Dec182012

Crockpot Breakfast Bake

Crockpot Breakfast Bake

One of my planned dinners for last week was Breakfast for Dinner, which is one of the girls’ favorites. Though I like it well enough, I hate babysitting the bacon, the eggs, and the griddle of hash browns. By accident I came upon a recipe for a crockpot egg bake and was thrilled to find that I had everything on hand because I was going to use them all for our regular meal.

But I have a confession: I’m not a fan of baked eggs. I’ll eat quiche or frittata but I prefer the quicker and less-drying methods of scrambled or over-easy.

I decided to give it a shot, and thankfully it was early enough in the day that I had plenty of time to get it going in the crockpot.

Crockpot Breakfast Bake

I ended up combining several different recipes, and all of them called for an overnight baking. Since ours was going to be for dinner, I started at around 10:30 AM, and it was perfect by about 6:00 PM on low. It turned out well enough that I’m going to use it overnight next week for Christmas breakfast.

I did have to fiddle with it a bit since I really wanted to make sure it turned out right. The basic recipe I went with is below, and my notes are under that:

Crockpot Breakfast Bake
makes 8 generous servings

12 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Salt and pepper

1 28 oz bag Potatoes O’Brien
1 cup chopped onion
1 lb bacon, cooked and chopped
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Mix eggs with the milk, ground mustard and garlic powder and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Spray your crockpot with nonstick cooking spray. Pour 1/3 of the bag of potatoes into the bottom. Layer 1/3 of the onion, 1/3 of the cooked bacon, and 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat these layers two more times.

Pour the eggs over top and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

~ I used the Ore Ida Potatoes O’Brien, with the potato chunks and not the shredded hash browns.

~ I baked my bacon in the oven instead of on the stove top. Cram the strips of bacon on a foil-lined baking sheet (make sure it has a lip so grease doesn’t go everywhere). Place the bacon in a cold oven, and start heating to 400 degrees and continue baking. Keep an eye on it and when it’s done, remove from the oven and place the bacon on paper towels to drain.

~ After about four hours I started to get a bit nervous because the center of the bake was still really watery. I got a big spoon and gently started lifting the liquid out and redistributing it around the top of the rest of the eggs. This created a crater in the middle, but I think that helped it cook that much more evenly.

Crockpot Breakfast Bake

~ It was also at this point that I realized the steam accumulating on the lid was falling back down onto the eggs, which were trying to bake. I draped a clean kitchen towel over the top of the crockpot, and nestled the lid on top of the towel. Any steam that accumulated on the lid now hit the towel instead of the food.

~ I used my beloved Slow Cooker Liners with this, just spray the liner with the nonstick spray.

~ I served these with a side of popovers — they were just as big of a hit.

~ I’m not a huge Cholula fan, but these were absolutely delicious with some on top.

~ My fall-back in case this wasn’t that great was to wrap it up in tortillas and make breakfast burritos out of it. We all liked it just fine on its own, so we did the breakfast burritos the next morning with the leftovers. They were delicious and by far the easiest I’ve ever made!

Aug102010

TWD: Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream

It’s been years since we’ve bought ice cream from the store. I got an ice cream maker several years ago and never looked back, mostly because not only is it cheaper to make it yourself, but I also love knowing exactly what’s going into it. So when I saw that this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was going to be ice cream, I got a little excited. It was chosen by Katrina of Baking and Boys.

I’m not usually a big fan of ice cream recipes that call for cooking on the stove first (worrying about the eggs overcooking sucks the fun out of it!). I’ve got a recipe book that pretty much just requires mixing everything together before putting it into the maker, so I was a little wary about this one before I even tried it.

I like to use pasteurized eggs in my ice cream because, though I know freezing is a salmonella deterrent, I just don’t like using raw eggs.

I was a little worried once I got to the end of cooking the mixture into a custard. It got thick fast and I thought for sure that I’d ruined it, but I decided to mix it with the chocolate anyway (I used a mix of 60% and milk chocolate Ghirardelli chips).

It set up in the fridge like a thick pudding and again, I thought it was ruined. I figured I couldn’t make it any worse and after it cooled down I ran it through the ice cream maker. And then I ended up with the best chocolate ice cream I’ve ever made. It was very thick and creamy without a trace of graininess, which I’ve found is hit or miss with homemade chocolate ice cream.

The next time I make this I’m going to add walnuts and marshmallows to make Rocky Road because it was the perfect consistency for some add-ins.