Okinawan Sweet Potato Stuffed French Toast

Photo Courtesy of KHON2

I have recently gotten the honor to cook like a MasterChef! It was part of KHON2's community contests. The contest is open to home cooks with no professional cooking backgrounds, winner will be flown (for free) to the audition of the Master Chef season 5, bypass public auditions and go straight to the producers of the show. The criteria is you have to submit a 100-word or less essay, explain why you wanna be on MasterChef, and what entree and dessert you will make if you are selected to do a live one-hour cook off. Lil P saw the commercial and told me I should do it so...I did! I thought long and hard of what I want to make, I have a crazy idea that I should not cook something that I have done before, wanted to make something with a local twist, something that stands out but yet tasty and true to what I love. So...I went with:

Wasabi Peas Furikake Crusted Ahi and Okinawan Sweet Potato Stuffed French Toast

I got the nerve wrecking call 2 days before the cook off and I was in on the run!! They said they went thru 3 rounds to select just 2 competitors to do the cooking throwdown, and I am soooo honored to be one of them!

Today I am going to share with you my recipe for my dessert: Okinawan Sweet Potato Stuffed French Toast (I have a link to the Ahi dish at the end of this post):

Ingredients:
1 medium size okinawan sweet potato
4 tbs evaporated milk
1 heaping tbs of condense milk
1 loaf of french bread
Eggs
Milk
Coconut Chips
Honey
Oil for light frying

1) Boil sweet potato in water until fork tender (about 20 mins)
2) Set oven to 300 degrees, toast coconut chips for a few minutes, toss, then in for a few more until nicely toasted (watch carefully so they don't burn), set aside
3) While sweet potato is cooking, heat oil in a pan.
4) Slice french bread
5) In a separate bowl, mix together beaten eggs and milk (depends on how much french toast you make)
6) Dip sliced french bread into egg/milk mixture
7) Fry bread on each side until golden brown, drain, then keep warm in oven at 170 degrees.
8) When sweet potato is soft, run sweet potato with water and quickly remove the skin under running water
9) cut it up into pieces, drop it into a food processor
10) add in evaporated milk and condense milk
11) pulse sweet potato filling until well-blended (you may add more evaporated milk if you want the filling to be less thick)
12) Let filling cool, then place filling a ziplog bag
13) place a french toast on a plate, snip the corner of the ziplog bag then pipe in sweet potato filling, sprinkle with toasted coconut flakes
14) repeat for a 2nd layer
15) drizzle honey all over the stuffed french toast

VOILA!

I would LOVE to add haupia to this but there's no way I could make it in an hour so I nixed the idea. But after speaking with the chefs, they said I could have added a haupia sauce over the french toast to make it into breadpudding-like dessert. Wow, that is why they are chefs because they've got great ideas!! They did give me a bonus for creativity!

All in all, I had a great time on the competition. Win or lose, the experience in itself was just uncomparable! I would like to give a shout out to Lil P for encouraging me to take on the challenge, Mr. P for all his support and providing me the kitchen of my dreams so I can cook the way I want, all my friends who provided me feedbacks, suggestions, and words of encouragement. I would also like to thank all the sponsors that made this contest possible: KHON2, Ferguson Honolulu, Hawaii Gas, and Anthology Marketing Group. Best of luck to Amanda Price as she represent Hawaii on the real MasterChef Competition!

Please refer to my Facebook page for my Wasabi Furikake Crusted Ahi recipe!

Protein Fiber Bar

Awhile back I mentioned that lil P had gotten tired of eating oatmeal so I have been finding other ways to get him to eat them. I have done muffins but recently I have created this protein fiber bar that lil P is just raving about. Thanks to Pinterest for the idea!

1/8 cup soy milk
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I used half milk choco and half dark choco)
1 packet of instant Quakers High Fiber brown sugar oatmeal (you can use regular packets too)
1 scoop of chocolate Muscle Milk
2 tbs coconut flakes (optional)
Handful of peanuts (I used Planters)

1) In a microwavable bowl, place milk and chocolate chips and microwave it for 20 seconds at a time. Stir until melted.
2) Add in remaining ingredients and stir.
3) Line a rectangular container with saran wrap, then pour mixture in to the container, pack it tight, then cover.
4) Refrigerate until hardens, then take out the bar by lifting saran wrap up.
5) Remove saran wrap, lay it on a cutting board and cut into desired pieces.

You can actually put whatever you want in the bar. Last night I have prepared a rocky road one with some marshmallow, see below. You can add in raisins or crasins, mac nuts, walnuts, etc. Again the possibilities are endless!

with marshmallows

Nutella cookie crumbs and coconut flakes roll

I'm a sucker at Costco. Always makes me buy more than I need! I actually manage to put down the bagel thins, but then passed by this "flat out" tortilla looking thing and told myself I've got to have them. This "Flat Out" bread has good fiber and it also has flaxseed. So I know this is good for me and it is also good for lil P. He NEEDS extra fiber to get him *going*.























Last night I made steak, rice and broccoli for lil P but thought i could make a dessert and decided to make some cookies (craisin walnut cookies)...so I thought. I guess maybe I left the cookie dough mixture out for too long before baking that the butter had melted causing the cookes to go *pfff* flat and melted. I was quite disappointed, it looks alot more like...poop. I didn't even want to take a pic of it because it looked really disgusting, yet, I didn't want to throw it out. I took a bit of it and it actually tasted pretty good. Just gotta find a way to put it together. So I took as much of it out of the foil (they looked like crumbles of cookies) and placed them into a container.



Flat Out bread came to the rescue. So I took a slice out, spread Nutella on top, then sprinkle those cookie crumbs on top, then sprinkled shredded coconut on top. Then I put it in the oven to toast for a few minutes. Then I took it out and rolled it up, cut it into two pieces and served it to lil P after his dinner.



I was really scared lil P won't like it. But he took one bit and said "this is good!" and ate the whole thing! The package of the Flat Out bread also says it's great for pizza...so I will definitely try that next time!