Maxi cheesy mini quiches

In my last week of holidays, Cam and I had a bit of an online baconpalooza, Instagramming our photos of baconny goodness to each other each day. It was possibly the best week of my life.

I had a lot of comments on the mini quiches I made, so I though I should share the recipe. My brother showed me how to make these many years ago and I've been making them ever since, so all credit goes to him. They freeze well, making them perfect for school work lunches. And if you have leftover vegies or smallgoods in your fridge, these are perfect for using those up.


You will need:

• 3 sheets of puff pastry, thawed
• 5 eggs
• milk
• Fillings.* (I used 3 rashers of bacon, a couple of green onions/shallots and 3/4 cup grated tasty cheese)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius, and grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

Remove rind and fat, and dice the bacon. Fry until cooked/crispy. In the meantime chop up the shallots. Remove the bacon from the pan and wilt the shallots. I add a little cracked pepper to the shallots, but that's a personal preference. Remove shallots from heat and let both cool a little.



Cut 4 circles from each pastry sheet. If you use a 10 cm diameter ramekin this works perfectly! Then cut a slit from the centre of the circle to the outside. Place each circle inside the muffin hole, and press down gently, overlapping the pastry as required. Don't press down too much. Relaxed is what you want.



In each muffin hole distribute bacon, shallots and cheese evenly.



Lightly beat the eggs in a measuring jug, then mix in enough milk to bring it to about 450 ml. You may have bit left over, but better too much than not enough. The more fillings you put in the muffin holes, the less egg mix you will require.



Carefully pour the egg mix into each hole. Make sure you don't go above the levee bank of pastry! MESSY!

Place in oven for 20-25 mins, until the top is no longer wobbly and it is golden brown.



Cool in tin for 10 mins and then pop out of the tin and cool on a rack. Or eat. Whatever suits you! They are lovely warm or cold. With salad or scoffed all by themselves.



* Other ideas for fillings: caramelised onions and blue cheese; spinach and fetta; chicken and leek; ham, cheese and capsicum. Let your imagination go wild!

December 6

There's nothing quite like the smell of a BBQ in the great outdoors on a warm summer night.



Unfortunately we've been missing out on the "warm summer night" part of the equation this week as it's been very cold after dusk, but I bought stuff at the farmers' market on Saturday for grillin' and I'll be damned if I'm not going to enjoy myself in the cold night air while I do it.




We are pretty lucky that we have an old uncovered deck outside our lounge room, and that's where we wheel our little two burner BBQ out to start cooking. And then we sit and wait while our food cooks, and enjoy the view of the garden and the shared landscapes beyond our fences. This is my view when I'm sitting and waiting.



And this is my favourite chook.



I've joined Car's Advent blog-a-long. Check out the other blog-a-longers!