
• Breakfast potatoes
• Sausages
• Grapefruit
• Fancy orange juice (thanks Trader Joe's!)
• Coffee

The night before:

Prep french toast and stick it in the fridge. Make the tart dough.

The morning of:

Make crostata and put it in oven. While it is baking, start prepping some of the easier things (cut grapefruit and put in in fridge. When it is around 15 minutes to the end of the crostata's bake time, make the muffins. Bake the muffins. While they are baking, prepare the kale frittata. When the muffins come out, put the kale frittata in for a few minutes to finish the top. While it is in the oven, cut up the potatoes. Take the frittata out and put the french toast in. Make the berry sauce (frozen berries cooked down with sugar to taste), potatoes (cut up potatoes and fry them lightly in olive oil with rosemary and sea salt) and sausages on the stove while the french toast is in the oven (time it to come out of the oven right before people come over). Make the coffee.

Whenever you have a spare minute, work in time for setting up.

Apple Cinnamon-Cardamom Scones

This recipe is an adaptation of brilliant vegan chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Chocolate Ginger Scones.


The chocolate ginger scone recipe is amazing--one of my favorite go-to brunch recipes.  Last Sunday, just as I began to take out the ingredients for the scones, I realized that we had no chocolate or ginger. After a short moment of panic when I considered skipping the scone-making, I decided to adapt. Assessing the options, I chopped up some apples and grabbed some cardamom and cinnamon from the near-empty spice cabinet.


These three flavors were a perfect wintery brunch combo, eaten side by side with (or dunked into) hot cider from the farmer's market.


The amounts could be played with, but the texture of these scones is always perfectly light and fluffy (2 tablespoons of baking powder will do that I guess). The best part? Total cooking time is half an hour or less!

• 3 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cardamom
• pinch allspice (or cloves, or both)
• 1/2 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/4 cups non-dairy milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1-2 apples, chopped into small pieces

Throw the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Mix together the wet ingredients, then add them to the dry ingredients.  Toss in the apples and mix until just combined. Form scones on a greased baking sheet (an ice cream scoop does this well), sprinkle sugar on top of each scone and bake at 400º for about 15 minutes.