PotW: Apple Pie Pancakes

[last week's PotW: Brown butter pumpkin pancakes with bourbon mascarpone cream]

Like pumpkin pie, apple pie is on my list of Staple Desserts of the Holiday Season.  I can't get through November and December without apple pie!  So, when I had a bunch of small home-grown apples to use up this week, I thought: what about apple pie pancakes???

Yes!  you CAN make apple pie into a legitimate breakfast.  :-P  (Not that I don't already when I have the real deal lying around.)

There's also no better accompaniment to apple pie than a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top of a hot-out-of-the-oven slice of pie.  But, my freezer was stocked to the brim with pumpkin cheesecake and coffee ice creams.  So, instead, these pancakes are super vanilla pancakes to make up for the lack of vanilla ice cream.

I caramelized the apples first before baking them in the oven with a sugar crumb topping, adding extra depth and sweetness to the flavor.  These pancakes were most definitely an ultra-indulgent way to start the weekend.  :-)

Read on for recipe...

Drunken pear frangipane tart

David Lebovitz beat me to it today with his almond and pear tart post!  Then, the NYTimes Minimalist with this post on upside-down pear cake.  The whole world is going pear crazy, I swear.  (And, to my credit, none of their pears are drunken. :-) )

But with good reason.  Pears are good.  And, I subscribe to the belief that they can cure a sore throat.  So bonus to pears.

Anyways, I was so excited last week when I went to Costco for eggs and discovered boxes of beautiful seckel pears for ridiculously cheap!  These tiny little pears are so cute.  Kind of like what crab-apples are to apples, seckel pears are to pears.  (Yes, I rocked analogies on standardized tests.)  And who can't resist things in miniature?

This past weekend, I finally broke into my pounds of seckel pears.  So tender and sweet and juicy--really, I could just gobble them up as is.  But, no, no.  What would be the fun in that? :-)  So, I busted out the poaching liquid that I'd saved from making poached pears with rosemary pancakes and added a good half bottle of leftover red wine, since there wasn't quite enough liquid, along with some additional spices.  The resulting poached seckel pears were so flavorful and totally drunk with wine.  (Actually, as I was poaching, my roommate claimed she was getting drunk just on the smell of the poaching liquid. :-P)

Drunken seckel pear frangipane tart

The drunken pears were a perfect accent for the almond nuttiness of the filling, the sweet crispiness of the tart crust, and a hint of apricot glaze.  The alcohol came through in a bit of a whisper in the end of each bite, which was perfect.

I took the large, rectangular tart to a workshop for my day job, saving the small round one for personal devourment.  One participant of the workshop said to me afterward--and I quote--:  "You have truly attained proficiency in the grammar of high desserts."

Okay, that really cracked me up.  But it was an appreciated compliment nonetheless.  So, folks, here's the lesson: this tart may not look as pretty as its summer fruit counterparts, but, trust me, it is most definitely yummy.

Read on for recipe...

Hope you had a Happy Halloween! (and Pumpkin Cake)

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!  My party turned out to be a lot of fun, though I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from it (hence no Pancakes of the Week, please excuse me!).  I promise that this will be my final Halloween-related post--that is, until next year, of course, but I wanted to share with everyone the cake I make every Halloween.

Pumpkin cake

with cream cheese frosting

Every year, I ask myself why I don't make this cake more often.  It's so dense and moist that some have even remarked (in a good way) that it's like eating a solid pumpkin mousse!  I really do need to whip out this recipe more often, if not in pumpkin form then at the very least in loaf pan form.  It's perfect for cool, fall mornings.

Anyhow, we'll move back to regularly scheduled programming on Desserts for Breakfast this week (I do have a day job that I can't abandon).  Here's looking forward to the holidays!  :-D

Read on for the recipe...