Mini food gets lots of love for being cute. Mini cupcakes, mini burgers, mini quiches; it’s all, “Aw, they’re so tiny and cute!” Let’s get to the truth of the matter though. Everyone’s just excited because it means they get to eat a whole bunch of them. What they actually mean to say is, “Aw yeah! They’re so tiny I can eat a whole bushel of them! Let’s go!” Or something like that.

These Mini Ham, Broccoli and Cheddar Quiches are so savory, fluffy and packed with flavor that you are definitely going to want to eat a whole bushel of them.

I like to make a batch of these on Sunday so that Matt and I have them for throughout the week. One minute in the microwave and they are good to go for breakfast or a quick snack. Supplement them with a big arugula salad (or some Perfect Buttermilk Waffles!) for a satisfying meal.

Not a fan of ham, broccoli or cheddar? Simply swap them out for your favorite veggies, meat or cheese. Some other combinations I love are spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese and bell peppers, sausage and provolone. I’ll even let you in on a little secret: I ran out of broccoli while making these so half of the mini quiches photographed here have spinach instead of broccoli. It’s that easy to customize these bad boys! Whip some up this weekend and enjoy!

Mini Broccoli, Ham & Cheddar Quiches

 

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Yield: 12 mini quiches

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup milk, whatever you have in your fridge is fine
• ½ cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 10 ounces frozen broccoli, thawed, drained and roughly chopped
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup diced ham, or 12 slices deli ham, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a large bowl whisk together the eggs and milk. Sift in the flour and baking powder, stir to combine.
3. Add the chopped broccoli, cheese and diced ham. Stir to combine.
4. Evenly divide into the 12 cups of the muffin pan. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until the edges have browned and a tester inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.

Notes

You can substitute any fillings you would like, just add about 1 cup of veggies, 1 cup of cheese and 1 cup of meat, or another vegetable. If you want to try different flavor combinations in the same batch you can wait to add the fillings until after you have spooned the egg mixture into the muffin cups, then put a tablespoon or two of toppings into each cup and give them a little stir. Just be sure not to overfill!

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Lauren Uncategorized 2 Comments

I am still not done talking about those Perfect Buttermilk Waffles from last week! They are so full of crispy-fluffy goodness that I needed to drag them into a second post. And what better way to put waffles on a pedestal than by hosting a waffle bar? A waffle bar is an easy (and delicious!) way to impress your guests, whether you’re hosting a friend get-together, a baby shower or even celebrating a waffle-lover’s birthday.

I threw my first waffle bar the other month for breakfast following a girls night and it was a big success. To provide a break from the sweetness I also made mini broccoli, ham and cheddar quiches, which can be made the night before and reheated in the microwave.

To allow yourself more time to hang with your guests I would suggest doing as much prep as possible before they arrive. You’re going to need quite a few serving dishes so pulling those out along with the serving utensils ahead of time will help. Certain ingredients that can be left out, such as the candies and nuts, can be poured into their serving dishes and covered until you’re ready to eat.

Once the guests arrive it’s waffle making time! Make sure to keep waffles warm in the oven until you’re ready to eat- they will lose their crispiness if you keep them warm on a covered platter. I factored two waffles per person, but it depends on the group.

A full list of ideas is below. Pick a fun mix of each of the three categories for a delicious waffle brunch!

Fresh Fruit
Bananas, whole
Blackberries
Blueberries
Cherries, pitted
Kiwi
Peaches, sliced
Raspberries
Strawberries, quartered

Toppings
Caramel sauce
Chocolate Ganache
Chocolate syrup
Fruit jam or syrups
Greek yogurt
Honey
Lemon curd
Maple syrup
Nutella, warmed
Peanut butter, warmed
Whipped cream

Add-ons
Almonds
Browned Butter Peaches
Coconut flakes
M&Ms
Mini chocolate chips
Oreo crumbles
Peanut butter cup pieces
Pecans
Reese’s Pieces
Sprinkles
Toasted walnuts
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

To inspire you even more, here are a few of my very own waffle bar combinations:

Strawbanana Love: strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, Nutella
Lemon Blueberry Blast: lemon curd, blueberries, sprinkled with powdered sugar
Ice Cream Sundae: chocolate syrup, whipped cream, cherries, rainbow sprinkles (and actual ice cream if you have any!)
Peanut Butter Cream Pie: peanut butter, chocolate syrup, peanut butter cup pieces, whipped cream
The Vermonter: blackberries, toasted walnuts, maple syrup
Coco for Waffles: raspberry jam, coconut flakes, raspberries
Health Nut: Greek yogurt, blueberries, almonds, maple syrup
Trust Me: strawberry syrup, strawberries, Reese’s Pieces, whipped cream

How would you top your waffle?!?

Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments

Waffles. Just typing the word makes me want to shout with excitement. WAFFLES! There, that’s better. Great waffles are crispy on the outside with a soft, subtly sweet interior. Who doesn’t love great waffles? Pile them high with butter and maple syrup, layer them with whipped cream and fresh fruit, smother them in melted Nutella and banana slices… the combinations are endless. And you know how I feel about flavor combinations.

We can all agree that great waffles are, well, great. But what if you want more? What if you want your waffles to overachieve, to be the best of the best, to reach for the stars?! Then you need to be able to strip the waffle platter down, remove all the syrups, fruits and toppings, and be left with just a damn perfect waffle that can stand on its own. As I’m sure you’ve seen from the title, these, my friends, are Perfect Buttermilk Waffles.

My dad shares my waffle love. Breakfast is his favorite meal so whenever we go out we do it right. Over-easy eggs, bacon, toast, sausage, hash browns, omelets, English muffins; we order it all. And yes, I did mean all those items at the same time. No matter what else we order, my dad and I always, always order a waffle to share.

We’ve been questioned on the volume of our breakfast order, we’ve been told we will never finish everything and one surly waitress even made us shift to a larger table, huffing that our food order would never fit! We laugh at their remarks and then dive in, waitstaff eyes wide as we do serious damage on the spread in front of us. We always judge a breakfast place by its waffle and if these Perfect Buttermilk Waffles came out of the kitchen it would go right to the top of our list.

If you don’t have a waffle iron, this Cuisinart is the one we currently have in the Lemon & Mocha kitchen and we use it at least every few weeks. If you aren’t looking to start up Waffle Wednesdays (it’s a thing!) in your kitchen, simply thin the batter slightly with milk to make crispy outside, fluffy inside pancakes.

Perfect Buttermilk Waffles

 

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Yield: 8-10 waffle squares

Ingredients

• ½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled in a medium mixing bowl
• 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 1½ cups buttermilk, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Turn on the waffle iron to get it hot and spray with nonstick cooking spray, depending on manufacturer’s instructions.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl. Stir to combine then create a well in the center for the liquid ingredients.
3. Add the eggs to the cooled butter mixing bowl and beat until frothy. Add the buttermilk and vanilla extract. Beat again until well-combined.
4. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the well in the dry ingredients. Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. The buttermilk and leavening will create a batter full of air bubbles.
5. Pour the batter onto your waffle iron in batches and cook according to manufacturer’s instructions. If working in batches, let waffles rest on a cooling rack after they are cooked, or place them directly on the rack of your oven or toaster oven on a low heat to stay warm.

Notes

If you don’t have buttermilk handy, you can use the following substitution. Put 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in a liquid measuring cup. Fill the measuring cup with milk (I use skim, any milk-fat percentage should work) until it equals 1½ cups. Let sit for 5 minutes before using in the recipe.

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Lauren Uncategorized 1 Comment

You are on the edge of your seat waving your hand so furiously to ask a question right now that you are almost falling out of your chair, so I will cut right to the chase and answer that question you all have at the tip of your tongue. Yes, this is a brunch where everything is chocolate. Milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate.

Chocolate cakes, chocolate mousses, chocolate ice cream. Prepared chocolate sweets and made-to-order chocolate treats.

Oh, and a four foot tall heavenly tower continuously gushing molten chocolate. Also known as a chocolate fountain. This, my chocolate crazed friends, is Café Fleuri’s Chocolate Bar brunch at the Langham Hotel, Boston. You walk into the swanky Langham Hotel in downtown Boston and head upstairs. There is a traditional brunch menu available, but all you can think about is the Chocolate Bar buffet brunch.

Yes, buffet. As in you can eat til you can’t eat no more, and then some. The live jazz trio starts playing the song from Willy Wonka when the kids walk into the candy paradise and you ask your table mates to check your pulse to make sure you’re still alive.

Without even feeling your feet moving, (maybe you’re gliding?), you come upon a scene you’re sure you dreamt about once, twice or a hundred times. Four large three-tiered tables are filled with individual chocolate-packed plated desserts.

Every table has different treats and each one looks like a pastry chef spent several hours making it look spectacular. In the far corner you see a server scooping out ice cream and topping it with gooey hot fudge.

Another server works the made-to-order crepe station, expertly stuffing the thin pancakes with fresh fruit before smothering in crème anglaise and homemade whipped cream.

Something catches your eye and your turn to see a towering never-ending flow of chocolate that makes you weak in the knees.

Matt and I ate at the Chocolate Bar this past weekend and as I’m sure you have already presumed, we thoroughly enjoyed it. We made sure we went in with a game plan of not getting more than one of any single item between the two of us and only having a few bites each so we could enjoy as many different chocolate desserts as possible.

This worked out really well because most of the treats are small. Just when you think you’ve had too much chocolate, there’s a huge bowl of popcorn and addictive salted homemade potato chips to balance out all the sweetness. The servers are continually re-stocking so there’s never a shortage of treats.

Was everything amazing? No, but between the large percentage of really great desserts and just the sheer volume of items offered we both felt it was completely worth going back. The cakes were where they seem to fall a little short, although I’m obsessed with my Perfect Chocolate Cupcakes so I might be a little extra critical. The standouts for me were the crepe station, the homemade pastries, the custards, the chocolate fountain and this salted caramel chocolate bombe.

Oh, and those addictive potato chips. The atmosphere was classy without being stuffy, every employee was sincerely friendly and the live jazz music was a perfect touch. My recommendations would be to avoid being seated in the main room with the chocolate and band if you can as it is a little loud and to focus your stomach capacity on the desserts you really love. Seatings are 11 am to 1:30 pm on Saturdays only, from September through June.

Lauren Uncategorized 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day! I have a delicious sweet treat for you today. Chocolate covered strawberry frozen yogurt. Also known as strawberry frozen yogurt with stracciatella. This frozen dessert is bursting with strawberry flavor and since it’s on Lemon & Mocha, it is of course also chocolatefied.

Valentine’s Day weekend is always especially meaningful for Matt and I because our anniversary is on the 15th! Tomorrow will mark 7 years since we starting dating, woo-wee! I’m going to keep it short and simple today so my Valentine’s Day present to you all sweet readers is this recipe and a bunch of drool-worthy photos. Enjoy!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

 

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Yield: 1 quart

Ingredients

• 1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• Chocolate covered strawberries, for garnish, optional

Directions

1. Slice the strawberries then toss in a medium bowl with the sugar. Stir until the sugar begins to dissolve then cover and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour. Stir occasionally.
2. Using a blender or food processor puree the entire contents of the strawberry bowl, the yogurt and the lemon juice. If you would like to get rid of any seeds push the mixture through a mesh strainer.
3. Refrigerate the mixture for 1 hour then pour into your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.
4. While the mixture is in the ice cream maker, melt the bittersweet chocolate over a double boiler and stir until it's smooth. Transfer the chocolate into a measuring cup with a pouring spout.
5. During the last couple minutes of churning in the ice cream maker pour the melted chocolate into the ice cream maker in a thin stream to create the stracciatella swirl.

Notes

Although this is a frozen yogurt, to me it had more of a sorbet texture. It is still delicious, but just wanted to give a heads up so you weren't surprised by the texture.

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Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments