Sunday, March 03, 2013

Cooking With Reckless Abandon: Bacon and Egg Biscuits

So here's the thing about these amazingly awesome breakfast cupcakes: I was inspired by a picture I saw on Imgur.  I didn't bookmark it, so I can't link to it.  Imgur uses a shit-ton of my monthly allotment of internet, so I am not able to go searching through piles of pictures.  If you have a problem with this, go blog about it.  The only reason I am prefacing this recipe with this information is to explain why I am not naming these biscuits anything fancier than Bacon and Egg Biscuits.  Had I invented them, I might call them Grandmother's Revenge, or perhaps The Uncanny Canadian's Secret Desire.

Let's get down to biscuitness:
Ingredients:
Coffee - Preferably hot and fresh, like my women.  Ha.
Bisquik - Yeah, this is straight up unpaid product placement, but I don't care so you should shut your dirty mouth.
Milk - Thanks for the check, cows.
Garlic - I put this in just about everything now. Deal with it.
Bacon - Whatever kind you like.  I used some Costco thick-cut, hickory smoked.
Eggs - The kind that comes out of a chicken.  If you have access to ostrich eggs, you may need less of those.
Spices - You can forgo these if you are Scandinavian or live in the Midwest and claim a specific ethnic heritage but can not actually speak the language of your ancestors.


Make some coffee.  Start your oven preheating your oven to 450, if you're using a convection oven this should end up at 425.  Drink some coffee.  Slap that slab of bacon on your cutting board, take a look at your cupcake pan, and cut some strips of bacon into thirds.  I chose thirds because I didn't think I had enough bacon to provide a full lining around the edge of each cupcake divot.  If you have a full bacon lining, that might be more grease than you would like, but you can always eat a few more salads next week, maybe go for another jog next month.  Put your bacon sections in the cups, and drink some more coffee.  Remember to wash your hands.

Make some biscuits from the back of the Bisquik box, 2 3/4 cups of mix and 2/3 cup of milk.  Think about the total package for a minute while drinking some coffee.  Refill your cup while you remember everything about these biscuits, the bacon you're using, and every egg that you have ever consumed.  Drink some coffee, and then grab some garlic.  Smush your cloves with the flat of the blade, just like Anthony Bourdain or The Half-Blood Prince would, then dice the cloves.  Throw the garlic into the bowl with the mixed biscuit dough, drink some coffee, and then knead the garlic into the dough.  Tear the dough, knead it, and really mix that garlic into the proto-biscuits.

Wash your hands, drink some coffee, and then contemplate the nature of cupcakes and biscuits.  Even if you are using a non-stick pan, I would recommend smearing the bacon around the cupcake divots to grease the divots, just in case.  Tear a bit of dough, about a one to two inch thick ball, and squash that into the bottom of each divot.  You want to fill the divots no more than half-full. 

Now, you are ready for the egg phase of this masterpiece.  Drink some coffee, and then grab an egg.  Take a spoon, or maybe a knife, and whack the narrower part of the egg.  You want to crack the egg, but not shatter it.  Pour the egg into the cupcake divots, over the dough.  The bacon will fill the role of the paper lining people sometimes use with cupcakes.  When you've finished topping all the divots with eggs, wash your hands, and drink some coffee.  Maybe remind yourself that you won't stay up until 3 am cruising Imgur again.  If you want to cut down on the number of eggs used, you may not own a flock of chickens.  As I was saying, if you want to cut down on the eggs, you could try mixing the eggs before pouring them over the divots.  I would estimate that you could probably get away with only 2/3 the eggs, as compared to the eventual biscuits.  For today's recipe, I could have probably used eight eggs for twelve biscuits.

Grind some fresh pepper over the eggs, drink some coffee, and then put the whole pan in the oven for about 12-13 minutes.  I set the timer for 8 minutes, since the Bisquik box said 8-10 minutes for pure biscuits, but I ended up leaving them in for another 5 minutes.  The eggs developed large bubbles, and I poked these after 8 minutes because I knew that the thin egg in the bubble could get burned or crusty.

Anyway, once the eggs look done enough, take the pan out of the oven, wake up your sweet babboo, drink some coffee, consume the biscuits, and marvel at my genius.

Variants: You could add cheese to the dough, or sprinkle some on top of the egg.  You can use other spices, like some provincial herbs on the eggs, or chopped fresh rosemary from your garden in the dough.  Chives would also work, but I would put those in the dough or between the dough and eggs.

Friday, March 01, 2013