Sunday Brunch

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen

And you know, I don't think there's anything like a Sunday brunch. To me, it's kind of like the perfect excuse to have two meals in one sitting

And you know what? I think I want to start today by baking up an apple bread

that's spread with a creamy apple butter that's just out of this world

And I can't resist following up with my cheesy baked garlic grits

And then I'm going to finish everything off with that delicious little savory sausage ball

And all of these things are going to make a beautiful breakfast buffet

So y'all go pour yourself a cup of coffee and whet your appetite

Because today, it's brunch time. Y'all come on in

Come on closer. All right, can you see good? I can't hardly wait to show y'all this applesauce bread that I've got in the oven

Look at that, Gertie. Look at that bread. Doesn't that look delicious, y'all

This is just the beginning of the brunch that we're cooking today

and there's nothing like having the time on a weekend to really spend on your dishes

and this is one of those just yummy things that everybody's gonna enjoy today

and if there's any leftover, we'll enjoy it all week. Now, I'm gonna show you how to make

this easy applesauce bread. We're gonna start with a stick of butter

I know y'all are surprised, but that's really the best ingredient for this

We're going to start by creaming our butter. And now I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of brown sugar

And you're going to find that your batter is going to be real, real thick

because it's like a real dense bread, like, almost like a pound cake

Now I'm going to just add two cups of all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon

of baking soda, half a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of

of allspice and two eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla

and one cup of applesauce. And we're just gonna mix this all together

until it's incorporated. And then I'm gonna stir in some walnuts and some raisins

All right. Now I'm just going to fold in walnuts. You can use any nut that you like

but I love the walnuts for this. And raisins. I'm using a dark raisin

You can use a white raisin or you can completely omit them

But I love the raisins because they make this taste like One of my favorite cookie batters, oatmeal cookies

So I just love the raisins. Now I've got us a 9 by 5 loaf pan prepared

I've greased it and floured it, and we're just going to put this in there

I've got my oven preheated to 350 degrees, and we're going to bake this off for about 60 to 65 minutes

You can serve this with just butter. You can serve it with cream cheese. but I've made us a creamy apple butter to go with our bread this morning

All right, now let's pop this in. And before you know it, we're going to have a wonderful homemade applesauce bread

So I want to show y'all how quickly I mixed up this apple butter

I'm going to start with one softened 8-ounce package of cream cheese

and I just bought some regular apple butter that you can get at your grocery store

It's in the jelly and jam section. Now I'm just going to kind of cream this up for a minute

and it doesn't take but a second. And now I'm going to add my store-bought apple butter

And this is so good with the apple bread because it's not overpoweringly sweet

So if you want just a hint of something this is perfect All right let come over here now and check out our bread

Maybe it's cool enough. Yeah, I think it's cooled off enough. Here we go again

Y'all hold on. I think it just needs the, a run of the knife

I tell y'all what, we could do probably an hour's worth of bloopers on things that don't

come out all that easily that are supposed to. All right, listen, there we go

Ooh, look at that beautiful bread. Oh, this bread smells divine

It's perfectly delicious. So I want to taste it while it's warm

Mmm. It reminds me of oatmeal cookies. and carrot cake all at the same time

You're gonna love it. Gertie is just waiting for me to throw her a crumb

In fact, I think Gertie is maybe my biggest fan. She loves my cooking

Don't you Gertz? When we come back, it's gonna be wonderful, creamy, rich

cheesy garlic grits. No respectable breakfast would not serve grits

so that's what we're going to make next. Now I've got six cups of chicken stock

and a little salt and pepper that's come to a boil. Now we're going to add two cups of grits

that I've added a fourth of a teaspoon of garlic powder to

And this is the most important step to making your grits is that you constantly stir them

until they get good and moist and each grain is nice and wet

And I'll come back and I'll stir those again. I don't like to get too far from my grit pot

when I'm cooking grits. All right, now we're going to put the lid on that and we're going to let that cook eight minutes

And I have some that's already cooked for eight minutes right here in this pot

You can see that they're nice and thick. All right, we're fixing to change a little bit of that

So now I'm going to get the cheese ready to go in. I love rolls of cheese that are flavored with garlic

but they're very hard to find. So if you can't find the rolls of cheese that are garlic flavored, you can do just like I've done

You can add your garlic separate. But those garlic cheese rolls are found in the dairy section at the grocery store

And like I said, we use a lot of those down here in the south

But they can be hard to find even down here. So this is a great way to substitute

Now I'm just cutting this up strictly so it will melt faster

And we're going to toss these over into our grits. Alright, I'm going to kind of move these pots around so I can get it a little closer to me

Turn that off. All right, I'm gonna stir that cheese up into there

And I'm gonna add a stick of butter. Whole stick. And you can see how thick our grits are

All right, it won't take long for that cheese to melt. They're already getting real, real creamy and kind of hard to stir, so I'm going to

add a half a cup of milk. It's going to loosen that up some

And it's going to make them so rich and creamy. is one of those comfort foods you know that if we sick we want a bowl of cheese grits with soft scrambled eggs in it It just something that we just love very very much here in the South

And there's several ways you can do them. You can cook them in water. If you want a really rich grit, you can cook it in the chicken stock like I've done

And then add the milk to it or the cream. Sometimes I put heavy cream in them

All right, so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna add the eggs, but before I just dump them in there

I'm gonna temper those eggs by slowly warming them because I don't want them to turn to scrambled eggs

when I put them in that pot. All right, I think those are safely warm to add to the grits

One of the important things about cooking grits is if you don't salt them at the very beginning of cooking, it's almost like impossible to ever get them salty enough

So you want to make sure that you've got salt in your water

All right, now we're just going to pour this in our casserole dish. The grits are completely done

You know, it's just the egg that we want to cook. Now I'm going to top my grits today with a sharp white cheddar

You can do any of the cheeses that you like, but this one just looks so good and tastes

so good. We've got our oven preheated to 350 degrees. We're gonna pop this in, oh, maybe for 35 or 40 minutes

The grits are cooked. We just want the eggs to set. So in that goes

All right, when we come back, it's gonna be sausage, sausage, and more sausage

How about sausage balls? And we're gonna dip them in those wonderful, creamy

rich, cheesy garlic grits. Welcome back, y'all

I'm so glad you decided to come back with me because today we're cooking a fabulous, fabulous brunch

While we were on break, I got a grits casserole ready for us

And we'll pull this out while it's hot and bubbly. Doesn't that look

just sinfully wonderful and rich and gooey. And you see what the eggs have done to it

They've made it set up almost like a pie. Oh my goodness there

Look how delicious those look

You don't have to be a southerner to enjoy grits. Y'all hang with me, stick with me, and before you know it folks in New Jersey will be just

living on grits. Mmm, it smells like cheese and butter and corn

Almost makes my eyes watery. Just tasting those grits are out of this world

Well, let's move on though, because I want to share this little simple recipe with y'all

I'm willing to bet money on the other side of the dish. money on the fact that this was probably the first hors d'oeuvre I ever made for a party

probably when I was 19. It's been around 100 years. Some of you may have had it

and some of you may have not. So if you don't, if you haven't had this or don't know about this

little recipe, I want to share it with you because it's great at a cocktail party. It's wonderful for

breakfast. When we get through with them, it's going to taste like a sausage biscuit. And we're

We're gonna take a biscuit mix, three cups of biscuit mix of your choice

We're gonna take a pound of ground sausage, and this is one of those things that you have

to do with your hands. There's just no way around it because you need the heat from your hands to break down

that sausage. So I'm gonna just go in like this and make sure that biscuit mix gets all mixed in

I just going to incorporate those together And then I going to come in here with four cups of shredded cheese Now this is a white cheddar You can use yellow or if you really wanted to spice them up you

could use a peppery Monterey Jack or something with some bite to it. We have really had the

cheese in this show, hadn't we? But like I said, now you're really gonna have to get

in there and just work this and work it. This is not something that you're going to mix up in two

or three minutes. All right, I've got all of our ingredients mixed up together real well, and

there's not but three ingredients. A biscuit mix, a fresh ground sausage and cheese, that's

all it is to it. And we're just going to pinch them off and roll them about the size of a small

walnut. Alright, we're gonna put these in the oven. It's preheated to 375 degrees

We're gonna keep an eye on these and we're gonna cook them for probably about

18 minutes. But for your own oven at home, you'll want to kind of check them

like after 10 or 12 minutes because I really don't know how your oven cooks at

I just know how mine cooks. So 18 minutes should do it

And in they go. Got to wash my hands. All right, I've got a pan back here that I got ready

and they've cooled off a little bit. Now, I'm gonna show you how I like to eat my sausage balls

like if I'm having a sausage biscuit, I love mustard on it and I love mayonnaise

So all I do is mix a little mustard with some mayonnaise

But those that watch my show, you know I'm a mayonnaise freak

I love me some mayonnaise. and I'm just going to put that sauce right here in my container

and then I'm going to just pile up my sausage balls around it

Well, except for one, Gertie has patiently waited. Gertie's been with me the whole time I've been making these sausage balls

So, let's see. That's the biggest piece, Gertie. Way to go. And Harry gets the little piece

And now Mama gets to taste it. After all these years, these simple little things are so good

I'm going to clean up. I'm going to come back. I've got some tips for you

I'm going to show you how to set up a fabulous, fabulous Bloody Mary bar

Because everybody loves a little Bloody Mary at their brunch. So I'll see y'all back in a minute

It's going to be so good. You know, you just can't have a brunch without a Bloody Mary

And there's nothing more fun than going up to a bar and making your own

Now, I've rimmed my glass with lemon. I'm putting it over here in, would you believe, beef bouillon

I'm gonna add my ice. And then I've got all these things out for everybody

I'm gonna add a little wasabi, a little celery, a little seasoning salt, a little jalapeno

a little Old Bay, I think a few capers, and an onion

onion. With this Bloody Mary bar, you can make any kind of Bloody Mary you want, and

that's bloody well good. Mmm. I think that y'all are probably going to agree with me

that these delicious dishes would be just perfect to have during a Sunday brunch. Between

the apple bread with the sweet apple butter or the creamy garlic cheese grits or those

little savory sausage balls. You could have a house full or just a small gathering

and I grant you, nobody's going to leave with an empty stomach

You know, the only thing, it might should come with a warning. Like, this may be

bringing on too many weekend house guests. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. So until next

time, y'all, I send you loving best dishes from my kitchen to yours. Don't we Gertie? Don't we? Don't we Gertie