Baked eggs were something that did not appeal to me for a long time - not because I don’t like eggs, but because the cooking method seemed somewhat unnecessary to me. It only takes a few minutes to scramble or fry some eggs; oven cooking takes longer and you need to allow for the oven to preheat, as well. Poached eggs take about the same time to make as eggs baked in the oven, but not all baked eggs use a water bath and there is still a longer setup time.

I was told that the point of baked eggs was the presentation. The eggs come out looking beautiful in their individual ramekins and are easy to serve. This is true and is the point that got me to try my hand at baking eggs in the first place. It turns out that there is one other big advantage to baking eggs that was not mentioned to me: customizability.

Baked eggs are very easy to make once your oven is hot. Just crack the eggs into a greased ramekin, add a bit of milk and bake until done. Since they’re single servings, you can add any flavorings you wish and make each dish unique. You can layer salsa at the bottom of the cup, or line the ramekin with a tortilla before baking. Cooked spinach is a good base, too. You can add in a piece of cooked bacon or ham, as well as any vegetables that you might ordinarily add into an omelette or other egg dish. For the eggs pictured here, I added some chopped chives, salt, pepper and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. One of the two ramekins also has a piece of ham in it.

I like to use two egg whites and one whole egg in my ramekins (healthy, right?), but most 6-oz ramekins will comfortably hold two whole eggs if you prefer. I noted a range of baking times in the recipe below. A 10 minute time will give you very soft eggs, while 15 minutes should give you eggs that have a quite firm consistency. Cook to your desired doneness and take note of the time so you know exactly when to pull the eggs out of the oven for next time.

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It’s been a while since I baked a batch of cupcakes, but I started to get the itch for some of the miniature cakes this weekend and pulled out my trusty cupcake pan. Some freshly picked oranges - plucked from the tree before the orange-loving squirrels could get to them - were my inspiration to make some orange and chocolate cupcakes.

I used a simple cake recipe that I come back to time and again. I’ve heard it called wacky cake and eggless cake before, but it’s just a good one in my book no matter what name it goes by. The cake uses no eggs and no butter (it’s vegan, actually), and it can be mixed up in just one bowl. Typically, it gets its leavening from a combination of baking soda and vinegar added to the batter and is moistened with vegetable oil. Since orange juice is acidic, I left out the vinegar and introduced a good amount of orange juice to the cake. The resulting cupcakes rose beautifully and had a great texture: soft, but not crumbly, and moist.

Using cocoa powder in the cupcakes gives them a really good, strong chocolate flavor. The orange juice, if used alone, contributes a surprisingly mild flavor that doesn’t stand up to the chocolate that well. I remedied this by adding in the zest of one orange to the cake batter to boost the citrus flavor of the cake and by topping the cupcakes with a zesty orange frosting. The frosting was quite bold and, in the end, everything came together perfectly.

These are tasty and easy to make - especially since you don’t have to wait for butter to soften before you can start mixing. Try to use freshly squeezed orange juice for the best flavor. You’ll need to have fresh oranges on hand for their zest, so you might as well make the most of the fruit in this recipe.
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I used to love watching Disney cartoons as a kid and Donald Duck’s were always my favorite. Things always went awry for Donald, no matter what activity he was participating in. One of my favorite Donald cartoons (perhaps a predictor for things to come) involved cooking. It’s a 1941 cartoon called Chef Donald.

Donald is sitting at home putting together his book of recipe clippings when his favorite radio program comes on the air: The Mother Mallard Recipe program. Old Mother Mallard reads out a recipe for her Delicious Golden Brown Waffles and Donald, eager to cook some up for himself, assembles the ingredients as she reads them out. Unfortunately, he ends up substituting rubber cement for the required baking powder and the waffles turn out… less-than-perfect, to put it mildly.

The thing that really appealed to me in the cartoon was how thick and delicious the batter looked while Donald mixed it up. Since the whole recipe was read out in the cartoon, I decided to give it a try and see how it really turned out.

It was a fun project! My batter was not as thick as the cartoon batter - but then again, it didn’t have any rubber cement in it either. It was still pleasantly thick and the waffles did cook up well. The batter is very simple, with few ingredients and a mild flavor. Since it doesn’t have much fat in it, the waffles don’t stay as crispy as long as their higher-fat counterparts, but still taste delicious with syrup and fresh fruit. Since the waffles themselves aren’t sweet, they could also be used for savory applications.

I’ve included the original version of the recipe and my slightly tweaked (i.e. no rubber cement) version below.

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Classic, buttery scones are delicious when served with a side of lemon curd and these breakfast pastry scrolls are a takeoff on that favorite. The scrolls start with a tender, butter-rich dough that is rolled out and spread with lemon curd and sweetened, shredded coconut. Rolled up and baked, the finished pastries are kind of like the cinnamon bun version of a scone - only, with lemon and coconut instead of cinnamon. Ok, so the comparison is a stretch, but at least it gives you a jumping off point.

I am a big fan of the dough used to make these scrolls. It is easy to make and easy to work with, and the fact that it isn’t overly rich (only 1/2 cup butter for 3 cups of flour) makes me more likely to use it on a regular basis, while I might shy away from using puff pastry in all my breakfast time treats. The dough is quite plain and, while it does have a nice buttery taste to it, is not a standout on its own when it comes to flavor. This plainness makes it highly adaptable. I’ve used it to make nutella scrolls before, but you could spread the dough with cheese, herb butter or any other number of savory things, as well.

The scroll dough stays surprisingly light during baking, and fresh out of the oven these pastries have a lovely combination of slightly crisp-tender dough, silky lemon filling and bold, chewy coconut. They’re best served when they’re fresh out of the oven, or just cooled. After they have been stored for a while, the pastry tends to soften up because of the moisture content of the lemon curd. The scrolls are still tasty, but much softer overall the day after they’re made. Fortunately, the recipe is quite quick and doesn’t require much work time if you do want to whip up a batch in the morning.

I used some of my favorite light lemon curd to make these pastries, although you can substitute in a store bought lemon curd or the full-fat variety if you prefer.

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When it comes to topping off a cake or some cupcakes, there is frosting and then there is frosting. Buttercream is the classic cake topper. There are two ways to make it: a shortcut uncooked way and a slower cooked way. I usually opt for the quick-fix way to make it, creaming together butter and confectioners sugar with a bit of flavoring. That method is fast, reliable and dead easy. It also tends to make a very sweet frosting that doesn’t hold a candle to real buttercream and when I have some extra time on my hands, or really want to make a dessert a standout, I always go for the real thing.

This cooked buttercream frosting starts with sugar and egg whites. The sugar is cooked on the stovetop until it is boiling away at about 245F - also known as “firm ball stage.” Once the sugar reaches the appropriate temperature, it is streamed into beaten egg whites. The heat of the sugar syrup cooks the whites and gives them stability, preventing the resulting meringue from collapsing. Once the syrup has been added, the mixture is given some time to cool down before butter is beaten in to finish off the frosting. I flavor mine by scraping about 1/2 of a vanilla bean into it, but you can also substitute vanilla extract if you prefer.

The result is a frosting that is spectacularly light and creamy. It is stable at room temperature and very easy to work with, largely because of its soft and fluffy consistency. It isn’t too sweet, since it requires vastly less sugar than the “quick” buttercreams, and has a suitably rich butter flavor to it. I’m not always a big fan of frosting on my cupcakes (particularly when it is on the sweet side), but this is a really outstanding frosting that it is hard to say no to.

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Regular sized homemade cookies are always delicious, but they are never quite as visually impressive as the giant cookies on display in coffee shops and bakeries. While the true measure of a good cookie is in its flavor, it doesn’t hurt if the actual measurements of the cookie are as big as its taste.

And these are some very big cookies.

Each one is just about 6-inches in diameter and, as if their size weren’t impressive enough, they’re very tasty, too. The cookie recipe is easy to make and takes relatively few ingredients. In fact, it is a bit of a takeoff of the ever-popular Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe - but then again, so are many chocolate chip cookie recipes. It uses lots of vanilla extract and brown sugar, along with a generous amount of chocolate chips and butter, so it is quite rich. The cookies spread a lot and end up being fairly thin and very chewy from all that brown sugar. For a large cookie, I think that this is a really good balance because with a thicker cookie you run the risk of it being either cakey from the addition of too much flour or simply far too filling to eat the whole thing at once (and I’m not one for eating half a cookie and then walking away).

As I said, these cookies spread out quite a bit as they bake, so be sure to leave about 6-inches between each 1/4-cup ball of dough. I baked only 3 or 4 cookies on each baking sheet. Fortunately, since the recipe only makes about 14 cookies, limiting the number on each sheet doesn’t mean that you’ll spend hours in front of the oven to get the whole batch baked.

I only used chocolate chips, but you can make these a bit more substantial by adding up to 3/4 cup of chopped, toasted nuts, as well. Try to get an even distribution when stirring chocolate chips or nuts into the cookie dough; since the cookies spread out a lot, you run the risk of having one cookie with only a couple of chips and one that is packed unless you pay a bit of attention when shaping the cookies. Worst case scenario, make sure you have a few extra chocolate chips on hand and just tuck them into the unbaked dough wherever you need them.

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