Kind of a hot mess.

Let it be known! For any Tex-Mex dish in existence, there is an equally delicious breakfast version of that dish.

For evidence to back this idea, I offer exhibit A – The Breakfast Nachos.

The topping possibilities are pretty unlimited, but should probably include some sort of egg and cheese, plus some good veggies.

They are actually very easy to make and definitely fun to eat. Just be careful or you might find yourself in a very solid food coma for the day.

Breakfast Nachos

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

8 ounces spicy pork sausage
4 large eggs, scrambled
1/4 red onion, diced
1 jalapeno, minced
2 cups pepper jack cheese, grated
Tortilla chips
Avocado
Cilantro
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Lay out tortilla chips on a baking sheet in an even layer. Top with grated cheese.

2) In a medium pan, add sausage and begin to brown over medium-high heat. Crumble sausage as it cooks and cook until it's well-browned, about 10 minutes.

3) Scramble eggs and pour into pan with sausage. Cook until eggs are barely cooked, another few minutes.

4) Add eggs and sausage to tortilla chips on top of the cheese.

5) Top with diced veggies.

6) Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until cheese is melted.

7) Top with avocado and cilantro and serve with salsa and sour cream.

The Prep

There’s actually very little prep for these bad boys. Feel free to combine them with some of the more advanced nacho techniques I’ve used over the years like the individually topped chip or the cheese sauce method.

If you’re starving though, you can just throw some chips on a baking sheet!

The chips are down.

Obviously you could add a lot of veggie toppings to these. I kept it pretty simple though and just diced up a jalapeno and a chunk of red onion.

Just some basic chopping

Eggs and Sausage

When it comes to a good hardy breakfast, it’s pretty hard to beat eggs and sausage. So that’s what I used here! While you could definitely leave off the sausage for a veggie version, I’m not sure I’d leave off the eggs because then you’d just have nachos and not breakfast nachos.

If you are using the sausage though, just add it to a pan over medium-high heat and break it up as it cooks until it’s nice and browned.

Well-browned!

Then pour in your scrambled eggs! The grease from the sausage will be more than enough to help the eggs cook.

This will work. Trust me.

Stir the mixture vigorously as it cooks and it’ll just take another minute or so to cook the eggs.

Don’t worry if the eggs are slightly under-cooked. We are going to bake them also so it’s better to under-cook them a bit at this point.

A bit undercooked is fine.

Finishing the Nachos

Nothing rocket science about it. Add your cheese to the tortilla chips. I like a good pepper jack, but feel free to use almost any cheese.

Then add your egg/sausage combo followed by your veggies.

This guy is ready for the oven!

Cheesed and topped.

These will need to bake for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I think Betsy would leave me if I served nachos without avocado, so I sliced up one.

It is the most marriage saving of all toppings.

Essential.

As soon as the nachos come out of the oven, top them with some avocado and cilantro (if that’s your thing).

I like to serve salsa and sour cream on the side so people can add their own.

Delicious breakfast.

This is obviously a pretty filling breakfast, but it really hits the spot on a cold winter morning. Especially if you maybe had a longer than expected night at the bar the previous night!

And yes. We did eat this entire tray of nachos. Do not judge!

Better than it looks. Promise.

The first time I saw tempeh in the store I thought that whoever first made it must have been very hungry. It doesn’t look too appetizing.

The first time I ate tempeh I thought that whoever first made it was a freakin’ genius.

I think it’s one of the most under-rated foods around. Trust me. It’s not just for vegetarians and health nuts. It’s for anyone who likes really good food that easy to make.

Tempeh has more flavor and texture than tofu and is about ten times easier to make.

In fact, one of my favorite tacos to this day is my crispy tempeh tacos. This is actually kind of a riff on that dish made as a breakfast instead of a dinner. I ate this breakfast two days in a row which is pretty rare for me. It was just that good.

The Tempeh Scramble

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

4-6 ounces tempeh, crumbled
1/2 red or orange pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
2 scallions, diced
2 tablespoons salsa
4 large eggs, scrambled
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
3 ounces pepper jack cheese, grated
1 avocado, sliced
Cilantro
Flour tortillas
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Cast Iron Skillet

Directions:

1) Crumble tempeh and dice all your veggies. Mix the veggies in a bowl with salsa.

2) Add the small amount of vegetable oil to a cast iron skillet and get it hot over medium-high heat.

3) Add the tempeh and cook until it's well browned, about 5-6 minutes.

4) Stir in veggies and salsa and season with salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two until veggies are soft.

5) Scramble eggs and add eggs to skillet. Stir vigorously so eggs mix with other ingredients. Cook until eggs are almost all cooked, probably just a minute or two.

6) Add on grated cheese and stick the pan in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for about a minute just to melt the cheese.

7) Serve scramble with warm tortillas, cilantro, and avocado!

Tempeh Tempeh

I’ve already raved in this post about my love for tempeh, but the reality is that it might be kind of hard for you to find. I only know of one health food store in my town that sells it.

Most grocery stores don’t carry it unfortunately. Maybe the demand isn’t quite there yet. But call around to a few places and you should be able to find it somewhere.

If you’re curious what tempeh is, it’s basically just fermented whole soy beans that have been mixed with other flavors like flax seeds or, in this case, random vegetables.

The nice thing about tempeh is that you can prepare it a million different ways. You can slice it thinly or just crumble it up. I thought for a scramble like this, it would be better to just crumble it.

Super easy to use.

The Veggies

While I listed specific vegetables in the recipe, I’d just encourage you to use what you have in your fridge. Some kind of pepper is good and something like an onion or scallion is a good idea.

It’s pretty flexible though… kind of like an omelet.

A few chopped veggies.

Whatever veggies you are using, dice them up and then stir them together with some salsa. This will give the dish a nice Tex-Mex feel.

Adding a tex-mex element.

Cooking the Scramble

I used my cast iron skillet for this dish, but you could use any large skillet really. I do recommend using one that is oven-safe so you can transfer the pan to the oven at the end and melt the cheese quickly.

The first step is to brown the tempeh. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan and then add all the tempeh. Over medium-high heat, it’ll take 5-6 minutes to brown nicely. It’s pretty hard to burn this stuff. It’s very sturdy.

Way easier than tofu!

Once the tempeh is browned, add in the veggies and salsa and cook for another minute or two until the veggies are soft.

Then pour in your scrambled eggs!

Already smells good.

Everything will cook pretty fast at this point.

Just stir it all together and let it cook until the eggs are almost completely cooked.

This is about perfect. It looks like a hot mess, but it’ll smell great.

Not sure how many style points I get here...

Top the whole scramble with some cheese and stick it in a hot oven for a minute or two just to melt the cheese.

Can't forget the cheese.

You could just eat this as-is or serve it as a side. If you want to make a really good meal out of it though, serve it with some flour tortillas, avocado, and maybe some fresh cilantro.

Delicious breakfast.

There’s a lot of nice things about this meal. For one, I guarantee you that you won’t miss the meat. The tempeh is very flavorful, filling, and has a great texture.

The other nice thing is that this whole thing takes less than 30 minutes to make. You could also easily double or triple it and feed a crowd.

This is a great introduction to tempeh if you’ve never tried it before so hunt some down and give it a go!

Well, this worked!

One of my favorite breakfasts or brunches to make on a lazy weekend day is crepes.

I like them because the batter is very easy to make and once you get the hang of them, I actually think they are easier to make than pancakes!

Plus you can fill them with all kinds of delicious stuff.

The problem I’ve encountered with crepes is that it’s hard to feed a crowd with them. You can only make one at a time and people usually want 2-3 for a meal so if you’re feeding four people, that’s 10-12 crepes!

Then one day the idea of a crepe pie smacked me over the head and I had to try it immediately.

It worked better than I ever thought it would.

Savory Crepe Pie

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 40 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Basic Crepe Batter:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 large eggs
1.5 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted butter (plus some for the pan)

Filling:
8 ounces crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1/2 onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6-8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Butter, for the pie pan

Helpful Equipment:
Large nonstick skillet or crepe pan

Directions:

1) Make your crepe batter by mixing the dry ingredients together in a bowl and the wet ingredients (except butter) in a separate bowl. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Whisk in melted butter. Batter should be pretty runny. Let batter sit while you prep the filling.

2) Slice mushrooms, dice peppers, onions, and garlic. Add mushrooms to a large skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and saute over medium-high heat until the mushrooms release their liquid and soften, about 5-6 minutes.

3) Add other filling ingredients (except cheese) to the skillet and cook for another 4-5 minutes until peppers soften. Season filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and a pinch of dried thyme. Set filling aside.

4) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5) Using a large nonstick skillet, or crepe pan, add a small amount of butter over medium-high heat. Pour in about 1/2 cup of crepe batter and swirl it around the pan so it flattens out. Cook for 30-45 seconds on the first side until it firms up, then carefully flip the crepe and cook for another 15-20 seconds. Repeat until you have 4 large crepes. The batter will make 5-6 crepes so you can mess up one without worry.

6) Butter a pie pan and lay a crepe in the bottom of the pan. Add half of the mushroom filling and 1/3 of the grated cheese.

7) Top with a second crepe and 1/3 of the cheese.

8) Top with a third crepe. So the middle layer is just cheese basically.

9) Add rest of filling and cheese to top of the pie and top with the fourth crepe. Kind of crimp the edges of the crepe around the edges of the pie so it is mostly sealed.

10) Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

11) Let cool briefly and then slice and serve!

The Filling

Over the years, I’ve put together dozens of different crepe fillings. Sweet, savory, fruity, cheesy… you name it, you can probably stuff it in a crepe.

So I don’t want you to get the impression that this filling is the only filling that you can use for this recipe. This is just the one I used and it worked really well.

Good winter veggies.

Rinse and slice up the mushrooms and dice up your veggies. It’s okay to keep them in pretty big chunks. You don’t want the veggies to disappear in the dish.

Great flavors.

Then just add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a large skillet and toss in the mushrooms. Cook them over medium high heat until they start to soften and release their water. Then you can add in all the other veggies and continue to cook until they are soft.

Total cooking time for this will probably be in the 10 minute range. There’s actually a lot of wiggle room in how much you cook the veggies. It is important to saute them though so you can cook off some of the water in the veggies. Otherwise the filling would be very watery in your final dish.

When the veggies are cooked, season the filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and dried thyme.

Very important.

The Crepes

This is my basic crepe batter recipe. It’s never failed me really. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken right?

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl (minus the melted butter). Then stir the wet into the dry and finally stir in the butter.

Ideally, let this batter sit for a few minutes before making the crepes.

I like to make the batter, then make the filling, and by the time the filling is done the batter is rested and ready to go.

Pretty easy batter.

Like I said, I find cooking crepes easier than pancakes honestly. That said, you might mess up one or two. Don’t worry about it if you do. Since these are going in a layered dish, they don’t have to be perfect.

When you’re ready to cook a crepe, just add a small amount of butter to a large nonstick pan or a crepe pan and then pour in about 1/3-1/2 cup of crepe batter. Swirl it around in the pan so it flows out and forms an even, very thin crepe.

Cook the crepe for about 45 seconds on the first side and then give it a flip. Flipping is always the part that people mess up but just do your best. Like I said, they don’t have to be perfect.

Takes maybe a minute!

You need four crepes to make this dish so just go ahead and make four and stack them up on a plate or something.

Making the Pie

You can use almost any kind of pie dish that you have. Is it important to have something round though so the crepes fit snuggly in there.

To make sure the crepes don’t stick to your pan, butter the thing really well.

Butter is important.

Then lay in one crepe and make sure to push it down so it’s snug against all the walls of the pie pan. Then add about 1/2 of your mushroom filling and 1/3 of your grated cheese.

Bottom layer.

Then toss on the second crepe. For the middle layer, I just did an all cheese layer. So add another 1/3 of the cheese to this layer.

Speaking of cheese, be sure to use a good flavorful cheese for this. You don’t want to use a lot of cheese, but make sure to use good stuff! I used a nice sharp white cheddar.

Just cheese on this layer!

Add on the third crepe and then the rest of your filling stuff.

It should all stack up very nicely.

More of the same.

Put the top crepe on and kind of press the edges down around the sides of the pie pan. Again, don’t freak out if it isn’t perfect.

Stick this whole thing in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

The great part about baking this is that the top and bottom crepes actually get a bit crispy which is nice and then the center is just this awesome savory party.

So good!

I was worried that this would just fall apart when I sliced it, but if you let it cool for just a minute or two when you pull it out of the oven, it actually slices really nicely.

You can even make out all the layers.

One of my favorite brunches.

If this is all your serving, assume about 1/4 of the pie per person. If you’re serving this with some other stuff then you could cut it into sixths and be fine.

The good news is that you can make these in advance and then just toss them in the oven if you’re having people over.

This is the right way to do crepes for a group!

Over the years, I’ve written about bacon a lot. If you want some serious bacon action, just check out the bacon section of the Macheesmo!

I’ve mentioned in passing how I like to cook bacon, but I thought it would be worth it to spend a post walking you through how I make my bacon.

Not only does this method result in what I believe to be the best bacon possible, but it lends itself well to a bunch of fun variations on bacon which are also included in this post.

So… vegetarians… look away!

Bacon lovers… proceed!

The Perfect Bacon

Yield: 8 strips of bacon

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

Basic Recipe:
8 strips of bacon
Coarse ground black pepper

Chocolate Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
2 ounces milk chocolate
2 tablespoons cream, or butter

Maple Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
4 tablespoons real maple syrup

Candied Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Helpful Equipment:
Sheet Pan
Wire rack (oven safe)

Directions:

1) Add oven safe wire rack to a sheet pan so it is slightly elevated off the pan. Lay out 8 strips of bacon on the wire rack. It's okay if the strips overlap slightly. Season with ground pepper.

2) Baked in a cold 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

3) Remove bacon and flip the strips.

4) Bake for another 10 minutes or until very crispy. Let cool briefly before serving.

Chocolate Version:
1) I like the pepper/chocolate combo, but you might want to leave the pepper off if you're doing a chocolate version. Otherwise, cook bacon as directed above.

2) Meanwhile, in a small microwave safe bowl, add cream or butter and chocolate and microwave in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted and smooth.

3) When bacon is cooked and cooled to room temperature, drizzle chocolate over bacon. Cool in the fridge for 10-15 minutes so chocolate hardens.

Maple Version:
1) Cook bacon as directed, but when you flip the bacon halfway through, drizzle maple syrup on each strip of bacon. Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

2) Let cool slightly before serving.

Candied Bacon:
1) Cook bacon as directed. Meanwhile, mix together brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. When you take bacon out halfway through to flip it, sprinkle each strip with brown sugar mixture.

2) Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

3) Let cool briefly before serving.

The Basic Technique

The title of this post is the BEST way to make bacon, but I probably should’ve added an asterix to that. There are, of course, dozens of ways to make bacon and some are better than other depending on what you want to do with the bacon.

This is not how you should make bacon if you’re adding it to a sauce (like pasta carbonara) or something like that.

This is how you should make bacon if you want to eat big strips of perfectly crispy, salty bacon that aren’t soaked in grease. In my mind, that makes for the perfect piece of bacon and this technique delivers every single time.

You really only need two pieces of equipment to pull this off. First you need some sort of rimmed sheet pan or baking sheet. Most people probably have that.

The piece of equipment that some people may not have unless you bake regularly is a wire rack. And not just any rack… it needs to be oven safe. Like this one. These are cheap and if you make bacon even once a month, it’s worth it to pick one up just for bacon.

Then just set your wire rack on your sheet pan and lay out your bacon in long strips on the wire rack.

The rack is key!

I like to season my bacon really well with coarsely ground fresh pepper, but that’s an optional step.

Once you have your bacon laying on the wire rack, just stick the whole thing in a NOT pre-heated 400 degree oven for about 12-15 minutes. Bacon should start off cooking slowly, so don’t pre-heat your oven for it.

PS. If you’re ever cooking bacon in a skillet or pan, it’s always best to start it off cold.

The reason that this method works so well is because as the bacon cooks, the fat falls away from it and collects on the sheet pan, so the bacon gets very crispy. Because the wire rack is supporting the bacon, it also stays in beautiful strips.

While you don’t have to flip the bacon, I recommend it after about 12-15 minutes just to make sure your bacon is cooking evenly.

Halfway home.

There can be a pretty huge range in bacon thickness. Obviously, depending on the thickness of your bacon, you might have to adjust the cooking time. If you’re using very thick, slab bacon, you’ll probably have to add on 5-10 minutes to the total cooking time.

After you flip the bacon, just stick it back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

When you pull your bacon out, let it cool briefly and you’ll end up with these beautiful strips.

Very crispy!

The best part about this bacon is how absolutely crispy it is.

If you don’t like your bacon crispy, you can still cook it this way… just pull it out a few minutes early.

But for me, crispy is where it’s at.

Bomb bacon.

Now that you have the method down, there’s three really fun variations that are very easy to do, but taste amazing.

Let’s go through them!

Choco-Bacon

This looks and tastes very decadent, but is super-easy to do. Basically, cook the bacon as directed above, but leave off the ground pepper. Actually, I like the pepper-chocolate combo, but it’s not for everyone so maybe just leave it off to be safe.

Then, in a microwave safe bowl, add the cream or butter and chocolate and zap it in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted.

Once your bacon is cooked, let it cool down to room temperature and then just drizzle on the chocolate. You could also completely dip the pieces of bacon in the chocolate if you want!

Drizzle drizzle

I like the chocolate to be solid for this recipe so after you drizzle or dip it on, just stick the plate in your fridge for 10-15 minutes and the chocolate will harden.

The salty chocolate combo is pretty amazing.

Maple Bacon

Bacon and maple were made to be together. Just a few notes on this variation to make sure it goes smoothly for you.

1) Use real maple syrup. If in doubt, look at the ingredients. It should only have one: maple syrup. If it has corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup, then try again. The problem with these is that they will cook differently on the bacon and it’ll be very sugary. Not ideal.

2) Don’t add the maple syrup at the beginning. It’ll burn by the time the bacon is done. Instead, half cook the bacon and then when you take the bacon out to flip, add a small drizzle of syrup to each strip.

It doesn’t take much to get the job done.

Nature's sugar.

After baking for 10 more minutes, the syrup will mostly evaporate leaving just a light maple flavor on the bacon.

It’s super delicious and really very easy once you master the basic technique.

Candied Bacon

I saved my favorite variation for last.

Basically, you just mix some brown sugar and cinnamon together like so…

The mix.

After the half-way cooking point for the bacon, sprinkle on a bit of the brown sugar on each strip.

While the bacon finishs cooking, the sugar will melt around it and form this delicious sweet crust.

When the bacon cools, the sugar hardens and makes the bacon even more crispy (which I like) and the salty sweet combo is perfect.

You must try this.

So there you have it. The definitive way to make really good bacon with a few fun alternatives!

Give it a shot if you’re in the mood for crispy and delicious bacon.

Fun, quick, delicious. What more do you need?

For quite some time now the most popular post on Macheesmo was a recipe that I made kind of on a whim almost two years ago. It was just a simple breakfast sandwich with two twists:

1) You could freeze them.

2) They were made in a muffin tin so you could make a bunch of them at a time.

Based on the comments and emails I’ve received about the post, I think the muffin tin thing was what people really liked. It totally takes the guess work out of eggs and you can cook them in big batches.

I also do not think it’s coincidence that a muffin tin is the perfect size for an egg.

Something that great couldn’t be coincidence.

So I started brainstorming quick breakfasts that could use a muffin tin, but didn’t involve actual muffins.

These guys were the first dish that I tried and I loved them about ten times more than the breakfast sandwiches. We’ll see if they get ten times the traffic…

Tex-Mex Egg Cups

Yield: Makes 6 cups.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

6 corn tortillas
Butter or oil for muffin tins
6 tablespoons salsa
6 teaspoons Adobo sauce (from chipotle can - optional)
6 large eggs
3 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
1 avocado, cubed
Cilantro, garnish

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin tin

Directions:

1) Lightly butter or grease muffin tins and form corn tortillas into the tins. It's okay if they get folded a bit.

2) Add a spoonful of salsa and a tiny dab of Adobo sauce into each corn tortilla. You could also add in some black beans or something.

3) Crack an egg in each cup.

4) Bake eggs at 350 for 15 minutes.

5) Top with cheese and bake for another few minutes.

6) Top with cilantro and/or avocado and serve immediately!

Prepping the Cups

While eggs are a perfect fit in a muffin tin, corn tortillas are not. Luckily they are flexible so you can make them fit!

So corny.

There are two very important steps to make sure this goes down smoothly.

First, grease your muffin tin. You could use butter, vegetable oil, or even a nonstick spray. Doesn’t matter. If you don’t do this though, the corn tortillas are going to stick horribly to the pan.

Second, microwave the tortillas for about 10 seconds on high. That will loosen them up and make them easier to work with.

Then you just kind of shove them in there! There’s no science to it and they might fold and break a bit. Don’t worry about it.

Grease or butter those cups!

The Bottom Layer

I knew my middle layer in these cups was going to be an egg. I knew my top layer was going to be cheese.

I struggled with the bottom layer. At first I thought black beans would be a good thing, but then I worried that it wouldn’t have enough kick.

So I went with some salsa and this stuff!

Kick it up a notch.

I didn’t want the actual chipotle peppers, just the Adobo sauce! This stuff has fantastic flavor.

Now, you could use a whole bunch of different stuff in this layer, but just don’t add too much stuff. Remember that we have a lot of other stuff to fill!

This was my bottom layer of flavor.

This is a spicy cup.

The Egg Business

Next step is the eggs. Nothing rocket science about this… just crack them in!

If you’re worried about shells, you can crack them into a separate bowl and then pour them into the cups.

Perfect fit.

We are going to add some cheese to these later, but I like to bake them for a while first so they are almost done.

So throw your muffin tin in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I went with some grated cheddar, cilantro, and avocado.

Good flavor toppings

When your cups come out of the oven, most of the whites should be cooked, the tortillas should be starting to crisp up nicely, but the yolks should still be soft.

This is perfect.

Almost done...

Then sprinkle on some cheese for each cup. You don’t need a lot, just enough to give each cup a light layer of cheese.

Then back in the oven for another 4-5 minutes just until the cheese is melted.

Pull these guys out and carefully remove them from the muffin tin. They shouldn’t stick much, but you might still need to go around them with a knife to loosen them a bit.

Then just top them with some avocado and cilantro and serve them up!

Yolks should still be a bit soft.

I definitely recommend making these soft so that the egg yolks are still a bit on the runny side, but you could cook them hard also.

Just like the breakfast sandwiches, these guys are definitely freezable. After they are done cooking, let them cool and then pop them out of the muffin tin. Freeze them on a baking sheet and when they are frozen solid you can individually wrap them in foil and then store them in a freezer bag.

Good luck having leftovers to freeze though…

Millions of cinnamon rolls!

You know you’re a food blogger when…

1) You are used to eating meals at room temperature because you had to spend 10 minutes photographing the darn thing.

2) You have the grocery store aisles memorized.

3) You bring baked goods to bars during happy hour just so you can get them out of the house.

Number three is exactly what happened with this delicious thing. I made it, photographed it, ate more of it than I should have and then rushed out the door to catch a beer with some friends.

I was about to leave when I decided… what the heck… let’s bring it to the bar! This was a good idea. People loved it because the tiny little rolls are bite-sized. Even our server snuck a few pieces!

While I was going to write that this recipe is really great for brunches, it also happens to be perfect for bars.

Chocolate Chip Monkey Bread

Yield: Serves 10.

Prep Time: 30 minutes + rise time

Total Time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

Dough:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup milk, warm
1/3 cup water, warm
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
3.25 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
2 teaspoons salt
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (opt.)

1-2 tablespoons butter, soft for bundt pan.
1 teaspoon vegetable oil, for rising

Brown Sugar Coating:
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Helpful Equipment:
Bundt Pan

Directions:

1) Butter pan with 2 tablespoons softened butter and set aside for later.

2) In a large bowl, mix together milk, water, melted butter, sugar and yeast. Meanwhile, mix flour and salt in standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn machine to low and slowly add milk mixture. After dough comes together, increase speed to medium and mix until dough is shiny and smooth, 6 to 7 minutes. If at any point dough is very sticky, add more flour by the tablespoon.

If you don't have a mixer, just mix the ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a rough ball. Then turn out onto a floured surface and knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball, about 5-6 minutes.

3)Turn dough onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly to form smooth, round ball. Coat large bowl with vegetable oil or nonstick spray. Place dough in bowl and coat surface of dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until dough doubles in size, about an hour.

4) For the sugar mixture, mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Place melted butter in second bowl.

5) To finish bread, remove the dough from the bowl, and pat into a rough 10-inch square. Sprinkle chocolate chips on half of the dough and fold it over. Then roll out again to a square. Using a bench scraper or knife, cut dough into tiny 1/4-1/2 inch pieces.

6) Roll each piece into a rough ball and dip into the melted butter, allowing excess butter to drip back into the bowl. Roll in the brown sugar mixture, then layer balls in the Bundt pan. Try to stagger the balls so they form a single thing.

7) Cover the Bundt pan tightly with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour until the balls are about 2 inches from the top of the pan.

8) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Unwrap the pan and bake until the top is deep brown, about 35-40 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a late and allow to cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

9) While the bread cools, whisk the confectioners’ sugar and milk in a small bowl until the lumps are gone. Using a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the monkey bread. Serve warm.

Adapted from a Brown Eyed Baker recipe.

The Dough

This dough is basically a cinnamon roll dough. It’s pretty much the easiest kind of dough to work with in my opinion. It’s really easy to mix and knead. It’s very soft and stretchy. It’s really easy to roll out and shape!

Start it by mixing all the dough ingredients except the salt and flour in a small bowl. Stir them together and let them sit for a minute or two to make sure the yeast is dissolved and active. It should start foaming a bit.

In a mixing bowl, combine your salt and flour and add in the liquid stuff. If you have a stand mixer, just mix this all together with the dough hook on low-medium speed until it comes together in a soft ball, about 5 minutes.

This is a really easy dough to make without a mixer though. Just stir the ingredients together with a wooden spoon and once they are all together, knead the dough on a floured surface until it’s a nice smooth and soft ball.

Mixer or no mixer, if the dough ever gets sticky, add more flour.

Pretty straightforward

Once your dough ball is formed, add it to a bowl that’s been lightly oiled. I just used some vegetable oil and coated the inside of the bowl. Turn the dough ball over in the bowl so it gets nice and coated and then cover the dough and let it rise for about an hour. It should double in size.

This was my finished dough ball.

After a short rise.

Making the Balls

Now for the fun part. Scoop the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a large square. Then sprinkle your chocolate chips on half of the square.

The chocolate is optional, but I thought it worked perfectly in the recipe. You can use almost any chocolate chip. I just used some semi-sweet chips that I had in my pantry.

You only need a few ounces to get some nice chocolate flavor.

No need to go crazy with chocolate.

Fold the dough over and pack it down so the chocolate chips are more or less enclosed in dough.

Folded and lightly rolled.

Then use a knife or a dough scraper to chop up the dough into bite-sized pieces. You should shoot for 60-70 little pieces. About 1/2 inch squares is a good goal.

It’s actually good to have different sizes though so don’t worry about them all being totally even.

Approximately a million.

Filling the Pan

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Also use a separate small bowl and gently melt some butter in the microwave.

Working with a few pieces of dough at a time, roll them into rough balls and dunk them in the melted butter.

No substitutions here...

Then toss them in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and roll them around. A light coating is all you need.

Like an inside out cinnamon roll

Then toss the finished balls in a bundt pan that has been pretty heavily buttered.

Keep going until you use all your dough. If you have a normal sized pan you’ll probably about half fill the pan which is perfect.

About half full is good.

If you don’t have a bundt pan, I don’t see why you couldn’t make this in a normal baking dish. It might not be quite as attractive, but it would still be delicious.

Regardless of the pan you choose, after you finish stacking all the balls of dough, cover the pan and let them rise a second time. About another hour should give you a great puffy dough.

While it might not look like these have risen much, keep in mind that they are also expanding to fill a bunch of little cracks that are in between all the dough balls. This second rise is really important.

A longer second rise.

Baking and Glazing

Once your dough has risen a second time, bake them at 350 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. They should be a nice golden brown and you might also notice some brown sugar bubbling up around the edges. That means it’s done!

This was my finished bread and it not only looked great, it smelled amazing!

Hello beautiful.

Let this cool in the pan for a few minutes and then invert it on a plate or platter.

Meanwhile, just stir together the powdered sugar and milk to make a very simple glaze.

Once the bread has cooled for 10 minutes or so, go ahead and drizzle the glaze all over it.

A simple glaze.

You could slice this, but I actually preferred serving it with toothpicks so people can just pick off the bread piece that they want.

Some people prefer the outer ones that get kind of crispy. Some like the inside ones that are soft.

So good!

For the delicious and show-stopping dessert that is produced, this thing really isn’t that hard to make. The dough is really easy to bring together and then it’s just a matter of rolling it, dunking it in butter and sugar and baking it.

In other words, you make do this. Anyone can make this.

And everyone should.

Good luck. Good eats!

I’m not really much of a superstitious person. Maybe it’s my philosophy background, but I tend to think that things happen randomly and we impose meaning on them.

That said, there are still a few traditions that I do without fail.

One of those is eating black-eyed peas on New Years. It’s something my mom always served to me and she still calls me every year to make sure that I eat some.

I figure that in this case it doesn’t really hurt. Black-eyed peas aren’t a strange food. They aren’t impossible to find or taste gross. They are cheap and delicious. So I figure why not?!

Normally, I just make some sort of hearty soup like this one, but this year I decided to class it up a bit. As it happens, black-eyed peas and bacon make for a really good eggs benedict.

As a reader recently said on my Facebook page: “I don’t believe in good luck. But I do believe in good food!”

Black Eyed Pea Benedicts

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + cooking beans

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
3-4 slices thick bacon, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 large leaf of kale, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pinch of salt
4 large eggs
1/2 cup white vinegar (for poaching)
2 english muffins
Sriracha sauce (opt.)

Hollandaise Sauce:
1 large egg yolk
1 cup butter, melted preferably clarified
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 pinch cayenne peppe (opt.)

Directions:

1) Cook black-eyed peas according to package. Canned would work fine for this recipe also.

2) Dice bacon and scallions. For kale, slice out the center rib from one large leaf and mince the kale finely.

3) In a skillet, add a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Cook bacon until it's well-browned and most of the fat has rendered out.

4) Add scallions and kale and continue to cook for another few minutes until they soften.

5) Stir in black-eyed peas and season mixture with salt and pepper. Keep on low heat until needed and stir occasionally.

6) For hollandaise, whisk yolk together with water, lemon, and a pinch of cayenne and salt.

7) Melt butter. Clarified butter will work best, but I've used just normal melted unsalted butter with success before.

8) Over a double boiler, heat yolk mixture and whisk until it's steaming and frothy.

9) Slowly start to drizzle in butter and whisk. Add the butter slowly until the sauce comes together. You may not need the entire cup of butter to get a smooth sauce. Once the sauce is formed, set it aside until needed. Don't keep it over the heat. If it gets too thick, whisk in a teaspoon of hot water to thin it out.

10) To poach eggs, add 1/2 cup of vinegar to a large pot of water (2 quarts). Bring the water to a simmer (not a boil) and swirl the water with a spoon.

11) Crack eggs into a bowl and then carefully drop them into the swirling water. Cook for about 2 minutes.

12) Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and let them drain briefly on a paper towel.

13) Toast muffins and spoon black-eyed pea mixture over muffins. Top with eggs and sauce. Optionally, drizzle on some sriracha or hot sauce. Serve immediately.

The Peas

I used dried black-eyed peas for this post, but there’s really no reason for it. Feel free to use canned.

If you do use dried, be sure to sort them before cooking them. Of all the dried legumes I’ve ever used, black-eyed peas have more pebbles than any other in my experience. No idea why this is, but I always find a pebble or two in my black-eyed peas.

Chipping a tooth on a rock is not a great way to start the new year!

You could use canned...

The Topping

Besides the black-eyed peas, there’s just a few things that I wanted to put in my filling. All of these are pretty standard flavors that go really well with black-eyed peas. Traditionally, a ham hock is used to cook them, but I just sliced up a few pieces of bacon.

Instead of collard greens which need need to cook for awhile, I just minced up a kale leaf which will saute much better.

Good flavors!

To start the filling, add a drizzle of oil to a skillet and add all your bacon over medium heat.

Cook it until most of the fat has rendered out and the bacon starts to crispy up, about 8 minutes. Then add the sliced scallions and kale.

Cook this mixture until the veggies start to soften, just another minute or two. This will already smell great.

Already delicious!

Then just toss in your cooked black-eyed peas and season with some salt and pepper.

Solid stuff

Keep this mixture warm over low heat until you need it later. Give it a stir occasionally just to make sure it isn’t burning.

The Hollandaise

I really do think that when it comes to classic sauces, hollandaise is the easiest to make. I find it to be a very forgiving sauce which is why I’m always baffled at how restaurants screw it up.

It’s really just two things: Eggs and butter.

Not a hard sauce.

If you are making a really professional hollandaise sauce, you want to make sure and clarify your butter before using it in the sauce. This basically just insures that you don’t get any butter solids in the sauce and that you have consistent results.

But you know what? Clarifying butter is kind of a pain in the buttocks. I’ve just melted butter in the microwave before and used it with okay (but not perfect) results. Just try not to add the butter solids (which will be at the bottom of your bowl) to the sauce if you can help it.

Also, if your sauce doesn’t work because you took this shortcut… don’t blame me!

To make the sauce, whisk together a yolk with a teaspoon of water and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. Add in a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper (optional).

Set this bowl over a pan of simmering water (double boiler) and continue to whisk it until the yolk mixture turns frothy. It should be steaming slightly and will start foaming like crazy. This is your cue to start adding the butter.

Just like any time you are making an emulsified sauce, start by drizzling in a small amount of the butter. Whisk whisk whisk. Drizzle in a bit more. Whisk more.

If your sauce starts to curdle at all, it might be getting to hot, so take it off the heat and whisk like crazy.

At the end of the day you should be able to whisk in almost an entire cup of melted butter into the yolk. This was my finished sauce and it was darn near perfect in my opinion!

I could eat this with a spoon.

Once your sauce is made, don’t put it back on the heat. It’ll break down completely if it gets too hot. It’ll be fine at room temperature for 5 minutes while you finish the rest of meal. If it comes time to use it and it’s really thick or congealed, just whisk in a teaspoon of hot water and it’ll loosen up immediately.

Poaching the Eggs

They make fancy contraptions to poach eggs, but I think those things tend to overcook the eggs. If you don’t feel like poaching the eggs, you can also just fry a few eggs over-easy and use those.

To poach eggs the right way though, just bring a large pot of water to a simmer and then add in a good amount of plain distilled vinegar.

Crack your eggs one at a time into a separate bowl. Give the water a swirl with a spoon and gently slide the egg into the water. It should immediately clench up and start cooking in a nice little package.

Depending on the size of your pot, you should be able to do 2-4 eggs at a time in one pot.

Two minutes of cooking time will leave you with perfect poached eggs.

When they are done, scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel.

You could fry them also...

Assembling the Benedicts

All the hard work is done. Now for the fun part.

Toast a few English muffins and pile on the black-eyed pea mixture.

High and deep!

Top each half with an egg and a good dollop of sauce.

You could stop right here if you wanted.

Pretty straightforward

I like a bit of hot sauce with my black-eyed peas though so I drizzled on some Sriracha. It totally made the dish in my opinion.

When you cut into one of these benedicts, it’s a thing of beauty.

Best brunch I've made in awhile.

Like I said, I’m not sure that I believe in good luck.

But I’ll use any reason I can find though for an excuse to make these delicious things.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

The crumb is awesome.

If I were to tell you that size matters, you would probably think I was telling an inappropriate joke.

On any other day, you would be correct.

But on this day, I’m talking about coffee cake. And size definitely matters when it comes to coffee cake.

Not the size of the cake actually, but the size of crumb.

Let’s face it, the best part of any coffee cake is the brown sugar laced, slightly crunchy crumb that tops the cake. That’s why coffee cake exists. So why not go big on it? Why not pile on heaps of the stuff?

Why not indeed. And that’s what this coffee cake includes: A big thick layer of nothing but crumb.

Blackberry Big Crumb Coffee Cake

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

For Filling:
1 pint blackberries, washed and halved
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch

For the Big Crumbs:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon crystallized ginger, mashed
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 3/4 cups cake flour
A pinch of salt

Cake:
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces and softened

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees

2) Butter an 8-inch-square baking pan.

3) For filling, slice blackberries in half and toss with sugar and cornstarch. Set aside.

4) To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk together sugars, spices, salt and butter until smooth. Stir in flour with a spatula. It will be a solid dough.

5) To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla.

6) In a separate mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed with a hand mixer or stand mixer until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula.

7) Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

8) Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon blackberries over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over blackberries; no need for it to be even.

9) Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake.

10) Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from blackberries), about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Cool before serving.

Adapted from a NY Times recipe.

Berry Berry Good

There’s a fair amount of ingredients in this bad boy, but there are lots of duplicates so it isn’t too bad really. There’s three basic parts to the cake and we’ll make them all separately and then pile them all together: The cake, the berry filling, and the big crumb topping.

Let’s start with the filling. I went with blackberries, but you could use any berry I think.

Pretty things.

Assuming you do you blackberries, I recommend chopping them in half just because they can be a bit large.

Then just mix them in a bowl with the other filling ingredients. Filling is done!

I worried that the filling would be too watery, but it turned out fine.

I was worried about this, but it worked great.

Crumb Time

This is a great recipe for crumb. It’s nice and thick and produces big chunks of crunchy and sweet topping. It’s a keeper for sure.

The one ingredient that you may not have used before is crystallized ginger. It gives the crumb a really light ginger flavor which is amazing. If you can’t find it though, don’t worry about it. It’s not essential to the recipe.

One of my favorite ingredients.

If you use the crystallized ginger, be sure to chop it up really finely. The stuff is pretty strong and you wouldn’t want someone to bite into a big nugget of it.

Combine that with all the other crumb ingredients (except the flour) in a large bowl. Once everything is combined well, stir in the cake flour with a spatula or large spoon. And yes. You must use cake flour. No substitutions.

The finished crumb will a really thick dough that will kind of crumble if you pick it up. That’s what you want.

What's up crumb?!

The Cake

The cake part of this recipe is pretty straightforward. Mix together all the wet ingredients in a small bowl (eggs, yolks, sour cream, and vanilla). Then in a large bowl, add the dry ingredients, the softened butter, and just a spoonful of the sour cream mixture.

Beat this together with a hand mixer or stand mixer until the butter and flour and sugar are mixed in together well.

Starting that cake.

Once that’s all beaten together a bit, go ahead and add in all the liquid ingredients and continue to mix until the batter is smooth. It will be a pretty thick batter, but try not to over-mix it. Basically, stop mixing when you can’t see any flour.

This was my finished batter.

This is an odd batter, but it works.

Finishing the Coffee Cake

In a lightly buttered 8×8 baking dish, scrape in almost all of the cake batter. Leave about 1/2 cup of the batter for later.

Then add on all of your blackberry filling followed by the rest of your cake batter. It’s okay if it’s not perfectly spaced out. Just kind of get it all in there.

Batter, blackberries, batter.

Next, take all your crumb mixture and break it up into large pieces. Add those pieces to the cake!

The crumb will pretty much completely cover the entire cake which is awesome.

So crumby.

Because there’s a lot of moisture in the berries, you’ll need to bake this cake for a bit longer than you would without them.

Bake it at a low 325 for 60-75 minutes. A toothpick should come out of the center cleanly.

The finished version will be a thing of beauty.

A bit rustic looking...

Let this guy cool completely and then you can chop it up and serve it up.

Check out the cross-section on this cake. It’s like half crumb which is perfect.

A peek inside.

I made a few different coffee cakes over the years here on Macheesmo, but this is definitely my favorite to-date.

It would be a great thing to have around for the holidays for people to snack on with their morning coffee!

Fun and tasty!

Finding fun ways to use leftover bread is a small hobby of mine. That said, a guy can only make so many impromptu bread puddings!

Croutons are a classic use of leftover bread, but it hit me a few days ago that these could be easily adapted to a breakfast thing by making them sweet instead of savory.

The resulting croutons are these slightly sweet crispy cubes that taste almost exactly like cinnamon toast crunch. They are sturdier though and stay pretty crunchy in milk (at least for a few minutes).

This makes them a really fun topper for cereals! They were really tasty sprinkled on my morning granola.

Cinnamon Crunch Croutons

Yield: Makes 2-3 cups.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2-3 cups leftover bread, cubed
1/4 cup butter, melted
3-4 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

1) Cube bread into 1/4 inch cubes. Lay bread cubes out on a baking sheet lined with foil and bake for 10 minutes at 325 degrees to lightly dry out the bread.

2) Melt butter in the microwave. Toss the dried bread cubes with the butter until the bread is well coated. Sprinkle in 2 Tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and toss bread with cinnamon and sugar.

3) Return bread to baking dish and sprinkle with extra cinnamon and sugar to coat well.

4) Bake for 15-20 more minutes at 325. Turn the croutons once or twice while cooking.

5) Let croutons cool completely to make them extra-crispy.

6) Use croutons as a topping for cereal or granola!

The Bread To Use

I’m almost positive that you can use pretty much any bread you want for this recipe. Ok… maybe not something super-savory like rye bread, but mosts sandwich breads or crusty loaves will work perfectly.

Ideally, it would be a little on the stale side even. Once you’ve picked your leftover bread of choice, just cube it up! Shoot for smallish cubes here. About 1/4 inch is a good goal.

Any bread will do.

The Pre Bake

Eventually we will be tossing these guys with butter and cinnamon and sugar, but for now we want to dry them out a bit to firm them up and make them easier to coat.

So just scoop them onto a baking sheet lined with foil and bake them for about 10 minutes at 325 degrees. It should just dry them out a bit.

Just lightly toasted.

The Butta

Normally, I use olive oil for croutons, but I couldn’t help substituting butter since it’s a breakfast/sweet style crouton.

Melt your butter and pour it into a good tossing bowl.

Sweet sweet butter.

Then just add in your dried bread cubes and toss them together so they are well-coated with butter.

At this point, also add in about half of your cinnamon and sugar and toss that together to get a good base on the croutons.

A light butter coating...

The Final Bake

Return the croutons back to the baking sheet and spread them out in a single layer. Then hit them with more cinnamon and sugar. I recommend going pretty heavy on it since some will fall off while baking and also you want these to have lots of flavor since you’ll just add a few to your breakfast.

A liberal sprinkle.

Now return these to the oven and bake them for another 15 minutes. Give them a stir halfway through just to make sure they are cooking evenly.

They should be nice and crispy, not too browned, but lightly browned.

These are just about perfect.

Nice and crispy.

I added a handful of these to my morning granola and I loved it! It gave it a nice, slightly sweet flavor and the texture is awesome.

Tastes just like the cereal... except sturdier.

I was a bit worried that these would immediately turn to mush in a bowl of cereal, but they actually stayed crispier longer than normal cereal does.

I think these might be really fun for kids although I don’t actually have kids… so I can’t confirm!

As an adult who considers himself a big kid, I really liked them.

Simple and delicious.

After a long week of cooking and eating, I’m going to assume that most people are looking for something very quick and easy to make for brunch or breakfast.

One of my favorite quick breakfasts is a cut up grapefruit with a sprinkle of salt or sugar on top.

This recipe just kicks that up a notch by broiling the grapefruit with a tiny pinch of butter/sugar topping. The topping caramelized a bit and makes something resembling a grapefruit creme brulee.

In other words, it’s really good. Not to mention that it literally takes under 10 minutes.

Broiled Grapefruit

Yield: Serves 2-4.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 grapefruits, halved and prepared
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Directions:

1) Preheat broiler on high.

2) Cut grapefruits in half and use a knife to cut out each segment away from the tough walls.

3) Mix butter, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon and pinch of salt in a small bowl.

4) Top each grapefruit half with a good sprinkle of the topping.

5) Broil grapefruits on a baking sheet for about 4 minutes until the topping is caramelized.

6) Let cool briefly and serve immediately.

Cutting the Grapefruit

The grapefruit is kind of an intimidating fruit. It’s large and the wonderful fruit inside can be a bit tricky to get to.

I remember as a kid always asking my mom to cut up the grapefruit so I could easily scoop out each individual segment. I still use the same technique today.

One of my favorite fruits.

Just chop the grapefruit in half to reveal all of the individual segments. Then take a sharp, small knife like a paring knife or steak knife and carefully cut out each segment.

This might seem like a lot of work, but it really only takes about a minute per grapefruit. I usually run my knife around the outside of the fruit and then work on the inside, carefully cutting each segment from the hard rind part.

Be sure to cut on each side of each interior wall so every segment is loose and easy to scoop out.

Get it?

That’s pretty much the hardest part of this recipe.

The Topping

This topping is about as easy as it gets. It’s just even parts butter, brown sugar, and white sugar and then a pinch of cinnamon and salt.

Hard to go wrong here...

Mash this all together with a fork and you’re ready to rock!

A good crumb topping.

Broiling the Grapefruit

Sprinkle some of the topping on each grapefruit half. You should have enough topping with this recipe to do two grapefruits. I actually over-did the topping a bit on these two halves. You could use less because it melts down anyway.

Ready for the broiler!

Set these under the broiler on high and broil them for about 3-4 minutes.

The butter and sugar will melt pretty quickly and caramelize a bit on the grapefruit.

It forms almost a candied crust on the top of the grapefruit segments.

Just a few minutes...

Because the segments are pre-cut, they are still really easy to scoop out.

The grapefruit is slightly warm and has a nice mix of sweet and salty. It’s completely delicious.

Really good flavors.

Two of these halves (1 full grapefruit) is actually really filling.

If you’re were serving these as a side though, then I would just serve half a grapefruit per person.

The leftovers!

For a dish that takes under 10 minutes to make, it’s actually a really classy dish and very tasty.

I think even people that aren’t huge grapefruit fans would have a hard time not liking this.