Puffed French Toast from The Crystal Palace

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle

DisneyBizJournal.com

August 1, 2023

 

It’s been many moons since we’ve been to The Crystal Palace at Magic Kingdom. The kids were still little, and we were there for the Hundred-Acre Wood breakfast with Winnie The Pooh and Tigger.  I’d like to blame our absence from the restaurant on the fact that our kids are now adults, and not so anxious to see Pooh anymore, but it really is more a function of the fact that we can’t bring ourselves to go back to buffets post-Covid. 

 

A few weeks ago, I was eavesdropping on a family sitting behind me on the Disney World Railroad, and overheard them bemoaning the fact that they hadn’t seen The Crystal Palace’s puffed French toast on the buffet. They were remembering the dish fondly from earlier trips to the Magic Kingdom, and suddenly, I, too, was transported back in time to that particular plate of deliciousness.  Lo, and behold, when I was flipping through my trusty copy of Cooking With Mickey: Gourmet Mickey Cookbook Vol. II last week, joy of joys, there it was!  Now I could avoid the buffet, and have my French toast, too!

Friends, let me tell you… this French toast was just as good as I remembered, even though it was being made at home and not being served with a side of pixie dust.  My son said to me, “This isn’t breakfast, this is dessert!”  Whatever you want to call it, it is scrumptious, and worth your caloric investment!

 

Ingredients:

2 whole eggs

2 ½ tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups milk

1 cup flour

2 ½ teapoons baking powder

12 slices Texas Toast (or other thick-sliced bread of choice), cut in half diagonally

Cinnamon Sugar topping (recipe below)

Maple syrup or fresh fruit for topping

 

Directions:

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla and milk until well blended. Slowly add flour and baking powder and mix until smooth.  Dip bread slices in batter, allowing any excess to drip off. Fry in a hot skillet with 1 inch of oil until golden brown on both sides. Drain on absorbent paper towels. While toast is still warm, roll in cinnamon sugar topping (recipe below).  Serve immediately with maple syrup or fresh fruit topping.  

 

For Cinnamon Sugar Topping:

3/4 cup sugar

4 teaspoons cinnamon

 

Mix together the 3/4 cup sugar and 4 teaspoons cinnamon into a shallow glass dish. Stir well and set aside.

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

Add Some Tropical Flair From Disney to Your Summer Dinners

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle

DisneyBizJournal.com

July 25, 2023

 

Back when we were less knowledgeable Disney travelers, we spent a vacation at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort…. with a small toddler…. who was still in a stroller… and we were assigned a second floor room.  And those of you who know where I’m going with this are busy slapping your foreheads right now, while others are wondering, “So what’s the problem?”

The problem is that Caribbean Beach does not have elevators, which we were clueless about until we’d checked in. So, coming back from the parks after fireworks, with a stroller and a sleeping child, meant either waking the child up (gasp!), or trying to finagle our way up the stairs, each of us balancing a section of the stroller with the sleeping child still in it, park bags and shopping bags akimbo (admittedly, not a good idea either!).  We liked Caribbean Beach enough to go back again, but not until the kids were older (much older), and we consider it a primo spot now that it is on the Skyliner route.  (And that pool is fabulous – one of the most fun on Disney property!)

We were flipping through our ancient copy of Cooking With Mickey: Gourmet Mickey Cookbook Vol. II recently reflecting on how many of the restaurants (and even Disney-MGM Studios) no longer exist. As we turned pages, we found ourselves laughing over such stories as our Caribbean Beach stroller quandary.  We came across this recipe for Jamaican Buns from the “Cinnamon Bay Bakery” at Caribbean Beach, part of their old food court. (In case you’ve never been to Caribbean Beach, each of the room sections is named after a different Caribbean island, hence the reference to “Jamaica.” Aruba, Barbados, Martinique, and Trinidad make up the rest of the distinct island designations.)

 

These buns are a bit of a quick bread, no yeast needed, and have a sweetness to them from the raisins and shredded coconut, and a little tang from the lemon zest.  They are a yummy tropical treat for summer by the pool. Or just dinner. Enjoy as you reminisce about your favorite pool at Caribbean Beach!

Just a cooking note from us:  These “buns” were delicious, but ours came out looking more like thick cookies than a traditional “bun.”  I chose to use the butter version rather than the shortening, so I’m not sure if it was the water content in our butter or not, but there was quite a bit of “spread” on our buns, even though they were originally piled high with the ice cream scoop.  Nonetheless, we loved the flavor – they just didn’t come out with the bun shape we were expecting.  The recipe also makes a lot – we got nearly 30 buns from our attempt.

 

Jamaican Buns From Caribbean Beach

 

3 ½ cups flour

½ cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons lemon rind (or 1 tablespoon lemon extract)

1 cup butter or shortening

3 eggs

¾ cup milk

1 cup raisins

1 ¼ cups shredded coconut

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon rinds.  Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly in texture. Beat eggs with milk and add to flour mixture. Blend until just moistened. Do not overmix. Add raisins and coconut and mix again, just enough to incorporate. Using an ice cream scoop or tablespoon, portion dough onto a greased cookie sheet. Brush the tops of each bun with beaten egg whites and sprinkle with sugar.

 

Bake for about 25 minutes. Buns should be golden brown and firm to touch.

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

Kick Off Your Holiday Weekend With Cobbler From King Stefan’s Banquet Hall

 by Beth Keating

Recipe

DisneyBizJournal.com

May 28, 2023

 

Disney has been known to make a few mistakes along the way, and one of the mistakes that has been covered up by the mists of time is the naming of the restaurant in Cinderella Castle at Disney World.  Many moons ago, the restaurant was named “King Stefan’s Banquet Hall,” an odd moniker because King Stefan was Sleeping Beauty’s father, not Cindy’s.  So why would Aurora’s dad have a restaurant in Cinderella’s castle?  Eventually, someone figured out that the name didn’t really fit, and the restaurant today is known as “Cinderella’s Royal Table.”  Regardless, it is just as difficult to get dining reservations there now as it was back in the day, when it was the purview of King Stefan.

We honeymooned at Disney World eons ago, and were privileged to dine there when it was still  King Stefan’s (and we have the mug to prove it!).  In flipping through our ancient copy of Cooking With Mickey: Gourmet Mickey Cookbook Vol. II, we came across a recipe for the now-defunct King Stefan’s Banquet Hall, and thought it might be time to give this recipe a try. After all, a berry cobbler sounds like the perfect treat to kick-off a holiday weekend! And boy, were these good! No wonder everyone loved them back in the day… They were, indeed, a fan-favorite.

This recipe is relatively easy on the pie-making scale (I’m a pie-making novice), and its blackberries, combined with the tart Granny Smith apples, offers a less sweet pie than you would normally expect in comparison to other fruit pies, but it was no less delicious. The recipe looks like a lot of steps, but it really isn’t. You could even cheat a little and use a premade refrigerated pie dough instead of making the dough from scratch if you wanted. Give it a try, and remember the good ole days of King Stefan’s Banquet Hall along the way!

 

Apple-Blackberry Cobbler From King Stefan’s Banquet Hall

 

1 ½ pounds Granny Smith apples

2 tablespoons butter

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, ground

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ cup light brown sugar

1 1/3 cups water

½ teaspoon cornstarch

½ cup blackberries (fresh or frozen)

Pie dough (recipe follows)

Egg wash (recipe follows)

 

Peel and core apples. Cut in quarters, then in ¼-inch slices. Add to 3-quart saucepan with butter, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, brown sugar and 1 cup of water. Cook until the apples are tender, but not soft. Stir occasionally to keep from sticking.

 

After apples have become tender, reduce heat. Mix ½ teaspoon of cornstarch with 1/3 cup of water, and slowly add to apple mixture. Continue stirring until mixture thickens (3 to 5 minutes). Remove from heat and cool.

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly butter 6 individual baking dishes or soufflé cups. Fill each dish with ½ cup of apple mixture. Top each cup with one tablespoon of blackberries. Cover blackberries with pie dough and brush top of each crust with egg wash.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until top of each cobbler is lightly browned. Remove from oven and serve warm.

 

Ingredients-Pie Dough:

¾ teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups pastry flour

1 tablespoon sugar

½ cup vegetable shortening

¼ cup water

¼ cup milk

 

Sift into a 3-quart mixing bowl salt, pastry flour, and sugar. Add shortening and blend with a pastry cutter. Combine water and milk and gradually add to flour mixture, just enough to form a moist dough. Knead lightly, and refrigerate for 1 hour. Roll dough ¼ inch thick and cut to fit individual baking dishes, allowing enough extra dough to hang over sides of the dish.

 

Ingredients-Egg Wash:

1 egg, beaten

¼ cup milk

 

Combine egg and milk and brush on cobbler just before baking.

 

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

“Walt’s Own Chili and Beans” Looks a Little Different Than the Theme Parks

 by Beth Keating

Review

DisneyBizJournal.com

August 22, 2022

 

Several weeks ago, I was at the Magic Kingdom trying to get lunch. It was one of those days when mobile ordering was just not working, with lousy WiFi signals squashing any hope of getting through to the menus.  When I finally got the page up and running after many refreshes, most of the places had waits that were hours away.  I gave up, and walked up to The Lunching Pad in Tomorrowland. 

While it wasn’t my original plan, the line at The Lunching Pad was short, and I could grab something quick and move on with my day. I selected one of the 50th Anniversary specialty items: Walt’s Chili-Cheese All Beef Foot-Long Hot Dog ($13.99). The hot dog was huge, more than filling, and the chili was tasty and not overly spicy. The only drawback was the fact that the chili made the roll a tad soggy by the time I got to the end of the meal.  It was a messy, need-extra-napkins meal for sure.

 

Fast forward to this weekend, when I was flipping through my dog-eared copy of Cooking with Mickey (Gourmet Mickey Cookbook) Volume II: The Most Requested Recipes from Walt Disney World and Disneyland. (It was published somewhere around the year 2000, but there’s no actual copyright date in the book.)  I came across a recipe for Walt’s Own Chili and Beans, and the description under the recipe reads “Walt Disney’s Personal Recipe.”  

 

I was intrigued by the possibilities, as so many of the chefs at Disney have offered up special variations on Walt’s chili in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Disney World.  (Tradition has it that chili was one of Walt’s favorite meals.) If you are in the parks yourself, and want to do a “Walt’s chili crawl,” head over to Casey’s Corner or Cosmic Ray’s in the Magic Kingdom, where you can get the same Walt’s chili-cheese dog that The Lunching Pad dished up. Cosmic Ray’s also offers the chili over fries for $6.49, as does the Golden Oak Outpost.  The chili fries and hot dog are available in Animal Kingdom at Restaurantosaurus, and if you are in Animal Kingdom anyway, try the Corn Chip Pie with Walt’s Chili for $8.49 at Dino Diner (the dog is available there, too.)

 

In the Resorts? Head over to the All-Stars or Pop Century, where you can get Walt’s chili in a bread bowl ($9.99). The chili dogs are there as well. At Capt. Cook's at Disney’s Polynesian Resort, you can get Walt’s Favorite 1958 Chili for just $4.99!

So, as a little experiment, I decided to give Walt’s recipe in the Cooking with Mickey cookbook a whirl, and see if it was the same as the current recipe in the parks.  The flavor was pretty close to the parks’ version, and it was fun to make this little piece of Disney history, but I will admit to it being a tiny bit different than The Lunching Pad version.  Whether that’s due to Disney making their chili in enormous batches, the vagaries of different chefs using a pinch more of “this” or a smidge more of “that,” or just the fact that I didn’t serve mine over hot dogs, each chili had its own personality.  (When I make it again at home, I’ll probably increase the amount of spice a little, and increase the amount of water over the simmering beans. My final product was a touch thicker than the park version, with a little more meat.)

 

If you’d like to see a few other recipes that we’ve tried from the Cooking with Mickey cookbook, check out this story about the Great Northern Bean Soup from Disney’s Soundstage, or the 50’s Prime Time Café’s Cranberry Chutney. In the meantime, here’s Walt’s personal recipe from the Mickey cookbook.

 

Walt’s Own Chili and Beans

 

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds pink (pinto) beans, dry

2 medium onions, sliced

¼ cup vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic, diced

1 cup celery, chopped

2 pounds lean beef, ground

1 teaspoon chili powder (more if desired)

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon thyme, dried

3 cups (about 28 ounces) tomatoes, solid-pack, canned

Salt

Pepper

 

Note: Optional ingredients for a more spicy chili: 1/8 teaspoon each coriander, turmeric, chili seeds, fennel, cloves, cinnamon, dry ginger, or 1 small Mexican chili pepper.

 

Wash and sort beans and soak overnight in cold water. 

 

Next morning, drain beans and place in a 2 quart saucepan. Add fresh water to cover 2 inches over beans. Add sliced onions and simmer in a covered pot until tender (about 2 hours). Meanwhile, heat oil in a large sauce pot and sauté garlic until lightly browned. Add celery and beef and cook until lightly browned also. Add chili powder, paprika and thyme. Break up tomatoes with a spoon and mix with meat mixture. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

 

When beans are tender, combine with meat, stirring gently. Add salt and pepper to taste and additional spices, as desired, and continue cooking an additional 30 minutes.

 

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

 

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A Look Back at Disney Soundstage’s Great Northern Bean Soup

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle

DisneyBizJournal.com

December 31, 2021

 

In the past few weeks, while pulling menus together for the holidays, I decided to look for something slightly different for this year’s New Year’s Eve celebration.  In our family, we typically put out an “eat when you want to” buffet of finger foods that people can nosh on throughout the night, as we put on movies, wait for the ball to drop in Times Square, and generally chat with family and friends.  

 

In trying to come up with something special for this year’s table, I decided to take some inspiration from Disney World’s 50th Anniversary.  Throughout the parks and restaurants, the Disney chefs have reached back to the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 to offer up specialty treats to honor the anniversary.  

At places like Casey’s Corner and Cosmic Ray’s, they are serving Walt’s Favorite Chili on a Chili-Cheese Dog. The Hollywood Brown Derby plates up Walt’s Corned Beef Hash with its filet mignon.  The Skipper Canteen is dishing Veranda Fried Rice with spicy chili-garlic shrimp from the original Adventureland Veranda Restaurant in Magic Kingdom, which closed in 1994. (The Skipper Canteen now operates on the same site, and, by the way, from personal experience, the Veranda Fried Rice is very good.) And at The Plaza Restaurant, they are making the Monte Cristo Sandwich, original to when Disney World opened.

 

In the spirit of looking back to the gastronomic history of Disney, I pulled out my beat-up, coffee stained copy of Cooking with Mickey (Gourmet Mickey Cookbook) Volume II: The Most Requested Recipes from Walt Disney World and Disneyland, published somewhere around the year 2000 (there’s no actual copyright date in the book.) 

 

I love this book as much for the memories of the meals represented by the recipes as I do for the many restaurants in the book that no longer exist.  It’s a fun way to reminisce about long ago trips to Disney World. The cookbook itself was a souvenir purchase on one such vacation.

 

I usually put out some sort of hot food in a crock pot for guests to help themselves that evening, and this year, I spotted a recipe from the now-defunct Soundstage Restaurant at the since-renamed Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park.  I can remember taking our oldest son there and having a character meal with Aladdin and Jasmine among the “celebrities” we met that day.  I thought the recipe for their “Soundstage Great Northern Bean Soup” would be a fun and filling addition to the hot selections on our buffet.  After preparing the soup as directed in the book, I poured it into a crock pot to keep warm for guests to help themselves when they wanted.

In case you’d like to revisit the old MGM-turned-Hollywood-Studios, here’s the recipe, direct from the Cooking with Mickey cookbook.

 

Soundstage Great Northern Bean Soup

 

Ingredients:

½ pound great northern beans, dry

10 cups water

4 chicken bouillon cubes

¾ cup celery, diced small

1 cup onion, diced small

1 cup carrots, diced small

1 cup smoked ham, diced small

¾ cup tomato, diced small

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon white pepper

¼ teaspoon thyme, ground

¼ cup cornstarch, diluted in 2/3 cup water

 

Soak beans in cold water overnight.  Drain beans, rinse well, and place in a large soup pot with ten cups fresh water and bouillon cubes.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook beans for approximately 1 hour until tender but still firm on the inside.  Add celery, onions, and carrots and cook an additional 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.  Add ham, tomato, salt, pepper, and thyme and mix well.  Cook for 10 minutes. Add cornstarch mixed with water and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes until mixture thickens.  Remove from heat and let soup cool for 10 to 15 minutes.

 

Mix well and serve.

 

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Beth Keating is a regular contributor to DisneyBizJournal.

 

Please support the efforts of DisneyBizJournal.com to bring news, analysis and commentary on Disney to readers such as yourself. Make a contribution right here via PayPal. Thanks!

 

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