brunch: sweet, savoury, rich and healthy

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To me, sweet, savoury, rich and healthy are the essential building blocks of a delicious brunch. I really love making brunch, because it gives you the chance to something a sweet and indulgent (like cinnamon buns, pastries, scones, croissants) and balance it with savoury flavours, either healthful (slimmed-down broccoli cheddar quiche) or not so much... (quiche lorraine). I like to finish brunch with a nice fruit salad.

For my morning-after Easter brunch, I had the challenge of having made a (last-minute) big dinner the night before, so I didn't have any time to prep anything in advance. I chose everything in the menu because it could be thrown together relatively quickly, and would also hold quite well.

I'm a huge fan of quiche and strata-type dishes because you can mix them together in advance, bake them, and then they stay good for quite a while. I actually will sometimes mix one up at the beginning of the week and then nuke it for a quick breakfast later on. When it comes to quiche, I am utterly and completely sold on the crustless variety. It's not just because I am really terrible at making pastry, but I find that I like the filling SO much better and the crust really doesn't bring anything to the table (refined flour, fat and salt...none of which we really need). I prefer to limit my indulgence to the filling. :)

These types of dishes are also great because you can really make them super healthy, or make them more indulgent. For this brunch, I decided to make a broccoli cheddar crustless quiche. This was a healthier recipe from Cooking Light, though I didn't really follow it to the letter (I don't believe in throwing out egg yolks!). For the more indulgent recipe, I found an absolutely exquisite crustless quiche lorraine recipe on epicurious. I do recommend a couple of tweaks, as I found the resulting quiche could have benefited from an extra egg (it was a little watery....but still yummy).

The sweetness of the meal came from what one of my guests dubbed "the love-child of a timbit and a cinnamon bun" - monkey bread with caramel glaze.

I've been hearing about monkey bread for a few months now, and it seems this 50s mainstay has made a comeback of late. I couldn't find a recipe that was quite what I wanted, so I've taken inspiration from a few different versions and come up with my own - a half-whole wheat, spiced version covered in an exquisite caramel glaze (the glaze being a last minute addition because I felt the bread looked a little drier).

To round out the meal, I served a tropical fruit salad - the key to a pretty fruit salad (rather than a sad-looking bowl of browned apples and squashed bananas) is to try to include fruits in bright colours, and make sure they won't brown (apples and pears brown quickly. I hate bananas and find they overpower fruit salads, so I never use them). Oranges work well, as long as you're willing to take the time to suprême them. Nobody likes an errant membrane in their fruit salad. Blech. I have a tropical fruit weakness, which is, I realize, TERRIBLE for my carbon footprint....

tropical fruit salad

1 mango, diced

1 kiwi, diced

1/4 pineapple, diced

2 cups diced strawberries

1 cup blackberries

1. Chop fruit.

2. Combine. No need to add anything more. This is a delicious, healthy addition to any meal.

Crustless Broccoli and Cheese Quiche

stolen and lightly modified from Cooking Light

2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 cup vertically sliced onion
1 garlic clove, minced
5 cups broccoli florets
Cooking spray
1 1/4 cups 1% low-fat milk
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 large eggs lightly beaten
1 tablespoon grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic; sauté 1 1/2 minutes. Add broccoli; sauté 1 minute. Spread broccoli mixture into a 9-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. Combine milk and next 8 ingredients (milk through eggs) in a large bowl. Pour milk mixture over broccoli mixture; sprinkle with Parmesan.

3. Bake at 350° for 40 minutes or until top is golden and a knife inserted in center comes out clean; let stand 5 minutes.

This quiche is very tasty and super easy to throw together. I cut mine into eight pieces, because I was serving two quiches to seven guests (this way, everyone can have a piece of each!). If it's all you're serving, you'd probably want to cut in six pieces.

Crustless Quiche Lorraine

stolen and lightly modified from epicurious.com

Makes 4-6 servings
Active Time: 10 min
Total Time: 30 min (not including cooling)

1 1/2 tablespoons fine dry plain bread crumbs
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup diced cooked ham (1/4 pound)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 (8-ounce) package shredded Swiss cheese (2 cups)
5 large eggs (original recipe calls for four...use five!!!!)
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk

1. Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

2. Butter 9-10 inch pie plate/quiche dish, then sprinkle all over with bread crumbs.

3. Cook onions with ham in butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until pale golden, about 5 minutes. Spread in dish, then evenly sprinkle cheese on top.

4. Whisk together eggs, cream, milk, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and pour over cheese.

Bake until top is golden and custard is set in center, 35-40 minutes***

5. Cool slightly before cutting into wedges.

***Note that the initial recipe called for cooking at 425F for 20-25 minutes. I had two other things to bake that necessitated a 350F oven, so I just modified. I liked the results. Also, I love the convection function on my oven - even with two quiches and a batch of monkey bread, everything ended up evenly and perfectly cooked. Score!

half whole-wheat monkey bread with the ultimate salted caramel glaze

PRINTABLE VERSION HERE: https://sites.google.com/site/definitelynotmartha/half-whole-wheat-monkey-bread-with-salted-caramel-glaze

dough:

**you could substitute any dough - frozen, refrigerated, or any dough recipe of your choosing

1 1/2 c all purpose/bread flour

1 1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 package quick yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

2 t pumpkin pie spice (or combo of cinnamon/cloves/allspice/ginger)

1/2 c milk

1/2 c water

4 T sugar

1 T oil

1 egg

1/2 t salt

1. In a stand mixer, combine flours, yeast, pie spice and salt.

2. In a small saucepan (or in the microwave) heat milk, water, oil and sugar until a thermometer reads 110-120F (warm but not burning) and sugar is dissolved.

3. Add milk mixture and the egg to the flours and process with dough hook (or stir with strong arm!). Once everything is all combined, you should have a soft dough - it should be a tiny bit sticky, but not ridiculously so. If there is too much flour, add a little more milk. If the dough is a liquid, sticky mess (more likely), add more flour, about 2 T at a time. Knead/process dough for a couple of minutes.

4. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl, turn to cover with oil. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and place somewhere warm to rise for an hour. I like to put mine in the oven with the light on. Out of the way, and nice and warm.

5. Sprinkle work surface with flour (I like to cover mine with waxed paper so I'm not stuck scrubbing dough bits off the counter). Spread dough out into a large rectangle.

6. Cut into 70-ish pieces - about 1 inch diameter...this is not an exact science though.

I just use a butcher knife. I leave my pieces mostly rectangular...you could try to make them more ball-like, but if you just plump the sides of the dough rectangles, they get round enough for me.

glaze for dough balls

1/2 cup butter (unsalted), melted and cool enough to get your fingers in.

1 1/2 c brown sugar (I used dark brown)

2 t cinnamon

1. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Take a tube/bundt pan and butter/grease it.

2. Dip each dough ball into butter. Let excess run off (you can try using a fork for this...it's a messy process no matter how you do it.

3. Cover dough in brown sugar/cinnamon mixture. Place in tube pan. Continue. I found that most of the way through, my brown sugar was reduced to a buttery paste. Whatever. It still worked.

4. Continue layering dough balls around your tube pan until you run out.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour.

5. If your monkey bread was rising in the oven, remove from oven. Preheat oven to 350F. Remove plastic wrap. Bake 35ish minutes at 350F. Let sit in pan for five minutes, and then remove from pan.

At this point, I was pretty pleased with myself, but thought that the resulting monkey bread looked less gooey and more dry than I wanted. This is where the ultimate glaze comes in.....

ultimate salted caramel glaze

1/4 cup butter (salted or not)

1/4 c dark brown sugar, packed

1/4 c white sugar

1/2 c whipping cream

(1/4 t sea salt, if using unsalted butter)

1 t cinnamon

1. In a sauce pan, melt the butter with the two sugars. Bring to a boil and let the sugars dissolve.

2. Add the whipping cream (there will be serious bubbles going on). Cook together. Add cinnamon and salt (if needed) and continue cooking until thickened slightly.

3. Remove from heat and let cool for five minutes. Slowly pour over still-warm (but not too hot) monkey bread.

This is the ultimate. I would be lying if I said that six people did not polish this off in one fell swoop. It's really freaking good. Like my guest said - love child of a timbit and a cinnamon bun. MAKE IT NOW.

You know what would also be good though? A savoury version, with herbed dough, dipped in garlic butter, then rolled in parmesan. And served with either a marinara sauce, or an herbed garlic butter glaze. The mind, it boggles, and the possibilities are infinite.

showered with food

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So this post relates to my previous post, detailing all my monkey-themed baby shower craftiness. This is where you come for the menu.

The baby shower was at 11 am on a Sunday, so I went with a brunch theme. Dietary restrictions of the crowd included one vegetarian and one with a moderate intolerance to wheat (i.e., not celiac, but not piles and piles of flour everywhere either).

The Menu (recipes, or links to recipes, all below)

spinach cheese souffle (or not so souffle)

potato fennel hash

buckwheat oatmeal scones with preserves

fresh fruit skewers with chocolate drizzle

BLT skewers with dijon aioli

chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mint swiss meringue buttercream

non-alcoholic mojito punch

OJ, coffee, tea

Spinach-cheese soufflé

These were delicious little yummy ramekins of goodness. I took this recipe from epicurious and modified it to be crust-free mini-dishes.

1 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 1b-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed, squeezed dry
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 15-ounce container ricotta cheese
8 ounce jarlsberg cheese, grated (or other cheese - mozza, cheddar, gruyere)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
6 large eggs, beaten to blend

1. Melt butter in skillet. Add onion and sauté until tender. Mix in spinach, salt pepper and nutmeg. Sauté until all liquid is gone.

2. Combine ricotta, jarlsberg, parmesan. Mix in eggs. Add (cooled) spinach mixture. Blend well.

3. Spoon into 12 ramekins (mine are small). You can make them up the day before.

To BAKE: preheat oven to 350F. Bake about 30-40 minutes, until filling is set in center and brown on top.

YUM!

Potato-fennel hash

(hash is at the bottom left of the picture. Scones are midway up the right side of the picture)

No creativity here - it's straight from epicurious. Get the recipe here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fennel-and-Potato-Hash-356731

It's a nice change from regular breakfast potatoes and because of the fennel, it's a bit lower in calories. I put mine together the night before and just heated it up with the souffles.

Buckwheat Oatmeal Scones with preserves

These are based on this epicurious recipe, which I've made before, with great success. I wanted to try them with light buckwheat flour (not dark!). The result was surprisingly wonderful! If you can source gluten-free oats and buckwheat, this recipe can be suitable for celiac sufferers. Using the food processor will make your life easier, but it isn't crucial. You just need to otherwise use oat flour and a pastry blender.

1 2/3 cups buckwheat flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar plus additional for sprinkling (I used organic palm sugar)
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups old-fashioned oats (I used large flake oats)
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
Finely grated zest from 1 large navel orange
2/3 cup well-shaken buttermilk plus additional for brushing

1. Preheat oven to 425F. Put flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and oats in a food processor. Pulse 15 times. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Transfer to a bowl.

2. Stir together zest and buttermilk. Pour onto oat mixture, and stir just until you can get it to stick together in a ball. Divide dough into two balls.

3. Form each ball into a circle, about 1 inch thick. I don't use a rolling pin for this. Just my hands. Cut the circle into 8 pieces (like a pizza) and put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Do the same with the other half of the dough. So you now have 16 cute little scone triangles.

4. Brush the top of each triangle with more buttermilk, and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in the oven until golden brown (15-18 minutes) and transfer to a rack.

These are rich but light. Yum. Totally recommend.

Fruit Skewers

Pretty self explanatory. Put fruit that won't brown on a skewer. I used starfruit, canteloupe, strawberry, kiwi, pineapple and dragon fruit. Just avoid things like apples and pear, which go brown. For the drizzle, I tried to be fancy and mix mine with sour cream. Don't do it. Just melt your chocolate and drizzle using a zip loc with a teeny bit of the corner snipped off. My drizzle was a little awkward and not nearly as fine as I wanted. Ah well. It tasted good.

BLT skewers with dijon aioli

Another easy one. Cook bacon (I candied it in the oven like this recipe). Cut into pieces. Thread onto skewers with some romaine and a grape tomato. The sauce is simply 1/2 c mayonnaise, 1/4 dijon mustard, 1 minced clove garlic, pepper. Add a spoon of grainy mustard if you have some). Voila!

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate-mint swiss meringue buttercream

OMFG I was proud of these. Don't they look amazing!!!!! Now, before you're too impressed with me, I absolutely did NOT make the monkey toppers. Those were made by my friend, who runs the amazing Sophie Bifield Cake Company. She is so super talented. If you're crafty and know how to do these sorts of things, there are great instructions for the monkeys on the Frosted Cake n Cookie. This is well outside my comfort zone, so HUGE thanks to Sophie for the help.

The cake part of the cupcake was from this epicurious recipe that I've used before with great success. It makes great cupcakes, just adjust the baking time to 18ish-20ish minutes. 1 cake recipe makes 36 decent sized-cupcakes.

The cake is good, but holy crap...the frosting has opened up my entire cupcake world to new possibilities.

I'd never made swiss meringue buttercream before...but it's so bloody wonderful. It's an enormous pain in the ass to make (it took an HOUR), but it's fabulous. Don't make it if you don't have a stand mixer. I used Martha Stewart's icing recipe. and beat in 4 oz of melted, cooled 70% cocoa chocolate, and 1 t of peppermint extract. The recipe makes enough to generously frost 24 cupcakes.

To ice the cupcakes, I used the Wilton 1C icing tip. I love the ruffly deep swirls it made. And if I can do it, so can you, because I suck at this kind of thing. I bought it at Bulk Barn and used a disposable piping bag. My bag was only 12 inches. Buy a bigger one. Mine was irritatingly small.

lime-mint mojito punch

I wasn't sure how this punch would go over....to the point that I yelled at hubs for stealing a glass of OJ the morning of the shower...but it was a HUGE hit! I'd make it again. It was refreshing and yummy and totally doesn't need the rum. Although rum wouldn't be a bad thing...as long as half of your guests aren't pregnant or nursing. ;)

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

zest of 3 limes

1 cup lime juice

1.5 cups mint leaves, whole (give or take)

4-5 cans club soda

1. On the stove top, combine the sugar, water and lime zest. Heat until the sugar is totally dissolved. Cool.

2. To make punch, combine lime juice, sugar syrup and mint leaves. Add club soda. Taste - add more club soda, juice, sugar, mint depending on what you think.

Yummy!

And voila. That's what we ate. It was super yummy and everything disappeared off the table. So I'd recommend all of the recipes here.