With Father’s Say tomorrow, we couldn’t wait to test these French Toast recipes.

First up: French Toast sandwiches.
 
 
SWEET OR SAVORY FRENCH TOAST SANDWICHES 

Use French Toast slices as bread to make a sandwich.

We made a wonderbar French Toast sandwich with smoked salmon, soft goat cheese (substitute cream cheese), onion, and tomato. Then we tried other favorite fillings:

 
To make Grilled Cheese French Toast: Sauté the second side of the bread to a lighter “toast,” add the cheese (and ham or other meat), add the top slice, and grill until the cheese melts.
 
 
RECIPE: APPLE PECAN FRENCH TOAST

This recipe isn’t a sandwich but was such a delight that we had to include it.

The recipe is from Zulka Morena, producers of top-quality, minimally processed sugars (granulated, confectioner’s, brown) made with freshly-harvested sugar cane. The sugars are not refined, which helps preserve the fresh flavor and natural properties of the sugar cane. You can taste the difference in a cup of tea. Zulka makes.
 
Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. CORE, peel, and quarter the apples, then slice into ¼-inch thick slices. Place in a bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and ¼ cup of sugar, making sure the apples are well coated. Set aside.

2. WHISK together the eggs, ¼ cup of sugar, the remaining tablespoon of cinnamon, vanilla, milk, and cream in a large bowl.

3. GREASE the bottom of a large baking pan with the butter. Dip half of the slices of bread in the egg mixture quickly so they are not saturated, one at a time, and place in the pan. Spread half of the apple mixture over the bread. Repeat with the remaining bread and apple mixture. Then pour the remaining egg mixture over the top of the pan.

4. SPRINKLE the top with the chopped pecans and the remaining ¼ cup of sugar. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

5. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Remove the pan from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking, warm to room temperature, and bake for 45 minutes, covered. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serve warm, drizzled with maple syrup.
 
FIND MORE FRENCH TOAST RECIPES

[1] French Toast sandwich with fig jam.

[2] French Toast sandwich with Nutella and jam on pandoro yeast bread with fruit (photo © Bauli USA).

[3] Grilled Cheese French Toast—even richer than grilled cheese because of the egg-milk batter (photo © Arla USA).

[4] Not a sandwich but a delicious French Toast recipe with apples and pecans (photo © Zulka Sugar).

Take your choice: innovative Mac & Cheese (photo courtesy Chef Eric LeVine) or a conventional preparation (photo courtesy Dietz and Watson).

What’s on this plate?

 
This may be just the thing for a fun food-loving dad on Father’s Day.

The concept is from one of our favorite innovative chefs, Eric LeVine.

Chef Eric is the author of Small Bites Big Flavor: Simple, Savory, And Sophisticated Recipes For Entertaining.

This imaginative cookbook is written for home chefs who want to expand their repertoire with fun and unconventional dishes.

The 100+ recipes also include mid-sized, larger and sweet bites, and even some signature cocktails. It demonstrates how much fun it can be to prepare, present, share, and of course, eat food.
 
MORE FUN MAC & CHEESE RECIPES

These are a bit more conventional, yet still fun food:

Here’s one of the easiest, tastiest “sticky buns” recipe. It was developed by the master bakers at King Arthur Flour.

Simple biscuit dough is dropped atop a sweet and salty maple-bacon-brown sugar syrup. Once baked, the biscuits are turned out of the pan upside down, so the sticky topping drips down their sides.
 
BACON STICKY BUNS

Ingredients For The Syrup

 
For 16 Small Biscuits

 
Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 475°F. Lightly grease an 8″ square or 9″ round pan; whichever size you choose, make sure it’s at least 2″ deep, to prevent any boil-over.

2. MAKE the syrup: Chop the cooked bacon into 1/2″ pieces. Combine the bacon with the remaining syrup ingredients, stirring until well combined. Spread in the bottom of the prepared pan.

3. MAKE the biscuits: Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Work in the butter until the mixture is crumbly; some larger, pea-sized pieces of butter may remain intact. Add the milk or buttermilk, stirring to make a sticky dough.

Top: Bacon sticky buns. Bottom: Maple syrup and bacon go into the sticky bun syrup.

5. BAKE the biscuits for 10 minutes. Turn the oven off, and leave them in the oven for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until they’re golden brown. Remove the biscuits from the oven and immediately turn the pan over onto a serving plate. Lift off the pan, and scrape any syrup left in the pan onto the biscuits. Pull biscuits apart to serve.
 
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*You can easily make buttermilk at home. For one cup of buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice plus enough milk to measure 1 cup. Stir, then let stand for 5 minutes. You can also use 1 cup of plain yogurt or 1-3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar plus 1 cup milk.

Top: Chocolate-dipped macaroons (photo courtesy McCormick). Center: Plain coconut macaroons (photo courtesy Recchiuti Confections). Bottom: Up close (photo by Georgie Grd | Wikipedia).

If you like coconut, don’t wait until Passover* to make coconut macaroons. They’re a great treat year-round, and gluten-free. Bring them as house gifts: They travel well without breaking.

We adapted this recipe from one by Serena Rain of VanillaQueen.com, purveyor of top-quality vanilla beans, extracts, pastes, powders, sugars and salts.
 
RECIPE: COCONUT MACAROONS

You don’t need to add chocolate to macaroons; but if you want to, there are two options:

 
Ingredients For About 24 Cookies

 
Preparation

You can incorporate the orange peel into the dough or the glaze. We like the “lift” it gives to the recipe.

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Line baking pans with parchment paper.

2. COMBINE the ingredients in a medium bowl and stir until well incorporated. Use a spoon to scoop tablespoon-sized mounds of the coconut “dough.” Shape into round balls and place on the parchment paper. Alternative: You can drop the dough as unshaped mounds. See the difference between the top photo (dropped) and the bottom photo (shaped).

3. BAKE for about 20 minutes or until golden brown (aim for the color in the center photo). Let cool.

4. MAKE the glaze. Place the chocolate in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir, and if necessary, heat for 30 more seconds until fully melted. Dip the bottoms of the cooled macaroons into the chocolate. Alternatively, place the cookies on a tray lined with parchment paper and drizzle the tops with chocolate; let cool until set. Some people prefer the glaze on top: a chocolate dome. Take your pick.

Macaroons appeared in the late 15th or early 16th century in Italy. The historical record isn’t clear, but they are believed to have been created by monks. There were thousands of monasteries in medieval Europe, and monks created different types of beers, brandies and liqueurs, cheeses, pretzels, sweets, wines and spirits.

The first macaroons were almond meringue cookies similar to today’s amaretti cookies, with a crisp crust and a soft interior. They were made from egg whites and almond paste.

Italian Jews adopted the cookie because it had no flour or leavening‡, so could be enjoyed during the eight-day observation of Passover. It was introduced to other European Jews and became popular as a year-round sweet. Over time, coconut was added to the ground almonds and, in some recipes, replaced them. Today in the U.S., coconut macaroons are the norm.

Macaroons came to France in 1533 with the pastry chefs of Catherine de Medici, wife of France’s King Henri II. In France they evolved into delicate meringue cookie sandwiches filled with ganache or jam.

Here’s more about the different types of macaroons.
 
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*During the week of Passover, in April, celebrants eat no leavened grains. Macaroons (all varieties) are grain free.

†Almond meal, or almond flour, is ground from whole, blanched sweet almonds. The nuts are very low in carbohydrates and very nutritious.

‡Leavening is the agent that raises and lightens a baked good. Examples include yeast, baking powder and baking soda. Instead of these, macaroons (all types) are leavened with egg whites.

Grilling steaks for Father’s Day? Check out these tips from Wolfgang’s Steak House.

Wolfgang’s is owned by a father and son who started with one location in Manhattan, dry-aging their own beef. Now they have four Manhattan restaurants and a total of 12 worldwide, from Beverly Hills to Hawaii to Korea and Japan.

Executive chef Amiro Cruz wants you to help you home-cook your steaks like the professionals do. Here are his tips to cook a perfect steak:

1. Buy USDA prime cuts. Yes, USDA prime is the most expensive beef and the very best you can buy. You get what you pay for: a truly superior taste and texture. Here are the different grades of beef.

2. Buy for rib eye steaks. Rib eye is the connoisseur’s favorite cut, considered the most flavorful.

3. Use only kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper for seasoning. When you have such a high-quality piece of meat, you don’t need marinades and herbs: You want to taste the essence of that steak. You don’t need to add any oil or other fat. The grill will be hot enough so the meat won’t stick.

4. Don’t worry about the temperature of the raw steak. You may have been told to bring the meat to room temperature before grilling, but it doesn’t matter. Chef Cruz takes his steaks straight from the fridge, at 41°F (which is what the FDA recommends).

5. Get the grill blazing hot. Once the grill is hot, clean it with a kitchen towel dipped in oil, making sure to handle the towel with a pair of tongs so you don’t burn yourself. Then, throw on meat. Steakhouse chefs prefer to char the steak. Some people don’t like a ton of char, and you might be nervous about burning the meat; but charring gives steak the right flavor. Once the first side is appropriately charred (after about four minutes for medium rare), flip it to the other side and repeat.

6. Use a meat thermometer. Simply touching the meat to see if it’s done is the technique professional chefs use. But if you grill steak only occasionally, a meat thermometer is a foolproof way to know exactly how done your steak is. Rare is 130°F, medium rare is 135°F, medium is 140°F and so on, with five-degree increases. Don’t have a meat thermometer? Run to the nearest hardware store or kitchen goods department, or order one online.

7. Rest the meat. Once it’s done cooking, don’t dig in right away. Let the meat rest for 5-10 minutes so the juices inside can distribute. If you cut it right away, they will drain out and you’ll lose the juiciness.

8. Cut against the grain. If you’re slicing a steak to serve more than one person, be sure to cut against the grain. While cutting against the grain is more important for tougher cuts like London broil, even with a top steak it makes for a softer chew. Just look for the lines that run through the meat and cut perpendicular to them.
 
Don’t forget to put some fresh vegetables on the grill. Even people who don’t like to eat raw bell peppers, onions, etc. enjoy them grilled.

Here are the best vegetables to grill.
 
HOW MANY DIFFERENT CUTS OF STEAK HAVE YOU HAD?

Check out the photos in our Beef Glossary.