Single-Serving Mini Breakfast Casseroles

Single-serving mini breakfast casseroles, version 1.0

When I throw a large dinner party, I prefer not to rest on an old standby recipe. My guests are my test subjects. That brings us to today's (slightly delayed) Night of 1000 Casseroles edition of Weekly Delicious with mini breakfast casseroles.

This recipe is scalable, reheatable, and completely flexible. It's easily adapted to be vegetarian or gluten-free as well.

The scalable part of this recipe didn't come easy, since I don't usually cook small. But since I was more or less making this up by scribbling the steps out on a piece of construction paper as I went along, I tried to make as small of a batch here as I could so that if something was amiss, not much was wasted. 

The photo above is from the first trial of these casseroles. Though still tasty, they didn't come out cleanly and a lot of the bottom layer of the casserole came off on the papers. Now, I don't normally advocate support of a certain widely-known domestic personality, but I have to say that "Marthawrap" was pretty much exactly what I needed for this recipe. If you can find something else with the powers of parchment paper on one side and foil on the other, more power to you. Parchment paper is almost a necessity here, and the foil aspect allows it to keep it's shape.

You can still try for high-quality, self-supported, grease-proof cupcake papers, but if you're going the route of parchment paper (magically foiled or not), you'll have a bit more prep ahead of you, but a cleaner casserole. Skip ahead to the ingredients if you're not doing this.

Grab a muffin tin or whatever mold you want your casserole to be in the shape of. Cut your parchment paper/wrap into 5"-6" squares, depending on the size of the mold you're using. There might be some trial and error if you're using a non-standard shape. Press the paper evenly into the mold, making sure creases are tight and you have a rim of uniform height going all the way around so that none of the filling leaks out. Trust me on that one. You can use a glass or something to help with that.

What I did is shown below. I put my square of paper/foil over the muffin tin mold, then pressed down on it with a similarly shaped quarter cup measuring cup, making sure that the creases were tight.

Loose creases are the enemy.

Repeat as needed and start getting everything else you need together.

Ingredients (for 6 casseroles):

• 3 large eggs
• 1/3 cup half and half
• 1/2 heaping cup of frozen hash browns
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup of your choice of filling
• For example, this time I roasted some minced mushrooms, green pepper, leek, and zucchini, then tossed that with some fresh wilted baby spinach and some cooked, chopped bacon. Just what I had on hand. Roasted veggies were made ahead of time by baking them at 425°F for about 15 to 20 minutes... which can also be done at the same time as step #3 below.
• 1/4 cup cheese (cheddar was used this time)
• 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs (enough to sprinkle on top of casseroles)

Pre-preparations:

• Preheat oven to 425°F
• Lay out all of your casserole papers on a baking sheet

Directions:

1. Lightly spray the inside of your casserole papers with non-stick spray. Seriously, it's not as good if they stick.
2. Divide the hash browns evenly amongst the casserole papers, then salt and pepper the hash browns to taste.
3. Bake the hash brown-filled casserole papers for about 15-20 minutes in the 425°F oven. The edges of the hash browns should just start getting some color by the end of that. Remove and set aside.
4. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F.
5. Evenly distribute the filling into each casserole, on top of the hash browns. On my batch, it came up most of the way to the top of each casserole.
6. Beat the eggs and half and half together and evenly distribute the mixture into each casserole. It should mostly cover the hash browns and filling.
7. Top the casseroles with the cheese, again, evenly distributed across every casserole.
8. Sprinkle on panko bread crumbs on top of the cheese for each casserole. You won't be completely covering the cheese with a layer of bread crumbs; this is just to add a bit of a crunch when they're fresh from the oven.
9. Bake the casseroles in the 350°F oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown.

If your casserole papers were non-stick enough, you should have a great eggy casserole that's lightly browned on the bottom, firm in the middle, and both gooey and crunchy on top. Serve immediately out of the oven or allow them to cool and store them in the fridge for up to a week.

Notes:

• This recipe is all about ratios, however, as you scale it up, you might be able to cut the number of eggs you use. When I made 42 casseroles, math would tell you I would have needed 21 eggs, but I did just fine with 18. Your milage may vary depending on the size of your eggs.
• Have fun with the filling. My filling above was great, but change it according to your tastes. Sausage would be pretty good too, or maybe you want to use up some of your leftovers.
• When reheating these, either remove the outer metal cupcake liner or pop the casseroles out of the paper/wrap before putting them into the microwave.
• These panko isn't essential to this recipe, so if you want to make it gluten-free, just keep it out. Ditto with meat if you want to make it vegetarian.
• These are also a great size for breakfast sandwiches.

When I did my final version for my casserole dinner party, I took advantage of the flexibility of this recipe and made half vegetarian. Then, I made half of the vegetarian ones and half of the ones with bacon gluten-free as well, giving me four similar casseroles in one round of cooking.

Super-Moist Banana Bread

Behold the loaf.

I'm a cook, not a baker. But with how I cook, it's often difficult to remember exactly what I did step by step to recreate it in recipe format here. So, to get back into the swing of posting here (and to use up some bananas starting to go too ripe), banana bread it is.

Not one to leave well enough alone, I combined two recipes. A constant standby for a solid recipe is the Joy of Cooking, and their banana bread recipe (this version is nearly identical to the 1997 book version actually referenced for this recipe). But I've also been hearing great things about the Flour Bakery banana bread recipe, so I averaged out the two into what turned out to be a very successful loaf of banana bread.

If you're playing the comparison game at home, I evened out the amounts of flour and bananas, used two types of leaveners, upped the amount of spices, reduced the sugar, and went with oil and sour cream to work with the bananas to keep the loaf moist. And I kept out the nuts, since this is banana bread, not banana nut bread.

The banana bread cast.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 3 ripe, mashed bananas (yours should be riper than those in the picture)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 T sour cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Pre-preparations:

• Preheat oven to 350°F
• Line a 4"x8" loaf pan with parchment paper for easy extraction. No paper? Grease it with veggie oil.
• Mash bananas

Directions:

1. Perform your pre-prep (preheat, line, mash).
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and allspice
3. In a smaller bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until creamy and well-combined.
4. Beginning with the oil, mix the oil, vanilla extract, sour cream, and bananas into the wet bowl.
5. Being careful not to overmix, slowly stir in the contents of the wet bowl into the dry bowl and mix until completely combined.
6. Pour the mixture into the lined loaf pan, and place the pan into the middle rack of your oven.
7. Bake for approximately 45 minutes to one hour, depending on your oven and your crust crunchiness preference.

That's it. Simple. Done. And the best part about lining the pan is that you can just lift out the loaf cleanly, and not have to wash a loaf pan.

What could you do to this to put your own spin on it? Try this with some toasted walnuts, or some dried cranberries. Add more spices during the holidays to make a more seasonal bread, or play with different combinations of spices (I was this close to making chai banana bread). I'm also well aware that I like my banana bread less sweet than some, so you can also bring the sugar back up to a full cup.

To really test the mettle of this banana bread, I brought it to my dry, dry office. After five days of taking off slices of the bread little by little, I was left with a heel that I left out for science. At the end of about six moisture-sucking hours, I tried the five-day-old heel. While it was nowhere near its original goodness, it was actually still reasonably moist and pretty decent.

My poor banana bread. Left out for science.

Please be kinder to your loaf than I was to mine. But realize that if you aren't, your bread will still love you back unconditionally... for about a week.

African Peanut Stew (with Sweet Potatoes)

My love for sweet potatoes is well-known. I think my obsession may be at a point where I'd eat them for every meal if it were nutritionally feasible. I'm becoming notorious in my office for consuming a large roasted sweet potato, split and stuffed with a generous portion of goat cheese, for lunch nearly every day. It's my go-to favorite meal.

It doesn't hurt that in addition to being crazy-delicious, sweet potatoes are chock-full of Vitamins A and C, beta-carotene, and are an excellent source of potassium.

But as they say (or as I say, anyway), there's more than one way to eat a sweet potato. If roasted sweet potatoes with goat cheese are my favorite preparation, my second-favorite is African Peanut Stew. I don't know why, but the sweetness of the sweet potatoes and the creamy, nutty richness of the peanut butter is a winning combination. For extra creaminess and substantially more protein, I also like to add black-eyed peas. In these cold Boston winters, this recipe is comfort in a bowl.

You can serve this as a traditional stew, by itself, or over a bed of your favorite grains. I recommend either Trader Joe's Harvest Blend (with Israeli couscous, red quinoa, and vegetable orzo) or millet.

Query: Does soup taste better out of an extra-pretty bowl that has crows and a moon painted on it? I think it does.

Ingredients

• 1 t coconut oil or olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 T fresh grated ginger
• 1 to 2 large sweet potatoes, diced (the exact amount is up to you, but always err on the side of more sweet potato)
• cayenne pepper, to taste
• 1 T cumin
• 1 t coriander
• 1/4 t cinnamon
• 1/4 t ground cardamom
• 1/4 t turmeric
• 1/2 cup dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight and cooked 1 1/2 hours (or 1 can black-eyed peas)
• 2 cups chopped green cabbage
• 1 can petite cut diced tomatoes
• 1 cup apple juice
•  1/4 cup natural unsalted peanut butter (almond butter also works beautifully here)
• chicken or vegetable stock, as needed
• salt and pepper, to taste

 Instructions

Prepare ahead: Rinse and soak dried black-eyed peas, if using, according to instructions on the bag.

1. Melt the coconut oil (or pour the olive oil) into a large pot over medium heat. Add diced onions and sauté about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. Add the ginger, sweet potatoes, and spices. Sauté for 5 more minutes.
3. Add beans, cabbage, tomatoes, and apple juice. Stir until all ingredients are well incorporated.
4. Add in the peanut butter. Stir thoroughly. If stew seems too thick, add chicken or vegetable stock until you achieve the desired consistency.
5. Cover and let simmer 30 minutes.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Divide into bowls, inhale the sweet-spicy-nutty aroma, and try not to swoon too hard.

Serves 4-5