17 March 2008

Breakfast Redux

Last week I posted our weekday breakfast of steel cut oats so I thought I might put up a weekend breakfast as well. A few years ago I was visiting a friend in Cologne and on Sunday morning she and her mother made a lovely breakfast tray of coffee, bread, cheese, cured meats, jam and Nutella and we all sat outside on the balcony and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. It's not quite warm enough to sit outside yet here (and even if it was, it's not like we have a balcony or patio) but sometimes it is nice to sit over breakfast.

We were sadly lacking in the cheese department and only had 3 slices of bacon left from another recipe so I decided to try making individual baked eggs in the silicon cupcake forms my dad gave me. I put a little cream cheese at the bottom of each mold, carefully poured in an egg (that I first broke into a custard cup- much easier to fish out fragments of shell that way) then topped it off with a few dried tomatoes and some smoked paprika. I baked the eggs in a bain marie (fancy way to say pan with water half-way up the sides of the molds) for about 20 minutes at 350F and out they came.

Tasty, and a very pretty presentation, although next time I will definitley give the molds a light coating of olive oil first as the egg didn't quite slide out of the molds, as I had hoped.

3 comments:

Thistlemoon said...

Sounds just wonderful! It is great to make do with what you have - sometimes they are the best meals!

Kate said...

I stopped to answer your question about the silpats, and just had to say that these looking yummy! I love the silicon cups too, I've never seen them translucent like yours!
As for the Silpats, I love them! I definitely think they are worth it. Think of how much money you will waste on parchment paper over the years! I too used to use parchment, but then I realized I kept throwing it away, adding more crap to the landfills and killing more trees in the process.
So not only are the better for the enviro and your purse, they are fantastic for baking! Stuff slids right off, which wasn't always the case for me with parchment anyway.
I would say go for it next time you have some extra money. Which of course happens just about never when you live in the DC metro area!

Jen said...

Jenn-- I seem to be channeling your food philosophy a lot lately and trying to make things out of whatever we've got. Thanks for always providing inspiration and motivation.

Kate- the translucent molds are pretty neat- especially when a chocolate chip batter is involved. I totally agree about the lack of extra funds in the DC area... so I might be putting a silpat on my list next time a holiday/birthday rolls around.