Recipes for a Wonderful Christmas Morning Brunch!

Well, Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas to you. I hope that you’re prepared for this wonderful holiday. We are so excited because this place is bubbling today because it’s Christmas morning. And I hope you’re having a good time at your house. I hope that the kids all stay in bed long enough so that you could get up and get the lights turned on the tree, and get everything prepared, the gifts underneath, all of the excitement of the day. Christmas has come to “At Home”. And I appreciate — there’s just something so exciting about the festivity that goes along with the trimmings and all the beautiful red color, and just the smells of Christmas, and the sounds of Christmas; the Christmas music. If this is Christmas morning, I want you to be sure to put on some beautiful Christmas music. Fill that house with wonderful sounds of a joyous holiday that it is. And as you can see, Christmas has arrived “At Home”. Be sure to spend time today — I know it’s a crazy day. I know you’re going to be picking up the gift wrapping and probably bundling those kids up and maybe going to Grandma’s house. But what I want you to do is spend quality time today with your family. I know that you want to prepare a whole lot of different things, and there’s — everything is going to demand your attention, but really the most important thing today, number one is to stop and remember what the day is all about, and think about the Lord Jesus Christ, and then have a wonderful day of celebration with your family and friends. Well, today on “At Home”, we thought we would prepare a Christmas brunch for you. And that’s what we’re doing today. It’s not the Christmas dinner. It’s not a Christmas buffet. It’s a Christmas brunch with all kinds of good things. And we’re going to get started just as soon as we come back from this important message for you and your family.

Here’s our “At Home” Christmas greeting to you. “From our home to yours, Arlene and the entire “At Home” staff extend our wishes for a very Merry Christmas, to you and your loved ones.”

Well, I told you this is going to be Christmas brunch. Some of these things you can prepare the night before so that it doesn’t make it so hectic on the morning of Christmas; like the French toast that we’re going to do, and some sticky buns. But the first thing we’re going to do is make a pancake; not like you’ve ever seen before, because this pancake goes into the oven. I have a ten-inch skillet that I have a couple of tablespoons of butter already in the oven. The butter has to melt, the pan has to get hot. And what we’re going to do here is take a couple of eggs — I think we have three eggs here, and we’re going to put those into a bowl. We’re going to mix this until it’s nice and fluffy. [Blender whirrs] Isn’t this exciting? I mean, I’ll bet your kids are running around. I bet Grandma is saying, “Let me help.” And your husband’s saying, “Oh, did we spend that much money?” Doesn’t matter, it’s Christmas morning. Forget about that. Don’t worry about that. Worry about that tomorrow, okay? Anyway, now we’re going to add — to the eggs we’re going to add some flour. You say, “What kind of pancake is this?” Well, this pancake is going to bake in the oven, and we’re going to fill it with peaches, and some sour cream; wonderful taste. It’s called a “baked peach pancake”. We’re adding our flour. Now we’re going to add some milk, which is a half a cup of each, flour and milk. And we’re going to add a little bit of salt; just a pinch, not too much. [Blender whirrs] And I’m going to beat this. Beat it around really good, until it’s smooth. When it’s nice and smooth, then we’re going to pour this into the pan that we already have in the oven, getting nice and hot. And we’re just about there. Okay; very good. This is nice and smooth. We’re going to take this over and pour it right into our pan that’s already getting hot in the oven. We’ve melted that butter, as you can see. Now, what you want to do is move the butter around the pan a little bit. See, and you want to pour this right in there, and put it back in the oven. This is going to bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. Okay? It’s really important to time these things. I’m going to check my time on that because I think it says 30 minutes. Sorry, bake 20 to 25 minutes. We’ll do it for 22, all right? That’s going to puff up. And you’re going to be amazed at how gorgeous and how impressed your family will be when they see this beautiful, beautiful pancake with peaches in there. We’ll add some more things to that later. Now, the other thing I was telling you about that you can do the night before when the kids are in bed, you have all the packages wrapped, all the baking is done, you’re thinking about that Christmas morning. This is called a “French toast” that’s really different. We’re going to take a half a cup of raisins. And we have eight slices of French bread cut about a half inch thick. And we’ve lined our pan. We’ve also greased the pan, so it’s easy to get them out. And we’re going to sprinkle raisins all over the bread; and some chopped pecans. Now, you have to do this the night before, because you know, French bread is also better when it soaks up what you’re making it French with, which is the eggs and the milk. Now, to that we’re going to add — we’ve got some eggs. And we’re going to whisk those. [Whisking] So many recipes today I have to keep referring to them. So you’ll pardon me while I look at them. We’ve got the eggs here, which are six eggs. And we’re going to take two cups of half and half. Now, I know you’re saying, “This is not diet foods.” No, you’re right, it isn’t because this is holiday, remember? This is Christmas. You’re allowed on Christmas. Okay, nobody counts on Christmas. Well, some do, but you know, for the most part people kind of throw that caution to the wind. But we’ve got two cups of half and half. And we’re going to add some orange juice; half a cup of orange juice. It’s a really unusual flavor, and I think something you’re going to really enjoy. And a little bit of salt, pinch of salt for those eggs; not too much. You don’t like to use too much. And some cinnamon, and some nutmeg. All right? And we’re going to whisk that. [Whisking] And the night before, like I said, you’re going to make this. And we’re going to pour this mixture over the top of this French bread. Make sure that it’s well blended. And just pour it. And what will happen — oops; what will happen is this will soak it up all night long. And in the morning, all you need to do is bake it. It’s amazing how much easier the breakfast will go when you have the ability to just take things out of the refrigerator and pop them in the oven. Now, the problem at my house is we only have one oven, so you have to time everything so that you can get everything done at the right time. But we’re going to cover this with a plastic wrap, and we will refrigerate it. And you say, “Well, what if I don’t have — what if I forgot to do it?” Well, then I would make the traditional French toast because this really needs that time that it takes for that egg to soak into that bread to make it so good. And what we’re going to make — I’m going to set this here. What we’re going to make with this is an orange syrup, maple syrup that is flavored with orange extract. You want to serve that hot. Won’t go into that now. We’ll show that at the end of the program. Well, moving right along, we have our pancake with peaches. We’ve got our French toast. Now I’m going to make — let’s go over here to this — to the stove. And what I want to make for you now is something called “Christmas morning mix-up”. And in our house we like to have some ham, some onion, that type of thing to go along with the variety that we’re having here today. So I’m going to put a couple of tablespoons of oil into our pan and let it get nice and hot. This is one of those dishes that has everything in it. I mean, you don’t have to have the ham frying here, the potatoes going there, the eggs going here, the — this is all in one. This is a great recipe, and very easy to do. First of all, we’re going to let that get nice and hot. And then we’re going to take the frozen hash browns. These come — they’re in the frozen food section of your market, which I hope is Foodland’s. And you measure them out. This will be about four cups. And what we want to do is just place those in our skillet. Okay? And they need to begin to sauté. Isn’t it wonderful that we have this time of celebration every year? And I know that people who commercialize on Christmas and it’s all Santa Claus and, “What are you going to get,” and, “What are you going to get?” But to people who really know the true meaning of Christmas, this is a glorious time for us, because somewhere — sure we bake the cookies, and we give the gifts, but deep in our hearts we know what it really is all about. And it’s about giving, because Jesus came to Earth so that He could give His life for us. And I love to think about Christmas morning. And Christmas morning at my house when I was a kid with my two brothers, they were under the tree with a train. And my dad he would make — I mean, we had a small house, but my dad had this platform. We had the houses, the gravel grass, the gravel roads. We had the poles. We had everything. He would make this elaborate set of — with an Erector Set, this thing — the trestle that the train would go over. They would work on this for months. My mother would say — I mean you couldn’t get around the living room because there was this much room between the couch and the edge of the whole platform where the tree, the train, everything was. It was a horrendous time. But my brothers and my dad would work probably a couple of months on that to get it ready. And it — when my second brother came along, he had to have his own train. Course he got that for Christmas one year. And so — you know, then there were two trains rolling around the house, just having — you know, the steam was blowing out of one, and the whistle’s blowing on the other. But what a wonderful time we had as a family. My folks would be right in there, working right along with us, having as good a time as we were practically; all except Mom because she couldn’t run the sweeper. Hard time for her to dust. She could hardly get around to do those things that she wanted to do. But she was very tolerant and very, very supportive. And we had such good memories of Christmas. Now, I remember the Christmas that I peeked at all the presents because I knew where Mom hid them. Do you know that was the worst Christmas I can remember, because I was so disappointed on Christmas morning. I knew everything I was getting. There was no excitement. So if any little kids are out there, and you think you knew where everything is, I hope this Christmas you haven’t peeked, because it’s disappointing and you will not like to do that again, I’m sure. Well, our hashed browns are cooking. And to this we’re going to add two cups of cooked ham. Now, if you have an Easter — or Christmas — yes an Easter ham, your Christmas ham, you’re going to want to chop up some of that ham and put it in with these hashed browns. You’re also going to do a couple of tablespoons or maybe a third of a cup of chopped onion. If you don’t like onion, leave it out. It’s okay. And let’s see, what else do we want to use here? This is going to cook for a while. This needs to cook for about ten minutes. So while this is cooking, we’re going to come back to it in a little bit. Really, really important at this point I would give it a good shot of fresh ground pepper. Now, let it just cook. Flavor it, season it. I would not add salt to this because the ham will be salty, so you don’t really need to do that. But I do like the taste of fresh ground pepper. It’s really tasty. We’re going to let this go ahead and continue to cook for about ten minutes sautéed. The smell is wonderfully smelled, the onions with the ham, with the potatoes. And we’ll be coming back to that periodically. All right, the next thing we’re going to tell you how to do is another one of those things that you can do the night before, and that’s called our “sticky buns”. Now, sticky buns are a great — it’s — I mean just smelling that baking in the house on Christmas morning is really going to get your family out of bed if they aren’t already up. Because they — you make it night before, you cover it, put it in a warm place, and then in the morning you just put it in and bake it. And I’ll tell you what, you will not believe how easy this is. You take a Bundt pan, and you grease it very, very well. You see these little frozen dinner rolls, you just take the frozen dinner rolls and place them into this Bundt pan. I’m going to use the whole package. Just distribute them evenly; okay? Now, what we’re going to need for this is some butter that we’ve melted in a saucepan. We’ve already got it melted to speed things along. And we’re going to add some pecans, some brown sugar, and some cinnamon to that butter. We want that to melt down. Really important for that to melt down. So you’re going to want to keep it on the heat until the sugar melts thoroughly; really important for that. Sometimes people want to take it off and it all lumps up. You need this to be very, very liquidy; all right? So stir it around. While you’re there, stir up your hash browns and your ham. Smells wonderful. These smells are smells of Christmas morning to me, because I remember mornings like this. And you know, what you do for your family, every day you create memories for your family. When you get older, you tend to go back and remember the pleasant ones, and how much fun you had when this was happening or when that was happening. And I trust that all of you have good memories. And maybe today is a good time to be thinking about all those wonderful things that happened. Okay, we’re going to let that go just for a minute. While we’re doing that, we’re going to add our — this is the cook kind of butterscotch pudding, not the instant. This is the one that you cook, okay? We’re just going to sprinkle a package of that over those rolls that we’ve placed in our Bundt pan. Sprinkle it evenly; all over. Keep going. Boy, it seemed like a big package there. All right, now what we’ll do is take our butter, cinnamon, sugar, and pecans, and basically you’re just going to pour this over the top of your rolls; all right? Doesn’t that look wonderful? Goodness sakes. Now, you say, “Do you bake them now?” No, like I told you, we’ll put those — because see your little dough balls are still frozen, so we certainly don’t want to bake those yet. But what we’ll do is cover this, either with wax paper or a plastic wrap, and you’re going to put a cloth over the top. Put this in a warm place, and you’ll bake this the next day. You talk about pecan rolls, [Laughs] this — and they’re so easy — they break apart. You don’t have to slice them. They break apart. Very easy to do. And your family’s going to enjoy it, all right? Very good now. We have — we’re coming right along. How much time do we have here, Dale? Want to make sure that everybody has enough —

Seven.

Time to — there we go. All right, now what we’re going to do, when these are just about finished — still have a couple of — see they’re browning nicely and evenly. What we’ll do with these then is mix up our eggs and we’re going to pour that over the top of the potatoes and the ham, and we’ll stir that just until those eggs begin to set. Then we’re going to stir in our cheese. And I’m going to wait just a little bit longer. We’re going to make our special orange juice treat; because I think this needs to go just a little bit longer. Yes; just a little bit longer. All right, that’s fine. We’ll keep an eye on that. This is a treat. If your kids like orange juice or if they don’t, maybe they’ll enjoy this because I call this my “frosty”. You take a pitcher and all you’re going to do in the pitcher is take two low-fat lemon-flavored yogurts. See that, that’s the lemon-flavored yogurt. And you want two of those. And we’re going to empty them into our pitcher. There we go. Clean it all out really good. Don’t forget now, all of the recipes are still available. You say, “Yes, but Arlene, we’re close to Christmas.” That’s all right, we’re going to do a New Year’s Day buffet for you — sorry, not a buffer, but a dinner; and those recipes will be included, too. So even if you think, “Well, I won’t get — have time to get this for Christmas,” go ahead and send for them anyway because there’s going to be another program’s worth of recipes there, and you’ll have to send them that way if you want to get those. All right, we’re going to get rid of this. And to this we’re going to add — let me turn this down just a bit. To this we’re going to add two cups of skim milk, low-fat yogurt, skim milk, two cups. And to that we’re going to add a six-ounce can of orange concentrate — orange juice concentrate. Put that in there. I think kids will enjoy this. I think there’s a few adults that would enjoy this too, because it makes a really interesting taste of a beverage for some special occasion like Christmas. [Blender whirrs] And you’re going to blend that around and around. You can do this in a blender if you don’t have one of these fancy do dads. They’re all right, but if you have a blender, it will work fine in a blender. And you’re going to just keep beating it. Make sure that that gets completely mixed very, very, very, very well. Okay? You’re going to pour this over ice cubes and serve it in glasses for breakfast. Don’t forget, you want a nice big pot of good, hot, hot steaming coffee. And get out those beautiful dishes. Don’t use your everyday stuff. [Blender whirring stops] Get out those pretty dishes. It’s Christmas. Come on. [Blender whirrs] It’s celebration time, something we need to be doing. Okay? [Blender whirring stops] And this is called a “frosty”. I think you’re going to enjoy it because it’s got a different flavor completely. And what I’m going to do is add some ice cubes to my pitcher, and that will kind of water it down. It looks a little thick now, but it will water down. And by the time you’re ready to serve everything else, that will be ready; trust me. Okay? Have you thought about maybe inviting someone who’s going to be spending the holidays by themselves? You go to this much preparation, it’s nice to have it be appreciated. And sometimes the people who appreciate it most are the ones that do not have an opportunity to enjoy something like this. So if you know of a neighbor or a friend, someone who you know will not have a lot of family around, why don’t you invite them for Christmas morning? I think it would be great — be a great time to show the love of God that you have that reaches out to people no matter where they are or who they are. Well, that’s ready. Now we’re going to just whip up our eggs here, because I believe the hash browns are ready. And we’re going to do this over here so in case it splashes, it will go right into the pan. [Whisking] We’re going to whip the eggs. And we’re going to be back right after this important message and we’re going to show you our entire Christmas brunch. Stay with us now.

To receive your special Christmas recipe packet 175 containing all of this month’s holiday recipes, listen very carefully. Just send a self-address business-sized double-stamped envelope — yes, that’s two stamps with a dollar or more to At Home, 175 CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You will only need to write once this month to receive all our Christmas recipes from “At Home”. And have a blessed holiday.

Well, here we are with our Christmas morning buffet brunch. And I’m going to let you see all the finished products. There are — it’s the Christmas morning mix-up with our hash browns, and ham, and onion, and cheese. Next to it is the delicious oven-baked French toast. And we’ve made our orange maple syrup to pour over that. Delicious. And your family’s going to love it because it’s got a little different unusual flavor. Next to it is our frosty; I call it “frosty” like the snowman, orange drink. And next to that here’s our sticky buns. Are they glorious or what? Now I’m telling you, what could be easier than that recipe? And right next to that is our peach pancake that I told you about. And what you can do with that is just add a little dollop of sour cream to that. I’ll tell you, this puts your mind of your Yorkshire pudding. If you like Yorkshire pudding, then you’ll like that. I hope that you’ve enjoyed these recipes. You know, today’s a very special day. And I hope it’s special at your house. So maybe this year hasn’t been the greatest, but there’s still cause for celebration. And I have to tell you that the group that helps with these programs, my studio crew, my directors, and the girls that are with me. Girls, could you come in now? Come on, Becky. Come on, Linda. [Laughs] Come on, Sandy. These are the girls that keep “At Home” rolling. Believe me when I tell you that, because without them we couldn’t do it. And without you, we couldn’t do it. “At Home” has become a program that people watch because they say it makes them feel good; makes them feel comfortable. They feel calm. I want to tell you that the reason that you feel that calm is because the people that are working on this program are all people who have dedicated their lives to the Lord, Jesus Christ, and have allowed Him to come in and reign in their hearts and in their lives. And I pray that today, if you have not done that, it could be a wonderful way to celebrate Jesus’ birthday —

Right.

Accepting the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior. He will totally change your life. You’ll be amazed at how different the world and everything seems when He comes in and rules and reigns. I hope that your family’s gathered around you. Take time to pause and remember the blessings of God. Remember how, you know, things will always not be — if you’re having a difficult situation, they’re not always going to be that way. They’re going to get better. But most of all, let this be a day of celebration; a great day of celebration. You know, take time maybe tonight later after all the kids have played with the toys and like the boxes are better than the toys that you picked for them [Laughter] — that’s what always happens with the nephews. You know, he plays with a big box and forgets the toy. But maybe tonight would be a good time to get the family together, get those big, heavy coats on, and go out for a nice walk. And just look at the sky, and just think about how good things are for you. You know, there’s always someone who has it a little bit worse than you. And this is a day for celebrating, for making merry. And the celebration is all involved with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We hope from our home to you that this will be a blessed time. This next week between now and New Year’s, you’ll enjoy family gatherings. You’ll go and visit that one you haven’t seen for a long time. Take them not just something tangible, but take them some love from your heart because that’s what they’ll appreciate much more than anything else, is just spending time with somebody that loves them. Right, girls?

That’s right.

That’s right.

Absolutely. [Laughter] I can’t — I want to say publicly, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the guys behind the cameras; Cornerstone Television, who has made this possible. And our home that was just a little dream has become a reality, and you’re part of our home. We thank every one of you. And above all else, we really, really do wish you a very, very blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year, right?

That’s right.

That’s right.

That’s right. [Laughs] Well, I hope this has been a great day for you. It’s a start of a good day. And so I’ll say, as I always do, be sure to join us the next time, because it just won’t be the same without you here “At Home”. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas

Yes.

Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh food and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholey’s. Your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less from Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.