Pear Cake with Pine Nuts

If you haven’t noticed by now, breakfast is my favorite meal. I think that I could eat pastries, French toast or pancakes for every meal of the day. I try to make my breakfasts somewhat healthy by eating some fruit alongside my carbohydrates and drinking a glass of skim milk. I’m a bit strange in another manner, I don’t like to eat eggs for breakfast. Yuk. If you find me eating sunny-side up eggs, it is most likely nine at night, not nine in the morning. For some reason eggs at night are a meal, whereas eggs in the morning are gross. Ooo, unless they are on a sandwich, with some bacon.

Luckily today we are getting our fruit baked right into our breakfast pastry. This means that you can save time and be out the door in a snap! The fruit of the moment? Pears! I love pears because you can eat just about the whole thing. Many years ago I realized that you can just rip out the stem of a pear and then you can eat the whole top of the fruit. This also makes it super easy to slice pears into easy discs. Slice circles off of the pear until you hit the seeds. You can cut around the outside of the pear or just move onto another piece of fruit. (I suggest you just eat the bottom third)

So simple to make, this pastry is perfect for a lazy weekend morning. A simple coffee cake, fancied up with pears and pine nuts, this is just perfect. The leftovers (if there are any) can be kept in the fridge until tomorrow. Reheating is simple. Cut yourself a slice, heat in the microwave for 1 minute on half power. Once you learn to use the power settings in your microwave you will be amazed at what it can do. Play around, it’s fun! You can get non-rubbery pasta leftovers, perfectly thawed bread slices and even scrambled eggs.

NoBloPoMo?

Thanks right everyone, November is NaBloPoMo.  Or to those of you confused out there, National Blog Post Month!  That one special month of the year that bloggers attempt to post, every single day.  Now I think being a food blogger puts you at a bit of a disadvantage for this challenge.  Posting everyday means a whole lot of cooking, baking and general dirtying up of the kitchen. 

So get ready for an onslaught of delicious recipes and perhaps the odd disappointment.  With posting everyday I don't think I'll have to luxury of not posting my failures!  Since we are heading into fall in the northern hemisphere, and approaching thanksgiving in the US, I will be posting lots of fall-inspired foods that hopefully help you out in planning your thanksgiving feast.

But until then, here is a picture of my dog...

Butternut Squash Soup

Okay, it’s offical. I am addicted to squash. It started with a question on facebook, “What should I make this week?” Being the beginning of fall, everyone seemed to be in the mood for squash. Acorn squash and pumpkin and butternut squash. So many suggestions, all involving those weird looking vegetables! Or are they fruits? Anyways… I have to break it to you, before last week I had never eaten a squash. I was so concerned about cooking with these wacky ingredients.

I mean come on, acorn squash looks totally strange! It was the first bit of produce that I took on, making acorn squash ravioli. I’m looking over a dozen recipes for squash ravioli and thinking “Nutmeg? Who puts nutmeg in pasta?” Apparently I do, because this ravioli was amazing. Although perhaps it was the browned butter.

Next up was pumpkin. I have never been a pumpkin pie fan. Maybe this is because I’ve never had a good pumpkin pie? Since I have a problem with pancakes, in that I eat way too many of them, I decided to start there. Do you know if there is such a thing as Pancakeaholics anonymous? I think that I need to join that group. Thankfully the pancakes turned out heavenly, and so did the cookies, and so did the cupcakes (stay tuned!).

My final hurdle was this odd looking butternut squash. I kept putting it off, which was okay, because squash is hearty. It sat on my counter, staring at me, mocking me. Can squashes laugh? Because I think this one was laughing at me too. No more laughing at me squash! I’m going to take a vegetable peeler to you! Ha! Who’s laughing now squash? You’re naked! Okay, time to make soup.