This Cake-Bread Combines Breakfast and Dessert in One
How’s that for the best of both worlds?!
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I’m a big believer that cake — in all its various ways, shapes and forms — should be eaten for breakfast. I’ve felt that way ever since I was a little kid, and despite numerous attempts by my parents to change my mind, it hasn’t worked. So, when I heard Scott Conant say pretty much the same thing during his recent Schiacciata all'Uva (Italian Sweet Bread with Grapes) class on the Food Network Kitchen app, I not only felt justified, I felt truly and utterly seen.
“If you consider this a dessert, then it’s a dessert. If you call it a snack, then we’ll call it that too. It’s whatever you want it to be, that’s the best thing about this,” Scott says while answering a viewer question. But here’s the real kicker folks: “It’s great with coffee. It’s great as breakfast.” Hear that, mom and dad?
All jokes aside, Scott’s cakey take on the traditional Tuscan wine harvest bread is something you’ll not only want to make this fall, after just once slice, you’ll probably want to have it every single morning too. To start, Scott coats his baking tray with extra virgin olive oil spray to give the bread an extra bit of floral flavor that’ll be evident once it’s fully baked. He then goes on to combine granulated sugar, flour, baking powder, orange zest and coarse Italian polenta in a stand mixer. After mixing everything together for a few minutes on a low speed, Scott then adds in egg yolks, heavy cream, whole milk, melted butter, vanilla extract and some Marsala wine.
“This isn’t a dough the way you would think a bread is,” Scott advises about the mixture while scraping down the sides of his mixer bowl. “I would call this a batter instead of a dough because it’s loose, you can see how loose it is. But it’s okay. Don’t worry — it’s the way it’s supposed to be. So, don’t get excited if you’re like, ‘Oh my God it says a bread, but I feel like I’m making pancakes over here.’”
Scott then moves on to his seedless Concord grapes, which he says you can also substitute with any other variety of seedless red grapes if you can’t find them in the grocery store. Though the recipe says you should half your grapes before adding them into your batter mixture, Scott breaks all the rules and adds them in whole, noting that the stand mixer’s paddle attachment will do all the hard work for you. “What happens is they’ll start to break up all by themselves obliviously with the paddle in there and what doesn’t break up will be cooked inside this bread and they’re just delicious. As it cooks the flavor of those grapes concentrates a little bit,” Scott adds.
After baking the grape-filled cake-bread for about 20 minutes, Scott takes it out of the oven and cuts himself a big slice. Noting the caramelized sugar on its top and its tender polenta and orange-studded interior, Scott finishes up the class by calling it “everyone’s new favorite cake.” And I’m totally inclined to agree, though I’d also add the word “breakfast” to the end of that statement.
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