Recipe Post: Mini Quiches

My church small group is having our Christmas party tonight, and anyone who has read enough of this blog knows that I never waste an opportunity to take photos of what I make for a get-together.

I have been charmed by the idea of egg "muffins" and homemade mini quiches for quite some time, and my Aunt-in-law Christy put up some photos of her egg muffins not too long ago and re-inspired me to give them a shot. I went with a mix of both, which I could claim was on purpose but in truth was because I only had so much dough to use.

Normally I'd do this using my pie crust, but I had some leftover puff pastry from my ramekin pot pies so I decided to give it a shot with puff pastry instead. Maybe some time soon I will try them with normal pie crust instead!

FYI, my camera battery charger is still MIA so there are less pictures than usual. It's been saying it's about to die since I made the berry crumble so my guess is that it's on its last leg.

Anywho.

Let's get down to it:

Prep Time: 20-30 minutes

Cook Time: 30-35 minutes

Yields: 2 dozen quiche/muffins

Ingredients:

For the crust:

1 sheet puff pastry

For the filling:

For all
16 eggs (or so...forgot to count!)
1-1/2 tablespoon light cream (or heavy cream if you're more adventurous than me)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Italian
1/4 small onion
8-10 mini plum tomatoes/cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon pesto
1/8-1/4 cup finely shredded mozzarella cheese

Mushroom
1  6-ounce package mushrooms*
3/4 jar of black olives
1/4 small onion
*(of any variety--I used white button because they were on sale)

Broccoli Cheddar
1 small head of broccoli (florets only)
1/4 cup finely shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Crack and beat all of the eggs and add in the light cream and salt.

Please, add the salt. I forgot it. The quiches suffered somewhat for it. Live and learn (by my mistakes--you're welcome.).

I have no pictures of this step, but separate them into 3 liquid measuring cups. Makes it nice and easy to pour the eggs into the cupcake tin!

2. Make up your mixes for all three flavors.

For the Italian, mince the onion and tomato as small as possible and mix in the pesto.

Cook briefly in a skillet just to take a little of the bite out of the onions, then add it to one of the three measuring cups with egg. Throw in the finely shredded mozzarella too, and make sure you break up any cheese clumps. That clump will make one of these quiches very tasty and cheesy, but the rest not as great.

P.S., please use finely shredded. Did I put that in italics enough times? I recommend this for the same reason as I said to mince everything--for mini quiches, you need mini chunks of things. They mix better that way. And look nicer. And taste better. And make kittens weep with joy.

...I may be exaggerating with the last ones. It's mostly for the even mixing.

For the Mushroom, mince up the mushroom, olives and onions. I also sautéed these, but for a little longer. Why? Because I wanted to.

Add to the second egg measuring cup.

For the Broccoli Cheddar, use only the florets--the darkest green top part of the broccoli.

Mix in the cheddar cheese and throw into the third egg measuring cup.

Is this confusing you yet? This is why I usually take so many pictures.

3. Spray your cupcake tins with some kind of oil spray. It will make your life easier.

4. Lay out your puff pastry sheet on some wax paper. Attempt to roll it out. Fail, realize that it's sticking even to wax paper, curse the wax paper and the puff pastry, then start from scratch with just the normal puff pastry, only now it will be slightly more sticky and more frustrating than it started.

...Maybe that's just me. The lesson I learned here is that puff pastry does not roll well and will not get thinner just because you want it to. Better to follow these directions instead:

Lay out your puff pastry. Slice into small squares, slightly smaller than the openings on the cupcake tin.

Stretch each one a little bit with your hands, being careful not to tear them, and tuck each into one of the cupcake tins. If you're like me and made "muffins", too, once you run out of puff pastry just call it a day and start making muffins in the space left.

5. Pour each of your mixtures into as many cupcake spaces as they can fit into. Make sure that they only go up to about 3/4 of the way to the top, since they puff a bit while cooking.

As you can see I didn't follow my own rules with all of them. Those were the stubborn ones.

6. Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until no raw egg is visible in the center. You can check it with a fork, but I've personally always been safety conscious (read: slightly neurotic) about eggs so I cut one of each kind open to make sure that they were cooked all the way through before I called them done. (See the middle left one? That's what happened there.)

And there you go! (Pardon my shadow)

Italian:

Mushroom:

And Broccoli Cheddar.

To recap:

-Don't forget the salt.
-Don't try to roll out puff pastry.
-Spray your pan before pouring anything in.
-Use finely shredded cheese.

I think I'm done with my reminders now.

Enjoy!

Kitchen Credits:

-I referenced Ree Drummond's/The Pioneer Woman's normal-sized quiche recipe, and then did not follow it because we have no internet. It's her fault I added the cream. (But seriously, do it. Adds something!)