Muffin pan mini-frittatas

I recently came across this recipe and decided to give it a shot with what I had on hand.  My first attempt was much less fancy, but it tasted spectacular.  The two things I like best about this concept are 1) how easily you can customize it to your tastes or a guest’s tastes, and 2) how little you need in the way of ingredients.  If you wanted to get really gourmet, you would need hardly any of each ingredient that you used — this is a great way to get rid of the little bits of this and that in your fridge.  This is all I used to make four frittatas for Mark and me to share:

As you can see, I used silicone muffin cups instead of a muffin pan, because I wanted to make sure everything fit.  I think it would have been a challenge in a standard muffin pan.  For each frittata I used one piece of thick-cut hickory bacon, one egg, one half of a thick slice of cheese (chopped), and one half of a sausage patty (also chopped).  (Confession: those aren’t real sausage patties, they’re Morningstar Farms breakfast patties.  They are so awesome that they can be forgiven for not being real meat.)

I curled the bacon around the inside of the cups and filled in with my cheese and sausage pieces:

I beat the eggs individually and poured one over each cup of ingredients, then baked the cups at 350F for 30 minutes.  If you end up with a little egg white at the top, the whites will look shiny and you may think they’re not done, but if you see the surrounding ingredients start to brown up, take them out.

They puff up beautifully as they bake.  Just give them a minute to rest and gently loosen the bacon from the sides with a fork, then pop them onto a plate.  You may lose a little bit of fat from the bacon if you don’t spray the cups, but it won’t be much.

These little protein bombs were a lot more filling than they looked.  After two I don’t think I could have eaten anything else (except dessert — I always have room for dessert).  Try it your way!