Consider my love for entertaining at home and my love for brunch, you would think I would host brunch at home more often. Apparently, that is not the case. Weekends are prime time for training so it is rare that I get to spend mornings at home at leisurely pace. When the opportunity comes around, I am more likely to enjoy the luxury of sleeping in.
Dad suggested to meet for lunch last Saturday at my favourite bubble tea place. Despite the draw of sleeping in on a weekend morning, I invited him over for brunch instead. That was an impulse decision I made late Friday morning. Within the span of 24 hours, I came up with the following menu and a precise schedule to get everything done on time.
Weekend Family Brunch
Lately Pinterest has become my favourite menu planning tool. It’s a visual way for me to organize recipes and notes for menus that are more involved. My original menu began like so. As you see, my final version differs in minor details. Some dishes were inspirations to what I ended up making. Others I followed exactly.
Let me begin with the Homemade Sweet Potato Loaf. I wanted a loaf of homemade bread as part of brunch but time constraint limited my choices. Rather than my planned Black Bread with Carrot & Caraway, I made Dan Lepard’s Flash Loaf with ingredients substitution. Grated sweet potato stood in place of potato and sherry vinegar replaced malt vinegar. A loaf of homemade bread made in two hours but with plenty of flavour is no easy feat. I managed to make it from scratch on Saturday morning and filled the house with yeasty aroma. Trust Lepard in giving us this gem of a recipe. I was happy to munch of this bread au naturel but it was just as good with homemade preserves.
The Blue Cheese Pear Zucchini Cake Salé was a huge hit among my family of blue cheese lovers. The original recipe from The Kitchn was a savoury zucchini bread with cheese and black olives. I love the savoury zucchini bread idea but wanted more aggressive mix-ins. I happened to have some leftover poached pears and a big wedge of non-descript blue cheese in my cheese drawer. The creamy salty cheese and the sweet pears were perfect combination to add a bit of French flair to this quick bread. Part of the beauty of quick bread is ease. The batter was quickly thrown together as soon as the sweet potato loaf went into the oven. With 50 minutes of baking time, I threw caution to the wind about oven temperature and baked the zucchini bread along with the sweet potato loaf.
My Tropical Fruit Salad was much more relaxed. On Friday night, I peeled and cubed an elephant papaya, a dragon fruit, an Atualfo mango, and some strawberries. They were drizzled with some yuzu simple syrup and ready to serve the next day. My homemade preserves were even easier to manage. All the work was done months in advance when I preserved the taste of summer with sugar and mason jars. I took a jar of Vanilla Apricot Jam and a jar of Wild Blueberry Maple Jam from last year’s harvest. They are by far my favourite jam recipes so I always make sure to replenish every summer.
Chipotle Sweet Potato Smoked Sausage Hash was the result of using ingredients I had at home. Brunch does not feel complete unless there is a savoury egg dish and it just so happened I had some sweet potatoes, a lone smoked farmer’s sausage, and plenty of free-range eggs. I took inspiration from a recipe at The Kitchn. On Friday night, I roasted dices of sweet potatoes seasoned with chipotle. I sautéed some red onion and diced sausage and stored the hash in the fridge. Just before serving, I filled individual dishes with the sweet potato hash and warmed them in the oven. I cracked an egg in the middle of each dish and baked until set.
Baked oatmeal is one of my favourite brunch course ever since I discovered it from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Everyday. I made my Sour Cherry Almond version many times before. Much of the prep work were done on Friday night so I only needed to bake the dessert casserole an hour before serving.
Last but not least, in honour of St Patrick’s Day, I made Pistachio Chocolate Marble Mini Bundt with Pistachio Cream Cheese Glaze. My inspiration came from several places for this dessert. First and foremost, green was the festive colour last weekend. I somehow managed to unearth the last box of instant Pistachio pudding at the grocery store. I normally look at instant pudding mix with suspicion but do make an exception for pistachio. The last time I met with Dad, he got me a fancy anniversary edition bundlette pan. It was a very thoughtful gift so obviously I wanted to bake with it as my way of saying thanks. Most pistachio pudding cake calls for mixing a box of instant pudding powder with a box of cake mix. Urgh, are you kidding me?! No way would I allow that in my kitchen. Thankfully King Arthur Flour published a version with from scratch ingredients for the cake.
I further adapted the recipe to have a marbling of chocolate (mix 2oz melted dark chocolate with 1/3 of the batter). There was a bit too much batter for 6 mini bundts but I didn’t mind having three extra cupcakes. The cakes were made last Friday evening so they had a chance to cool completely. On Saturday morning, I quick mix of cream cheese glaze tinted green with a nob of pistachio paste and decorated the cake with chopped pistachio. The mini bundts looked absolutely adorable and appropriate for St Patrick’s Day.
My menu was made for three but there was enough to feed 6 people comfortably. Now that I got my brunch groove back, perhaps I should invite friends over for brunch more often!
