I'm getting this posted right in time for Thanksgiving and winter holidays so you can surprise your family with a special brunch treat!

My friend, Cherlynn (butteryexistence.com or Instagram) and I wanted to collaborate on a recipe. I'm not a very talented cook, so I asked her to pick something that I could make easily with basic ingredients. We landed on a Croque Monsieur with Pineapple. It was so easy and turned out delicious!

Check out Cherlynn's Blog entry that guided me in the challenge here: Cooking Challenge: Croque Monsieur + Pineapple for Rigel. I've embedded her video again below.

Background

Cherlynn is an amazing cook. For my birthday this year, she came down to LA from the Bay Area with the most amazing surprise cake - a Beyhive cake. Celebrating our shared love of Beyoncé.

Her blog is all about her adventure discovering cooking. So I knew she would be the perfect person to lead me in my own cooking adventure. As I mentioned, I am not a talented cook. I can follow a basic recipe, but my patience for elaborate preparation and unique ingredients is fairly thin. So this recipe calls for ingredients from the typical Millenial cabinet - plus a special jam that Cherlynn sent me (info below). The recipe is inspired by and adapted from Rachel Khoo's recipe for Croque Monsieur in her book The Little Paris Kitchen.

My take

It was a success!

The beauty of this recipe is that I didn't have to make the pastry crust. It was just rolled pieces of wonderbread. And when baked, the crust came out crispy and delicious. I recommend 1 tsp of the pineapple jam on each cup, not a tablespoon, as my version turned out with a bit too much jam! Making the marnay sauce was the most fun part - watching the liquids turn into a thick sauce made me feel like a real french chef!

The jam can be purchased from Woo Garden here.

So give the recipe a try and let me know how it goes!