Nailed It! The Bacon and Cheese Scone Quest

I promised you this recipe would come eventually! And lo, here it is!!


So, when I was a wee lass (which I typed first as ass... hilarious), my Nana used to make these bacon cakes. They were triangular shaped like scones often are, moist, delicate and delicious slathered in butter and we would have them for tea. Nana always made "tea" at 6pm. It was her version of supper, the last meal of the day, and it would be malt loaf or eggy bread or ham sandwiches or bacon cakes or something else delightfully carby. It was usually my favorite meal. I would spend my six week long summer holidays with her and I loved tea-time almost as much as I loved blackberrying and rollerskating and her bedtime stories.

I have a few of her recipes and one of them is for bacon cakes. I've diligently made it a few times, and while the result is pretty good, it isn't what my ten year old self remembers. I've tried to tweak it a lot, and finally I decided that instead of just creating a replica, I need to create something that I really like.... something of my own.

I started over, tweaking, making, kneading, shaping, re-doing. I tried adding ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, cream cheese. I played with the amount of baking powder, the type of milk, the quality of the butter. Until finally one day a few weeks ago I got the result I wanted. I think I've gone through at least nine incarnations of this recipe, but it's finally the one I like best. Ironically, it's probably the one with the fewest ingredients... the simplest version. These are perfect just out of the oven, cut in half and spread with some good quality salted butter.


Bacon and Cheese Scones

4oz Butter (1 Stick), cold
2 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
4oz Sharp Cheddar, grated
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon + 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
3 Slices of Bacon, cooked and diced
1 Scallion, sliced thin
1 Egg
2/3 Cup Milk (any kind)

Preheat your oven to 400F.

In a mixing bowl, combine the butter with the flour, salt and baking powder until it becomes like breadcrumbs. Stir in your cheese, scallion and bacon. Beat the egg into the milk, then slowly add to the dry mixture until combine. Try to mix it as gently and as little as possible.

Roll out the dough until it is an inch thick and cut into circles with a four inch or so cookie cutter. I, owning cookie cutters only in the shape of candy canes and ninjas, used a jam jar lid.

You should get about 8-10 circles out of it. If you like, you can do a quick egg wash glaze over these by beating an egg with a couple of tablespoons of milk and brushing with a pastry brush. It's not completely necessary, but I would take the time if you have it.

Bake for 20 minutes until well risen and turning slightly golden. If you need to reheat these for later, do use the oven and not the microwave... it's much better.

Slather with butter and enjoy hot, with fond memories of your childhood drifting through your head.

Make Ahead Spinach, Bacon and Egg Sandwiches

It's about to get really really busy up in here. Next week, I'm on the longer shifts at work so I'll be starting early most days, then the week after we have a big big PR event that I'm partially responsible for, then we go on our dark and I'm away for most of two weeks... one week in Antigua, one day in New York, then two or three days in the mountains learning to Snowboard with the new boy. I'm learning, not him. He can already Snowboard quite well,  although there was an incident with a tree last season that best not spoken of.

When I go into a period where I'm about to get busy, I try and be smart and prep ahead with food in the freezer so I'm not busy and tired AND hungry. Honestly, you don't want me to be all three. I'm awful. I'll start by getting cranky, then I'll just live on the verge of tears where any little thing can make me cry. I am not fun when I'm busy and tired and hungry.

But the promise of vacation is coming. I think the last time I went on a real holiday was when I was a teenager. Every other time I've been responsible for someone else, or visiting family, or something else where I can't relax. I'm so happy I get to just take a week on a beach with no one but my Mum and Stepdad, and unlimited food, drink, beach and sleeping.

So anyways. Make ahead stuff. I've seen a version of this knocking around Pinterest for a while. I figured I would go ahead and play around and see what I could come up with. I'm a big fan of adding bacon to things, and when I was making this, I had a really really good idea. I was cooking the bacon, and prepping the muffin cups, and I was about to reach for some cooking spray when I said Nay! Thou Shalt Not Use Cooking Spray, Thou Shalt Use Bacon Grease!! And yea verily, a bacon grease smeared muffin cup was born. For I am mighty in my use of bacon. I love my brain sometimes.

So yeah, screw the spray, use the bacon grease. I made six of these and after they had cooled, I wrapped them in foil and put them in a freezer bag. When I want one, it'll be two minutes in the microwave, add a slice of cheese and an English Muffin, and I'll be out the door on my way to make people fly through the air.

Make Ahead Spinach, Bacon and Egg Sandwiches

6 Eggs
3 Rashers of Bacon, cut in half
1 Cup Spinach
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the over to 350F. Cook the bacon in a skillet until mostly done. Use a basting brush to coat six muffin cups with bacon grease. Layer in the spinach so that it is essentially lining the muffin cup.
Lay a piece of bacon in each cup. I like to flip it over a little so it's like a little ball of bacon. Break an egg into each cup and put a few grinds of salt and pepper over each one.

 

Bake in the oven for twenty minutes. Everything will be cooked through and delicious. Allow to cool then wrap individually in foil, and place in a freezer. To use later, unwrap from the foil, pop in the microwave for two minutes or a little longer if needed. Add a slice of cheese and an English Muffin and you've got breakfast. 

Eat hurriedly whilst heading to your car. Then double back because you left your coffee on the counter. 

Makes 6.

Bacon and Cheddar Gougeres

 

Finally, a day to play in the kitchen. It feels like forever since I've had the opportunity to just mess around and cook.

It's weird how you get into a routine with things, like writing a food blog, and then when something happens to knock you out of the routine your life feels very off balance. In my brain, I shouldn't be putting this post up since it's a Tuesday and I normally post Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But I figure the best way to get back in the swing of things is to just grab the rope, tarzan yell, and jump.

So, today I jumped into a big plate of Gougeres. I love Gougeres. They are essentially just little pastry puffs. They are made with gruyere normally which is a harder cheese, and I still feel that the classic take is best, but I wanted to play with the idea of making them with ingredients you are more likely to have on hand, like cheddar and bacon. I pretty much always have cheddar and bacon in the house. That and eggs. Without eggs, I would be lost.

So I whipped up these little beauties and I certainly like them. I had five in the first sitting, three more while taking a picture, and another three while putting them into tupperware. They are so little you can just pop them into your mouth. It's easy to lose track.

These would be great for a party, or nice to just have on hand as a snack. They don't get as much height as a normal gougere would, but they still work nicely in my opinion.

Bacon and Cheddar Gougeres

2 Slices of Bacon, cooked crispy
1/2 Cup Milk
3 Tablespoons Butter
1/2 Cup Flour
2 Eggs
1/4 Teaspoon Mustard Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
10 Grinds Black Pepper
3oz Cheddar, finely grated

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Cook your two slices of bacon until they are crispy, then mince them up after they have cooled a little.

Put the milk, butter, mustard, salt and pepper in a saucepan and heat up until the butter has melted. Do not boil. Set aside and grate the cheese finely. You'll probably want to use a Microplane Grater if you have one so the cheese will incorporate better.

Once the cheese is grated, you'll want to move fairly quickly. Take your liquid and dump in all the flour at once. Beat firmly with a spoon, it will form a heavy paste. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well, then add in the bacon and three quarters or more of the cheese. You'll want to reserve a little to top the gougeres with.

On a baking lined with either Sil-Pat or parchment, spoon out 30 rounds of the mix, just over a teaspoon each. You can pipe them out with a pastry bag if you like. Try and coax them into little peaks if you can, but don't worry if it doesn't happen. Sprinkle over the extra cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes until they are golden brown.

Eat one or two every time you walk past the plate in the kitchen. Try not to count.

Makes 30.

Bacon, Brie and Spinach Quiche

Normally, I use the phrase "When all else fails, just drink wine". I'm amending that today.

"When all else fails, just make quiche".

I sometimes think that I make too much quiche. It's my go to. My fall back when I have nothing in the freezer, or when I have extras of something that I feel like I need to use up. The story of this quiches inception story involves the latter.

A little while ago, I got into the habit of having a midnight snack of some really good brie on some toasted bread, or a couple of crackers. This with a glass of wine is what became my go-to after work for about a month. I'm still on the kick, but I've been trying to be better about eating things that are delicious unhealthy before bed.

One fateful night, I was heading home. I was tired and sleepy and I just wanted to curl up in bed with my snack of choice, a decent glass of red, and some early episodes of 30 Rock. As I was driving, I remembered devastatingly that I was out of Brie, and also out of cat food. I stopped at the 24 hour grocery store and sleepily grabbed some cheese and friskies, concentrating hard to ensure I didn't mix them up. I got home, toasted my bread and cut into my cheese. This was when I realized that I had picked up some decidedly sub par cheese. This was not the creamy brie that I had been spoiled by. This brie made me sad and unsatisfied. I crawled into bed with just my wine and pouted.

The next day I wrestled with what to do about the Brie. It was a slow day at work. I decided that if I was thinking about it at work, I should just go and pick up some decent Brie, dammit. So i did. The rejected Brie sat in my cheese drawer for a couple of weeks. I felt sorry for it. It hadn't done anything wrong and here it was, lazing around and going to waste.

So when I went through my freezer trying to take stock of the necessary pantry busting that was coming and found some bacon, I realized that I could make this Brie's life worth living. I could restore it to joy and glory. I could turn it into quiche!

So that is what I did.

Spinach, Bacon and Brie Quiche

I've posted a basic quiche recipe before in the early days of my blog. This one is very similar in structure and is a good base to use if you ever want to make a standard quiche. I have a real live quiche pan in the mail right now because I did get a wee bit tired of using my good old pie pan. I'm looking forward to christening it. For the filling, if you don't want to use cream, you can substitute it with half and half or milk.

The Pastry

1 1/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons (1/3rd Cup) Butter
2-4 Tablespoons Cold water

Make sure the butter is really cold. Dice it up and mix it with the salt and flour until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add a little water at a time and mix or knead until the dough comes together. You don't want it sticky at all. Roll it out until it's the size of the pie dish. Set into a standard pie or tart pan, spread evenly up the sides. If you have a standard tart pan, you may have some excess to trim off. If you are using a pie dish, you'll likely have extra pastry up the sides when the filling is in. Personally, I like the crunch, but feel free to trim it is you don't.

The Filling

6oz Brie
1 Cup Fresh Spinach, Chopped
4 Rashers Bacon, cooked crispy
5 Eggs
1/4 Cup Cream
1/4 tsp Salt
Freshly Ground Pepper

Preheat your oven to 350F. Cook the bacon until it is nicely crispy, then chop in into inch sized pieces. Chop up the Brie and layer it over the bottom of the pie dish. Cover with the chopped spinach, then sprinkle over the bacon.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream and salt and pepper. Pour over the fillings. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the pastry is cooked and the filling is set. Delicious warm or cold.

Makes 8 servings. Believe it or not, this quiche freezes beautifully wrapped in foil and then stored in a zip lock bag.