Plan B Bacon Blueberry Muffins Recipe

Well, the hubs wanted Eggs Benedict.  But after I ruined the Hollandaise... (got it too hot!) and didn't have enough eggs to try a second round... we went for plan B.

I had bacon in the oven and I've been playing with bacon in muffin cups.  Hmm... what to do, what to do?

He mixed up some pancake batter and I tried an experiment with the bacon, the pancake batter and some fresh blueberries.

They sure didn't look like anything special, though I could see the bacon grease bubbling around the edges of the muffins.

And so I peeled off the foil and...

Well... I was a little busy to take photos at that moment.  Well... the bacon grease kind of caramelized the outside of the muffin, the inside was juicy because of the blueberries, the bacon was... well... mmmm....   bacon.  (And that's as it should be.)

I finally decided that the way to serve these little buggas was with some really good maple syrup.  I bought some of the grade A stuff a while back and never really appreciated it's overbearing flavor (except in recipes) until I drizzled a tiny bit over one of these.  Then... that sweet maple flavor was the perfect counter balance for the salty bacon and warm blueberry.  I suspected that they'd taste greasy, I was very wrong. 

I hate to admit how many of these I've eaten this morning.  I'm going to need to hike all day long to make up for it.  But no matter what I have to do to burn off the calories... this was worth it!

What do you think, too much?  (Yeah, visually that didn't really work.)  Te He!

Plan B Bacon Blueberry Muffin Recipe:

1 package of smoked bacon.  

1 batch of pancake or muffin batter

Washed and dried fresh blueberries

Good maple syrup

Line muffin tin with foil muffin cups, cut 12 slices of bacon in half and arrange one half bacon strip in a circle in each muffin tin.  Line a pan with foil and arrange the rest of the bacon on that, cover it all with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the bacon is cooked the way you prefer. 

Mix up a batch of pancake/muffin batter.  We've got a bag mix that you just add an egg and some water, very easy and better than the scratch recipe we'd been using! (don't you hate it when the mix is better than a scratch recipe!?)

Wash the blueberries and set them to drain.  Always wash your fruit, chemicals on there can harm you!

When the bacon is still hot and bubbling, add the batter in on top of the bacon, then toss three blueberries on top.  Pop them back in the oven to finish them up, I'm guessing I baked them 8 - 10 more minutes before taking them out.

Peel off the foil, I liked the way they looked upside down with the bacon showing.  Serve them warm with fresh blueberries for garnish and really good maple syrup.

Bon Appetit!

Now I don't mind a bit that I screwed up the Hollandaise!

Try it and let me know what you think, ok?

Savor the Flavors,

-Carmen Rose

Quail Eggs with Alton Brown & Benedict (perfect for the Hollandaise!)

Hmmm... I have two dozen quail eggs from my CSA... what to do? What to do! As a child I hated eggs and realized later that I had been allergic to them. I would eat them when I had to, then be nauseous for most of the morning. In recent years have I tried them again and realized that they didn't make me sick anymore, plus - I kinda liked them. I'm not a fan of yellow goo oozing from a fried egg. I don't like the texture of whites or yolks in a hard boiled egg. I do, however, LOVE a good scramble or omelet. So with all that in mind... I am going to try to make something wonderful with quail eggs.

It seems to me that the first step in doing something wonderful with quail eggs must include... Bacon! I cook bacon in the oven, it's so ultra easy and nobody has to hover over the range while a fine spray of grease coats everything nearby. Just line a pan with foil, spread out the bacon and cover it with foil (to keep that fine spay of bacon grease off of the inside of your oven) and bake at 400 until it's the crispness you prefer (between 20 - 30 mins.) I like it crispy, DH likes it chewy. (So I make it crisphewy.) While I was at it, I tried making some little cup like shapes out of bacon, just to see if it would work.  I curled up some bacon in some foil cupcake cups and covered that with foil.

And into the oven it went:

And then I started on the Hollandaise sauce.  I used the Alton Brown recipe that calls for butter chunks rather than clarified butter.  It sounded easier to me, plus Alton Brown is a genius.  If he says it will work... it will work!  There are three organic chick egg yolks in here (I get 1 doz free range, organic, yadda yadda eggs in my CSA box each two weeks.)  STIR!

Add a few chunks of butter at a time and keep stirring, make sure it doesn't get too hot.  Don't want to make scrambled eggs!

OO00oooo... pretty!  Add the lemon juice, salt and cayenne.  I added those, then added more for a little additional flavor.  I ended up using the juice of half a lemon, nice bit of tang!

The bacon came out of the oven looking all lovely and filling the kitchen with "ode to cooked PIG!"  (yum)

I don't have photos of the next steps cause it all pretty much happens all at once.  The English muffins went in the toaster oven and I broke four little quail eggs into a round ring in my egg skillet and began frying them.  Eggs Benedict call for poached eggs, but that's an adventure for another day when I want to work with chicken eggs.  This whole adventure started with Quail eggs... so I fried them a bit, pried them off the cookie cutter round and flipped them.  They were SO cute in there cooking away, but quail eggs are really hard to crack.  The shells are very soft and the membranes are pretty strong.  But they are O SO CUTE!  (I had to go after a piece of shell with  my tweezers, that's why there are tweezers in my kitchen.)

Get the English muffins from the toaster oven, add the bacon, top with the four fried quail eggs...

Hurry now, eggs are never good cold!

Top with the Hollandaise and run to the herb garden for some fresh chives and sprinkle those on top.  I called the man and he sat down to eat his... I looked up and it was gone while I was still working on mine.  He eyed my plate while I finished mine, then he licked his plate clean.  Yes, literally.  He kept eying mine until I gave him the last bite.  Not bad, not bad at all.

What a lovely breakfast!  (DH's second breakfast, my first)  Hmmm... I still had those little rounds of bacon, so the next experiment involved getting quail eggs into the little bacon rounds.  As you can see from the photo, it really only worked about 3 out of 12 cases.  What a silly MESS!

I decided that if they already looked that bad, flipping them wasn't going to hurt them.  So... over they went - as one solid mass.  Then I picked them back apart...  I put some Hollandaise on the plate, tucked three little quail eggs in bacon baskets into the sauce.  I sprinkled this with the rest of the chives.  Now they aren't exactly pretty, they didn't turn out looking at all like I imagined... HOWEVER!  When one pops one of these little buggas into one's mouth... it does elicit an involentary creamy-smokey-bacon-and-egg YUMMMMMMmmmmm!

Ok, so not entirely pretty food... but a pretty big YUM! 

I love my CSA!  (Community Supported Agriculture) 

I would never have tried quail eggs without them!

Savoring the Flavors,

-Carmen Rose