As promised, July is cherry month here at FoodieTots. I know it’s the tail end of the season around DC, but elsewhere they’re just coming into season. While I bought all the Bing and sour pie cherries I could during our too-short season, I never spotted Queen Anne cherries this year — the yellow-red cherries that resemble my favorite West Coast Rainier cherries. But the Bing cherries were nice and sweet this year, and in an effort to use them in as many meals as possible I made this warm cherry apricot compote for Sunday brunch.

Recipe: Cherry Apricot Compote

Ingredients:
1 cup sweet cherries, pitted and halved
4 apricots, diced
1 tablespoon raw honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions: Heat a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook apricots until lightly browned on one side. Add remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat until fruit is warmed through and apricots are soft, about 8-10 minutes. Serve warm over Almond French Toast (below) or your favorite pancakes or waffles. Makes 4 servings.

Recipe: Almond French Toast

Ingredients:
8 thick slices of day-old bread
1 tablespoon butter
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of ground nutmeg

Instructions: Whisk eggs in a shallow baking dish (big enough for your bread slices) until light and fluffy. Add milk, extracts and nutmeg and whisk until combined. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Dunk slices of bread, one at a time, in the egg mixture, letting soak for a minute or so. Cook for several minutes on each side, until golden. Serve with maple syrup and or/Cherry Apricot Compote. Serves 4. Enjoy!

Farms of Origin: cherries and apricots from Black Rock Orchard (PA) @ Falls Church Farmers Market, milk from South Mountain Creamery (MD), bread from Atwater’s Bakery.

So the boy has developed this charming habit lately of coming to the table when called for dinner, taking a cursory glance at his plate, and then declaring, “I do not like that! I do not even eat that!” Sometimes, this is followed with continued whining and stomping around, other times it’s followed with him eating a few bites while continuing to protest between mouthfuls that “I do not eat this.” (Despite the obvious evidence to the contrary.)

Now, it’s been a stressful couple months in the FoodieTots household. A death in the family, a move to a new house in a new neighborhood, and of course the impending arrival of the newest Foodie Tot. The boy hasn’t been sleeping well (anyone have a cure for toddler insomnia??), and we’re trying our best to maintain some degree of patience. But after the new, longer commute home from work, cooking a meal in our not-yet-entirely-unpacked kitchen and dining room, and getting something on the table to eat, these tantrums are more than a little disheartening.

After a regrettable week (or so) of take-out/eating out during the move, I’m trying to get back on track with home-cooked meals at least five nights a week. So rather than give in to the pizza parlor temptation, Monday night I made pancakes for dinner. And not just any pancakes: big, fluffy pancakes topped with lightly sweetened strawberries and whipped cream. That’s right, whipped cream for dinner. And when the boy came stomping into the kitchen to see what horrible injustice I was preparing to dish up, the sight of the beater whirring in the KitchenAid was an instant mood changer.

(The strawberries came from Westmoreland Berry Farm this week, at the Alexandria West End market.)

Recipe: Our Favorite Pancakes with Fresh Strawberries

Notes: You can make these with half whole wheat flour. I “lightened” them up with olive oil, and sweetened the whipped cream with vanilla but no extra sugar. For the strawberry topping, I sliced a cup of strawberries and sprinkled with a tablespoon of sugar, then let stand while I prepared the pancakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cups organic unbleached flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon organic cane sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/3 cups milk
• 1 tablespoon olive  oil

Instructions: Lightly oil skillet with olive oil and heat over medium heat. Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the egg. Add milk and oil and mix well. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined (some lumps will be left). Pour about 1/3 cup batter per pancake into the skillet, and cook until bubbles begin to form and pop around the edges. Flip and cook another minute. Serve warm, topped with strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream. Enjoy! (Makes about 12 3-inch pancakes.)

I can’t serve whipped cream for dinner every night, so please share — what tricks do you have to fight the dinner-time blues?

Shared with Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

There are few things better than the scent of cinnamon on a Saturday morning. While these waffles aren’t quite as decadent as fresh cinnamon rolls, they do offer more instant gratification. I had some toasted hazelnuts left over from another recipe and added them on a whim — turned out delicious. A little sweet, and warmly satisfying. (On yet another snow day.)

Recipe: Cinnamon Hazelnut Waffles

Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, finely chopped

Instructions: Preheat waffle iron.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add milk, sugar, butter and vanilla and stir to combine. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (you may have some small lumps still). Stir in the hazelnuts.

Cook on hot, oiled waffle iron. I use about 1/2 cup of batter per 4-inch-square. Makes 10 4-inch waffles. Enjoy! (Leftover waffles can be frozen and then popped in the toaster for quick breakfasts during the week.)

Cooking with Kids note: Waffle irons can be highly tempting to curious preschoolers … particularly ones who feel compelled to touch and see when you tell them it’s really hot. So for best results, I recommend letting young children help with the whisking, but distracting them in another room for the actual cooking. My son also likes to help garnish for the photographs (as seen above).

If I try hard enough, I can almost a remember a time when my idea of unwinding after a long work week was heading out for cocktails with girlfriends. (Okay, so it really wasn’t that long ago.) But nowadays, few things are more soothing than spending some quality time creaming butter, sugar and eggs in the KitchenAid. Sure, cooking with a 3.5-year-old isn’t entirely relaxing, but it is especially rewarding to see the boy bite into a fresh baked cookie or slice of bread with glee and to watch him proudly boast to his dad, “Look what Mommy and me made!” And there’s no better time than February (hello Valentine’s Day) to share home baked goodies with the ones you love. So I’m declaring February “Homemade with Love” month here at FoodieTots. I hope you’ll join in and share what you and your kids are baking, too. There may even be a round-up at the end of the month if you have links to share.

First up is Cinnamon Swirl Bread, the next entry in my Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge. Peter Reinhart’s bread calls for raisins and walnuts, which I like well enough, but I wanted to make a simple cinnamon bread first. This is the bread that inspired me to join the challenge, as I have strong memories of my mother baking cinnamon bread and the warm fragrance that filled the house. I don’t even remember if she ever made it more than once, but the cinnamon-sweet scent has stayed with me all these years, and motivated me to overcome my phobia of yeast.

This is a pretty simple bread, the dough smooth and pliable. In addition to omitting the raisins and nuts, I replaced the shortening with melted butter. The boy helped me knead, giving it a few enthusiastic whacks and pokes.

To add the cinnamon swirl, you simply pat the dough out into a rectangle, spread it with a generous layer of cinnamon-sugar, then roll up into a loaf. (You can see pictures of this step on Pinch My Salt’s post.) After a second rise in the loaf pans, it heads into the oven to bake.

(You can see the pronounced difference between the crappy over-stove fluorescent lighting and my Ego lights, the dough didn’t actually turn from yellow to white…) I had a stuffy nose the day I baked it, so the scent wasn’t as strong as I’d remembered, but the taste was everything I remembered.

Cinnamon swirl bread is best with a generous spread of fresh-from-the-farm butter, and maybe a little more of that cinnamon-sugar on top. Delish. Of course, if you somehow don’t finish the loaf the first day or two, it also makes scrumptious French toast. And needless to say, the boy was quite pleased with the finished product.