Betty Crocker Cheese Dreams

My cooking career began as a young girl. I was given a Copy of Betty Crocker’s Cooking with Boys and Girls. I still have it. It’s wrapped in a  ziploc bag to keep it from completely falling apart. It was my and my sisters go to book for recipe when we were allowed to cook. Mostly we just ran to the corner hamburger stand and bought 10 hamburgers for a dollar. It was cheap and easy for a working mother with four kids. But back to the cookbook. One of the family favorites to “cook” was cheese dreams. Pictured to the right, they were simple, tasty and something we could handle without too much parental intervention. The hardest part being the cooking of the bacon. If you survived that, at 9 without incident, you could call yourself a cook. The rest was to toast an english muffin, butter it, place a slice of tomato, a slice of bacon and a slice of American cheese, cut in half and criss-crossed on top, then broiled it to melt the cheese. And voila! Dinner was ready. I really liked them but wanted to try to make a grown up version with our garden fresh tomatoes this year.So I decided to do just that. For breakfast yesterday I grabbed a favorite french baguette, some apple smoked bacon, and my favorite mild melty cheese – Edam.  My husband, like all good Oklahoma farmers I know, peeled the fresh garden tomatoes for me. You see, he says no self respecting farmer eats a tomato unpeeled. I don’t know if that’s true for all farmers or just his family, but I never have eaten the peel on a tomato in his family’s home.

I began the same as Betty instructed me all those many years ago. Mis en place! Cook your bacon thoroughly before beginning the assembly of the Cheese Dreams. Allow it to cool. Then begin your assembly. Begin with a half of a french baguette, I cut it in half lengthwise. Lightly buttered and toasted my baguette. Lightly toasted. Next time I think I’d get it a bit more toasty. I like the crunch of a good toasted baguette, and this one just could have used a bit more toasting. Then I sliced the tomatoes in half and laid them on the baguette.

Added the cooked bacon, I used just two slices, but I know the husband would have like four per half.

Sliced up some Edam cheese and laid it atop the bacon.

I chose Edam because I love the melty goodness of it. It has s lightly buttery taste to it and melts just perfectly. You can use any cheese of your liking. Then place it all in the broiler and let the fire do its work.

It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to get the cheese melted to perfection.

Serve with juice and fresh fruit. Garnish with a small piece of basil, if you can wait that long to eat it.

I like the grown up version of this recipe. I look forward to trying different breads and cheeses. I went with Cheese Dreams as a breakfast, but it would work as a lunchtime meal as well as a light dinner with an accompanying salad. Great as a quick snack too! Just how will you eat these?