Wake Up Call

Hi

You know, I am feeling so extravagant today. This is your morning wake-up call

First, it's the best bananas foster french toast you have ever put in your mouth

Michael and I cook up a one-eyed sailor, and then I'm baking off a heavenly hash brown casserole

and we're washing it down with a hot mocha float. afloat. So, start

brewing that coffee, y'all, cause this is your wake-up call. Y'all come on in the kitchen, cause this

is gonna be really, really good. And I hope fun. My cousin Johnny Gabriel

sent me this faux mink. So, the fur may be fake, y'all, but

this breakfast I'm about to cook y'all is not. If you like

the dessert, Bananas Foster, You're gonna love this French toast. I got some nice, wonderful, fresh croissants from the bakery

and this is gonna be our toast. All right, let's make up our custard, our dipping sauce

that we're gonna dip our toast in. I'm gonna start with four eggs

Making sure they're all perfect. So far, so good. There we go

And I'm going to add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Or more

Going to whip those eggs. All right, now I'm going to eyeball about a cup of heavy cream

And this makes it even more decadent than like milk would. But that's all

The recipe is just that easy. All right. Now I'm going to come over here and I'm going to take me a little butter

There we go. And now I'm going to take my croissants and just dunk them down in that cream and cinnamon and into the skillet

You know, when I was a kid, Mama always just used plain white bread

But as I grew older and was exposed a little bit more

I found that people would make French toast out of all different kinds of breads

And that really does give some excitement to this ageless recipe called French toast

Simple, simple, simple. Now we're just going to let those brown away

Let's move on down now to the part of the recipe that makes it that yummy bananas foster

I've got six bananas, and I'm just going to peel our bananas

and slice them in half and then quarter them. So those are all ready

All right. Look at that French toast, y'all. That's great. Now a little butter in here

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Y'all, come on in here and look. Look at this

How does that look? Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am

Don't swallow your tongue, Paula. All right. All right, a little butter

Now I'm going to add a half a cup of brown sugar. Now I'm going to add one half a cup of dark corn syrup

So in that goes. and then the syrup that I just do love

one cup of pure maple syrup. Are you picking up what I'm putting down, y'all

All right. In goes about a cup of chopped pecans, and we're going to let this cook away

And then after we get this going and boiling, we are going to throw our bananas in there

and just coat them in all that wonderful sugar and nuts and syrup

Oh, I'm going to find a plate and put our French toast on

I'm going to cut this up a little bit more. Oh, it's starting to boil, though. Mmm

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Doesn't that look delicious? Okay, let's toss in our bananas

You can see that our syrups and our brown sugar is melting and boiling together So all right a little squirt of rum flavoring

If you don't like rum flavoring, you can use vanilla flavoring. I'm just going to whisk that around

Let those bananas coat in that beautiful syrup that we've got going on

Just a second. Let the bananas just heat up just a little bit

We got our toast sitting up here ready. Makes you almost weak, doesn't it

Oh, and I can smell the rum peeping out from that sauce

Mm. You ready? Yeah. I am feeling like a bad girl today, you know

Mmm. Mmm. So good. So decadent

Mmm. That is so good, y'all. This is... your wake-up call. Coming up, my sailor cooks up a one-eyed sailor

And later, a casserole with a hash brown twist and a delicious hot mocha float

Hey, y'all, welcome back. That French toast I just ate was so good

but that's only one part of your wake-up call. Michael, come on in

Good morning. How are you? Tell everybody how you're doing. Hey, everybody

The dish that I want you to oversee, Michael, is a one-eyed sailor

You might know it as toad in a hole. I know for years you made this for your children

but tell everybody else out there how you did it. You just take a piece of bread

you find your cookie cutter large enough for the egg to fit in, and then you just cut a hole out

You put it in a pan with butter and olive oil and put your egg right in the middle and fry it and flip it

And it's perfectly yummy, and the children love it. All right, now hold that piece of bread up there

Look at me through. Oh, we got a one-eyed sailor, y'all. Okay, I'm going to move on down here

and I'm going to make a cheese sauce to put on top of these one-eyed sailors

So I'm going to start with two tablespoons of butter, y'all. Would you turn me on

There we go. I will so turn you on. Speaking of turn on, what you think

I love it. You do? I do. I wish I had one

You want one? I'll get you one. No. I'm going to stir in two tablespoons of flour

I'm just going to blend those together. All right. Now I'm going to add one and a half cups of warm milk

And I'm going to start that white sauce to go in. That egg fit perfectly in that heart

I know it. All right. Now I'm going to add just a little bit of cayenne

Just a little bit. Because Michael likes hot stuff. A little bit of dry mustard

You want some coffee? I would love some coffee. I'll keep an eye on this pan

You make the coffee, that sounds great. Now, I'm going to add a dash of hot sauce

A little dash of Worcestershire sauce. We're going to have a yummy, yummy cheese sauce to go on top of our toad in a hole

Just mix all that up. Just like that. Now we're going to add our cheese

I got about a cup and a half of fresh sharp cheddar cheese grated

So I'm just going to toss that in. Let that melt. Then I'm going to come over here and look at these toads in a hole

Now, when my children were little and I made this for them

I would always take the center, and I would throw it in the pan

because I didn't want to cheat them out of any of their toast

All right, so here we go. Oh, look at that pretty toad in the hole

Yum. Those look great. All right, back over here to this pot

I'm going to add some fresh grated Parmesan cheese. about half a cup

and I gonna grate up a little bit more You know if we gonna have cheese let have cheese

I got about two cups of fresh, sharp cheddar cheese total. So we're gonna have a real rich cheese sauce

All right, a little fresh ground pepper. Look at that

Those look great. Mm-hmm. Let's plate this up. Just scoop that up

Michael, you missed the first dish that I cooked, and you would have loved it

It was bananas foster French toast. I do love that. Mm. All right, now look

I'm going to give you the heart, and I'll take the circle

Come on down here now. I've got us some bacon to go along with it

All right. Come over here. Now you can dip your cheese sauce

All right, now I'll dip mine because you know what? Truth be known, I'm just as finicky as you are

Mmm. Looks delish, doesn't it? It sure does. Come on down here now

I've got us a fork. All the recipes that I'm doing are for a wake-up call

They're wonderful brunch and breakfast recipes. Gosh, I can remember my little children sitting down there

their chair before school and eating that. Huh? It's delicious. I almost thought I heard a little moan

Next up, y'all, hash brown casserole. And then later, a delicious hot mocha float

I used to do that all the time when I was a kid. that was the only way I could whistle

That's y'all's wake-up call. It's all about the foods that just really wake you up

and make you want to jump out of bed. So a yummy hash brown casserole is in order for this wake-up call

Now, I'm going to start with four cups of just a frozen shredded hash brown

I've got one onion in my pot along with a little butter

Now I'm just going to add those hash browns and kind of soften them up just a little bit

And over here in this pan, I've got one pound of country sausage

But believe it or not, my pork sausage that I'm using is really kind of lean, very, very little grease

Okay, I hear those hash browns to go in now. And they're starting to soften up in those onions

All right, now move on down here. I'm going to be working now on the bread part to this casserole

I'm using a French bread that I've removed the crust from, and all we have to do is just cut this in cubes

and I'm going to need eight cups. This works great with day-old bread

or with some stale French bread that you've got laying around the house

So, okay, let's bring that up to eight cups. all right now we've got to have a custard to pour over all these ingredients don't we

well to make our custard we're going to start out by measuring two and a quarter cups of milk

there we go I've got eight eggs

Give them a scramble

Now I'm going to grate just a little bit of fresh nutmeg

Not enough to overpower it, but just enough to flavor it. All right, a little salt, about a teaspoon

A little fresh ground pepper. A couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard

Okay, so in goes our milk. Two and a quarter cups. Okey-doke

Now, I'm going to be using two cups of a sharp cheddar cheese

two cups of fresh Parmesan cheese. But you know what? The more cheese to me, the better

All right. Now we're ready to put our casserole together. So let me get our dish

I'm using a large dish, and I going to spray this because I don want that casserole sticking Okay so just that easy All right the first layer to our casserole is going to be our hash browns

The next layer is going to be our bread. Shove that stuff out of the way, and that's eight cups of cubed French bread

All right. Now, the next thing to come in is the sausage. Now, if you say, Paula, you know, my family doesn't like sausage. That's all right. Substitute it with a ham or even bacon

And I don't even know why you couldn't use a little steak, do you? You know, the important thing is that you're using the ingredients that your family likes

Looks pretty good, doesn't it? And we're just going to pour that over our potatoes, our bread, and that yummy sausage. Mmm

Looking good. Now the last ingredient is two cups of parm, two cups of shredded cheddar

Now on the shredded cheddar, you might want to hold back a little bit

to put a nice fresh layer. The last five minutes of cooking time

cooking time. Just that quickly, our dish is together. We just have to pop it in a 350 degree

oven and bake it for 45 minutes. Coming up, my hot sizzling mocha float

You know, you can't have a wake-up call show without a hot mocha float. So the first thing

that's going to go in our pot is a half a cup of cocoa. And a half a cup of sugar

Now, I'm going to take my whisk. I'm just going to break that cocoa up

and then we're going to add one quart of milk. I want to do it rather slowly

so I can incorporate that cocoa and sugar. So now we're safe to just go ahead and pour in the rest of our milk

Well, now we're ready to pour in two cups of black strong coffee

because we're looking for what's going to really wake us up. And it's not going to take that long to get hot because the coffee was hot

We'll move on down here and check on that casserole. And hopefully it's ready and it looks delicious

Oh, it's heavy. Our hot mocha float is almost ready. Look at this

I'm going to just dip me up a piece. Oh, I can smell that

Parmesan cheese, please. and those potatoes and that wonderful French bread. All right, come on down

Let's look at our cocoa. Looks just like the perfect temperature. Mmm

I love this size cup. So in goes our chocolate ice cream

In goes our fresh whipped cream. A little dollop and a little shaved chocolate and then some little sugar chocolate spoons

This is just a semi-sweet chocolate and a little white chocolate. Dip our spoon down in it

Let them chill in the fridge and let that extra little bit of chocolate dissolve

Oh, my goodness. And we are already here. I have probably waked up the whole neighborhood

with all the wonderful recipes that's been coming out of my kitchen this morning

Mmm. That is so good, y'all. Mmm, the Parmesan cheese and the sausage

Mmm. Shut up, I say shut up. Until next time, y'all, I send you love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours. Wake up