Summer Vacation

Well it's summer!! I know I've been a bit absent, and haven't managed to post much lately. I could make a bunch of excuses, or I could throw together some hurried and half-assed posts, but instead I've decided to give myself a summer vacation. Who knows, maybe I will be able to post some, but right now it hasn't been happening so I thought i'd just give official notice. Honestly I don't cook that much during the summer. Meals become super simplified, and I try to grill as much as possible. So fear not you aren't missing much. I'll see be posting to the Starting to Simmer facebook page, so "like" Starting to Simmer so you can stay up to date. See you soon- I'm gonna go make myself a margarita!

French Toast & Bacon Egg Cups

French Toast & Bacon and Egg Cups

Recipe Review- Eggs, Bacon and French Toast in one bite- what could be better? 

I really love brunch. I'm a big breakfast person but I rarely get to eat it. That's not entirely true- I eat a meal in the morning everyday. Usually its a quick egg sandwich- or lately a fruit smoothie, not really much fun. Weekend brunch makes up for all those workday on the go breakfasts. With all its choices, leisurely pace, and requisite alcoholic beverages, brunch is special occasion not to be missed.

Over memorial day weekend a friend hosted a brunch so I decided to make some egg cups that Kevin had found a recipe for. I lost the link he sent me so googled and found another great food site- 15 Spatulas which had a similar recipe. I decided to change it up and make french toast for the bottom of the egg cups. This obviously make the recipe a little more complicated but I reallyyy liked the taste.

French Toast Egg Cups
yield: 12 servings

dozen eggs
6 pieces french toast
maple syrup (optional)
12 slices bacon
salt & pepper

Place bacon on a cold baking sheet in a cool oven. Turn oven to 400 degrees and bake for 15 minutes. Bacon should be mostly cooked- but still easily pliable. Prepare a muffin pan with a light coating of non stick spray. Let bacon cool and then wrap one piece around the sides of each muffin cup.

Cook french toast using your favorite recipe, and cool. Use a round cookie cutter slightly larger than the bottom of  your muffin pan to cut the toast into circles (you will get two for each piece of bread). Push one bread circle into the bottom of the muffin cups prepped with bacon. This will help to hold the bacon in place. Drizzle maple syrup over the french toast.

Crack one egg into each bacon cup. Season with fresh ground salt and pepper. Bake in oven preheated to 400 degrees for 12 minutes- or until your eggs have set up to your liking. Let cool for 3- 5 minutes and transfer to a plate and serve.

Notes: 

I overcooked my bacon- you want it to still be flexible but mine was bordering on crispy. That made wrangling the bacon into the cupcake tins tough to do- but I made it work.  

Since I was making a full dozen egg cups I went the oven method for the bacon. If you aren't making as many feel free to make your bacon on the stove top. 

You might be able to see the cupcake liners that I put into my muffin pan. I thought this was a genius idea, and would make them easy to remove. Nope. The papers adhered to the bacon and tore when I tried to remove them. So definitely do not do that!

If you don't care for french toast- I also experimented with doing hash browns for the bottom of half of them and that was equally tasty. 

I did the beginning steps with the bacon and french toast the night before, then covered the pan in plastic wrap and threw it in the fridge. All I had to do day of was preheat the oven and crack the eggs, and then sip a Bloody Mary while they cooked.