Potato Crusted Quiche

Potato crusted quiche is a great grab and go meal prep breakfast item. This is a really simple recipe that can be adjusted with the filling options you have on hand.

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Quiche Lorraine: Bacon, Cheese and Onion Quiche

Quiche Lorraine is a classic quiche recipe that never fails. It's a crowd pleaser and is usually devoured quickly whenever I serve it. I've simplified the ingredients a little bit so they are all very easy to find. Feel free to use a store bought pie crust if you prefer.

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Bacon, Cheese and Green Onion Quiche

I recently had a spare pie shell in my freeze and way too many eggs in my fridge. The obvious, easy solution was to make a quiche. I usually have some bacon in my freezer and I happened to have green onion in my fridge, making this a really easy recipe to put together from what I had laying around. As with most quiches, you can adjust this recipe with what you have at home. You can sautee regular onions and use those, add other veggies, use a different breakfast meat. It's pretty hard to mess this one up.

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Raspberry-Topped Lemon Muffins

In a way, muffins have always confused me. They're considered a breakfast food, but they border on being a dessert. I almost never have pastries for breakfast since I'm usually starving 20 minutes later if I rely solely on breakfast sweets. And when I do go down the sweet breakfast path, it's usually an afterthought to what would have already been a filling meal (and usually provided by somebody else). Don't get me wrong, I love a good muffin or doughnut, but I don't understand how that can keep someone going until lunch time. You non-breakfast eaters out there are a total mystery to me.

For me, muffins serve as an afternoon snack. Or a small dessert after a meal alongside some fruit or berries. For this reason, I especially love mini-muffins. They're the perfect 2 bite treat to satisfy my sweet tooth without making me feel overly stuffed. I've been known to eat myself into a food coma (my friends who traveled with me in Turkey have witnessed this in full force), so sometimes even the thought of a rich, heavy dessert is enough to induce the coma. This is when the mini muffin is a much welcomed end to a meal. And there's no way you can say no to this adorable one.

Not only does this muffin have a refreshing lemon flavor, but it's almost 1/3 berry. The bite of fresh raspberry (which can be a little tart) contrasts really well with the sweet muffin. The addition of a whole raspberry to a mini muffin is a great way to cut the sweetness and make it feel much lighter. This recipe is originally from Bon Appetit magazine, but I followed the directions on Smitten Kitchen since Deb simplified the steps and made this a much easier (and more freezer friendly) variation of the original. According to Smitten Kitchen, you can use fresh or frozen berries, but since I had lots of fresh berries, that's all I have tried these with.

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Challah French Toast with Chocolate

As a kid, it wasn't uncommon for my mom to make us Challah french toast on Saturday mornings. We almost always had leftover Challah from Friday night, and french toast was one of the best way to use it up, especially in the eyes of a little kid. This weekend, I decided to make this french toast again, after not having had any variety of french toast in years.

My little twist to traditional french toast is that I cut slits into the side of the bread and add some chocolate squares that end up melting on the inside. As you can imagine, this is amazing. It's not something I eat often since it really is not the healthiest way to start your day, but seeing as how it's the weekend and it's still mysteriously cold in Los Angeles, chocolate stuffed french toast sounded perfect. If you're really not into having chocolate in the morning, just skip this step. You can spice up the otherwise standard challah french toast with different flavors in the egg and milk combination (orange zest, vanilla, etc...) or by adding some fruit sauce or compote on the finished french toast.

If you cannot find challah, you can also use brioche. I used a mini challah that had been partially eaten (that's what we had leftover) and it gave me about 10 small pieces of french toast. With the mini challah, I was only able to stuff chocolate in 1 side, but with a larger challah or brioche, you can stuff all 4 sides or just 2 sides.
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Easy Scones

Ever since opening a jar of lemon curd last week, I've been craving some warm, fluffy scones to smother with this lemony goodness. The reason I kept putting it off stems from a scone disaster that occurred about 10 years ago. The last time I made scones, I spent a fair amount of time incorporating the butter into the flour by hand and following a traditional scone recipe. Sadly, this decade old scone experience led to what could be defined as either 1) a lethal weapon, or 2) a rock.

I asked around for a scone recipe and it turns out a pretty common Aussie method for scones is extremely easy and tastes just as a scone should. I don't know the origin of the recipe as it was discovered by word of mouth, but whoever came up with it is incredibly skilled at making baking easy. I know, the ingredients made me skeptical at first as well. But give them a chance, they make a great breakfast/brunch food in only 25 minutes.

Update: I made these scone for a British brunch and received so many compliments. One woman said they were the best scones there (and there were quite a few variations). They were the first ones gone from the brunch spread. I obviously did not mention that they were probably also the easiest scones to make.
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