Monday, July 27, 2009

pressed bread & other flat things

Found whilst trawling the Internets:
"We also mix up pancake batter, fill the wells halfway, then stick in a ready cooked sausage link. Then put a little more batter on top. The kids like to dip these in syrup." - Fancy
They do this in their sandwich maker. I know. Is that genius or what? Though I am not sure what a link is when it pertains to a sausage. Do they mean...a sausage?

The reason I was coming across such culinary wizardry was because when Martin picked up Fred from After School Care tonight, the carer was making biscuits (that's cookies to y'all in America, not those scone-type things you call biscuits) in a sandwich press! Fred didn't want to come home and who could blame her because Jade is obviously much smarter than us.

Can I just interrupt myself now to tell you, there are a lot of people out there putting up 'recipes' for making toasted spaghetti sandwiches or mashed potato toasted sandwiches and a lot of people responding to these posts saying 'well, now, I don't know about that, I like a plain toasted cheese sandwich'.

*Crickets.*

There are also various chocolate bar and marshmallow type sandwiches (do you really need a recipe? If you've got to that point, you're just seeing what else will melt, and you'll eat anything and we know what you've been smoking. That'd be like putting a 'recipe' up for the thing we used to do with milo in the microwave - oh Americans, you DO know what milo is, you MUST. Milo sponsors your soccor team. Yes. You have a soccor team. *is still not quite over milo being edited out of Breathe and replaced with ovaltine*)

I do remember seeing Geoff Jansz using a toasted sandwich maker to make some kind of turnover thing with sheets of supermarket-bought puffy pastry, much like the following suggestion*:
"Use pop-up type pastry, flatten and place on pie iron. Add a chocolate kiss or two and one or two small caramel squares, flattened, and a couple of mini marshmallows. Top with more pastry, seal edges and cook over campfire. Yum." From here.
By the way, I think a chocolate kiss sounds very friendly. And this artful genius makes her curry puffs in the jaffle iron too.

We use our sandwich press for toast too fat to go in the toaster, toasted sangers, quesadillas (with savoury mince or ham and cheese), turkish bread, reheating pizza (not that there's ever much leftover pizza in our house), felafels, and various other pressed bread meals. We probably eat a sandwich or variation on a theme at least once a week for dinner. The kids will eat suprising things when it is encased in cooked dough.

Still, I feel there is limitless potential in the humble jaffle/sandwich/toastie iron/press/maker. (that reminds me of this very shallow boy I met once who told me that he always had really deep philosophical when on drugs, like - is it a milkshake mixer? Or a milkshake maker? That'd keep Socrates and Plato going for weeks).

Anyway the upshot of this is, I can't find a biscuit or a cookie recipe for the sandwich maker. Any ideas?
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*(This is for the kind of jaffle iron you stick in a campfires but I'm guessing you could do it in ye olde sandwich press.)

15 comments:

  1. May be a skillet cookie recipe would work - they're intended for cooking in contact with the heat source.

    There's one here: http://messythrillinglife.blogspot.com/2008/04/cast-iron-skillet-cookies.html

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  2. Er, in the sense that the skillet presumably gets pretty hot..or something. I think. You don't actually put the skillet on the stove....

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  3. Oh wow, that giant cookie is intense. Thanks for the link.

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  4. I quite like the idea of just seeing how stuff melts in your sandwich press, but I fear it would lead to a non-food product sandwich press which would be kind of wasteful. Cos I do like, you know, toasted cheese sandwiches. But I would like to try melting stuff like, oh I don't know, soap and gladwrap and dishwasher tablets and dirt. I guess that's why they invented baking paper. It's powerful stuff.

    And it's very interesting to hear that ovaltine would be more popularly known than milo. Interesting in a totally unbelievable kind of way.

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  5. My flatmate (of about 15 years ago)used to eat baked bean toasties. I thought it was incredibly inventive, but I guess it was actually pretty old school.

    Let us know how your experiment goes!

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  6. This is so weird. I read that exact same recipe about 3 days ago. (the one with the sausages) And I think they mean those tiny cocktail wiener type sausages... But that's pure speculation. Yes, Americans do stuff like sweet pancakes with sausage and cheese and maple syrup, or instead of sausage they use a small hamburger and/or bacon...

    Anyway: Have you tried just plopping some regular biscuit dough into the sandwich maker? It's worth a shot, isn't it? Just make a batch of dough and f it works in the sandwich thing, fine, if not you can either wrap it in cling wrap and freeze it or just bake them in the oven... OR, you might want to try Anzac biscuits, they kind of go melty gooey before setting into a crispy biscuit, that might work?

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  7. Laurie11:29 PM

    OK, I'll bite. What's milo? Since they used ovaltine to replace it in Breathe, is it a chocolate powder to put in milk?
    And not to do with a sandwich press at all, one of my son's favorite breakfasts is pancake-wrapped sausage on a stick (bought frozen) that he dips in syrup. They actually make them with chocolate chips, too, but we must draw the line somewhere.

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  8. i do grilled veggies for lasagne and sometimes schnitzel in the sammich press.

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  9. In no particular order:

    Lauren: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_(drink) It is a malted chocolate powder with a coarse texture, so when you have a cold you actually just eat big spoonfuls of it moistened with milk. It is excellent and far superior to ovaltine.

    Pancake wrapped sausages on a stick? How do you cook them?

    Nicole - I think that is what we will try - Anzacs was my thought, not the hard nubby ones but the DELICIOUS, right sort.

    Penthe - one day you and I shall meet, and we shall melt things.

    Lili - ooh, grilled veggies. Does it work with eggplant? Do you oils them first?

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  10. I used to make toasted banana & cinnamon sandwiches when I had a sandwich press (I gave it to my x, and so I no longer live with it).

    I also used to work in after school care and I must say that we did get rather oddly creative with our cooking. Something about necessity being the mother of invention and all that... We never made sandwich press cookies though, I'm afraid.

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  11. Curry puffs in the jaffle iron? REVELATION.

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  12. Toasted sandwiches in the press are my favourite kinds of meals. Baked beans and cheese, etc, but the best one is sliced banana, cinnamon, honey and sultanas.

    Also, you don't need to have a cold to eat spoonsful of Milo moistened with milk you know. (Just a hint).

    (OOh, word verif is GONER. Yep).

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  14. You can make popcorn in them. You just put the corn in, shut it, it goes bangbangbangbangbang and when you open it, there's popcorn! Learned this in year 12 with the community jafflemaker. It was great til someone accidentally jaffled the cord in it. A different sort of bang.

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  15. I think the standard old freezer biscuit dough would cook that way. Cant test it for you though because I'm out of dough and forgot to buy flour.
    I believe a link is just a sausage. Sausage in patty form is also very big in the States.

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