A few weeks ago, we invited some of J's coworkers over for brunch. It was so nice for all of us to kick back and relax together. In addition to the main attractions - bellinis and Bloodies - I also served food. The biggest hit was a crustless chorizo egg bake.

- 10 large eggs
- 1/2 cup fresh salsa (or jarred if that's your thing)
- 1 medium onion, finely diced
- 2 (or more!) cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 poblano pepper
- 1 bell pepper (I chose yellow, but pick your favorite color)
- 8 ounces chorizo
- shredded cheese of your choice (I tried Sargento's Nacho & Taco blend - not paid, not an endorsement, but it was pretty good!)
- salt and pepper

First, I browned all of the chorizo - if you opt for pre-cooked, you can certainly skip this step and simply cut it to your desired size. I removed it from the pan onto a paper towel-covered plate to drain a bit and scooped out most of the fats from the pan. I left a little bit behind and sautéed the onion in it. After a few minutes, I added the garlic and peppers in as well and cooked until the peppers just started to soften. I pulled the vegetables off the heat and let them cool.

Once cooled, I tossed the chorizo and vegetables into a lightly oiled casserole pan and covered with one or two handfuls of shredded cheese.

In a separate bowl, scramble all 10 of the eggs thoroughly. Having learned from my last multiple egg cooking attempt, I added three heavy pinches salt and a bunch black pepper (as much as you want, really). Add in the salsa and mix to combine. Pour the egg mixture over the chorizo and vegetables.

I topped it all off with another hearty helping of cheese. Because cheese is wonderful. I baked it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees until the top looked golden and the eggs looked cooked through.

YUM. I let it cool for about 10 minutes before serving, but it is as delicious room temperature - I confirmed this 4 hours later when there was only one helping left and I ate it directly out of the dish with a fork.

I also made zucchini and cream cheese muffins that were... Not Good. J swears they were delicious and not a single muffin remained, but I thought they were dense and chewy, almost gummy. Avoid. I also made a fruit salad of sliced strawberries and red grapes with a balsamic vinegar-vanilla extract-Campari-lemon zest reduction. It was Fancy and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who actually used the reduction. More for me!

All in, the egg bake was a hit. It was so simple to put together, and I'm sure you could even cook all the vegetables the night before to save time day-of. It was spicy from the chorizo and salsa, but it wasn't so hot that it completely burned out your taste buds. I think serving some fresh avocado on top would also be an outrageous and tasty addition.

There weren't any leftovers (after I scarfed down that last serving when the guests left) , but I had hoped for some to take a square to work for lunch! I'll definitely be making this again!

Raspberry White Chocolate Scones

One of my NYC Apartment Living habits is a regular audit of storage - purging my closet, throwing out clutter from under the bathroom sink, chucking Sephora samples that are 6+ months old and untouched. Most relevant to The Chardonnay Kitchen is my periodic review of the contents of our kitchen cabinets and formulation of plan to use things up.

I made Skinnytaste’s flag-styled fruit pizza back at the 4th of July and had some white chocolate chips hanging out. Yum. I know not everyone is a fan of white chocolate but I 100% am. I decided to dust off the best scone recipe on the planet and use them up, brightening them up with fresh fruit. Strawberries were the plan, but raspberries won out once I got to the store.

I wondered if Martha had made raspberry scones and found this recipe, too. I ended up mainly using the Fast Raspberry Scones recipe, incorporating the cream from the Cream Scones in lieu of buttermilk.

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup light cream
1 egg yolk
6 ounces fresh raspberries
3/4 cup white chocolate chips

I got to use my food processor's dough blade for the first time - oh, the things that thrill me these days! - and it whipped the ingredients together in a snap. I added the white chocolate chips by hand once the dough was ready so the blade wouldn't smash up the chips. Once those were incorporated, I smushed the dough ball out onto my floured countertop and, per the recipe instructions, "sprinkled" the raspberries on top. I folded it over the top of the berries and the moment I pushed down on the dough I thought, “Shit, this is going to be white chocolate raspberry soup.” I folded the dough in half again and more raspberry juice oozed everywhere. Only semi-panicked, I added another ¼ cup or so of flour to dry everything out and just started molding blobs of hot pink dough into scone-ish shapes.

Sighing, I figured, “They’re pretty. They’ll cook or they’ll fall apart.”

I put them in the 400 degree oven and checked them after 10 minutes. I finally took them out around Minute 12 when the edges were browned and a toothpick came out clean.

Nailed it.

They’re creamy inside. They’re fully cooked, yes, but somehow the fresh raspberry juice and the gooey chocolate make the otherwise crumbly scone taste creamy. They are amazing. They are admittedly sweeter and more moist than the Currant Scone recipe that I love for opposite reasons, but I added almost a cup of chocolate to them. And I loved every bite.

And I took MANY bites. The next day, I brought four of these to a girlfriend of mine and thank goodness I did - they are addictive. I ate them for breakfast, as post-dinner dessert, as a snack with a cup of hot tea. I think they'd be perfect to make around Valentine's Day because of their gorgeous color and assertive sweetness. Or, they'd be perfect for the next time I want to empty out chocolate chips from my pantry - to quote The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.

Lemon Poppyseed Cake

One of my go-to breakfast foods as a kid were muffins. "Muffin", of course, is the breakfast word for "cake". I could not get enough lemon poppyseed muffins, especially when I made the connection between poppy seeds and the poppies that put Dorothy to sleep on her trek to the Emerald City. Plus, what's not to love? I think lemon poppyseed muffins were my gateway food to a passionate love of all lemon-flavored desserts.

My lovely former coworkers gave me a gift card to Sur La Table on my last day of work and during my week off, I paid a visit to the store on the Upper East Side. I found and purchased my new favorite pan.

It's so pretty, right? I thought about making another version of Lemon Breakfast Cake, but worried that the cake would be too moist and stick to the intricate design of the pan. I opted instead for a Lemon Poppyseed "Bread" recipe. But let's be real: if a recipe calls for a cup of sugar, it's cake.

I closely followed this recipe, except I skipped the lemon glaze entirely. I do love cake, but I'm generally unmoved by frosting/glaze/drizzle. I loved the use of sour cream - the tanginess beautifully balanced out the sweet, tart lemon zest-infused cup of sugar.

The batter itself is a dainty, pale yellow. This is the color I had in my mind when I painted my first apartment after college yellow. I ended up with something closer to pineapple Fanta. It was Not Good. What is good is this batter's color, but more importantly the flavor of this batter. After hanging out in a 350 degree oven for the better part of an hour, your house also smells like this gloriously yellow concoction, which has of course turned into a real live cake.

At this point, I began an audible incantation urging the pan to gently release the cake when I flipped it over.

It's not the prettiest, but damn I buttered and floured that pan to death and it came out okay!!! The glaze might have helped cosmetically but I really did not miss it flavor-wise. This cake is crumbly and sweet and lemony and delicious.

It's perfect on it's own with a cup of tea, but I mostly ate it along with my Adulthood Go-To Breakfast, scrams. Healthy food alongside cake? I believe that is what They call "moderation". It works for me.

Strawberry Cornmeal Breakfast Cake

I went late-season strawberry picking over 4th of July weekend at Jones Family Farms in Shelton, Connecticut. We also stopped by their winery and sampled their strawberry wine. As a proud Alpha Delta Pi woman, I immediately broke into song, because every self-respecting ADPi knows every single word to the Deanna Carter classic. J was only semi-mortified.

After the outing, I came home with the most stunning and perfectly sweet strawberries, but they were more of them than I knew what to do with. So, I fired up my oven the first weekend of July and surprised my coworkers with a treat first thing on Monday morning.

I actually made two cakes because I had that many berries to use up. First was my beloved Smitten Kitchen lemon yogurt anything cake and I hoarded that at home for myself. Second was a cornmeal-spiked cake from Katie At The Kitchen Door. It also has yogurt like the SK one, but the cornmeal added a really unique gritty bite to the cake.

Hi, is this not the most perfect berry you've ever seen?

I made the batter according to the recipe, though I used just slightly less than 1/2 cup of sugar since I was increasing the berry amount. I folded one and a half cups of strawberries (maybe more) into the batter and then placed some slices on top. I'm telling you - SO MANY STRAWBERRIES TO USE.

I also used a 9x9 instead of the recipe-recommended loaf pan. I like the square shape if I'm cutting the final product into bite-sized work sharing pieces. This went into a 350 degree oven at the same time as the SK cake. I didn't know how sharing the oven would impact bake time, so I checked both at the 40 minute mark and every 5 after that. This cornmeal cake came out around the 50 minute mark, per my recollection.

I let it cool for about 5 minutes in the pan before turning it out onto parchment paper on top of a wire rack.

I left it on our office kitchen island just before 9 am. It was gone by 10:30. Every single bite contained a sweet burst of strawberry. The yogurt made the cake very creamy, but there was still an incredible texture from the cornmeal. Absolutely a winner - I can't wait to recreate this and actually keep it at home! It would be perfect at breakfast, with some bubbles at a brunch spread, or even as a mid-afternoon snack alongside a hot cup of tea. I can't wait to try this with other berries, too - I'm guessing blackberries plus cornmeal will be a match made in heaven.

Lemon Berry Breakfast Cake

Happy Friday! Hopefully you have a gorgeous spring weekend ahead of you. I'm off to a graduation weekend myself and can't wait to hug some of my favorite people in the world. As a matter of fact, this recipe reminds me of a few more of my favorite people. I served this as a sweet option at Easter brunch this year and it earned the highest praise possible: my nieces texted me for the recipe after the fact.

I started thinking about brunch and breakfast cakes I have loved. Fruity, moist, dense, fresh. I knew my required starting points were lemon and sour cream/yogurt. Smitten Kitchen answered the call perfectly with Lemon Yogurt Anything Cake. Done and done. The recipe asks to be altered - there is an entire section with suggested swaps or tweaks - and I went with Greek yogurt, lemon zest, fresh blueberries and fresh strawberries.

It starts with eggs, sugar, lemon zest, and yogurt. Sunshine in a bowl! (Also, vanilla extract and cooking oil.)

Slowly add in the dry ingredients (mixed in a separate bowl).

I sliced a whole carton of strawberries into little spears and rinsed them with a whole box of blueberries.

You lightly coat the fruit with about a tablespoon of flour and then gently fold into the sweet, lemony batter.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for around 45 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean.

And it is gorgeous. And you wait patiently for it to cool. And then it gets even more gorgeous.

That is a picture of the most delicious breakfast cake I've ever had. It is everything I wanted. It was dreamy and dense and smooth and even with the richness from the yogurt and sugar, it still tasted light and fresh from the fruit and lemon zest.

Above all, if you make this for your favorite people (including yourself), you will cement your place as one of theirs. Have a fantastic weekend!

(Sort Of) Shakshouka

Happy Friday! Are you as excited as I am for a three-day weekend? I have a few fun items on my weekend agenda, but I'm excited to ring in the unofficial start of summer by sleeping late tomorrow and having a sleepy brunch at home. Daydreams of brunch over the last few days led me to today's post!

Shaskshouka is, at it's most basic, eggs poached in some sort of spiced tomato sauce. It's a fancy breakfast or brunch dish, a hearty Meatless Monday option, or in my case, the perfect way to repurpose leftovers. I'd made tomato sauce for dinner a few days before this breakfast and used what I had on hand. I had Jerusalem open for timing and egg cooking instructions but I simplified to basically spice up the leftover sauce and swap an onion in for the bell pepper.

I cooked a sliced onion until it turned golden around the edges.

Then, I added about a tablespoon of tomato paste and two tablespoons of harissa to my leftover tomato sauce, plus a few hefty shakes of ground cumin.

Once the sauce was heated through, I added the eggs.

I used a butter knife to gently swirl the whites around a bit and then covered the pan for a few minutes.

I served two eggs each with the sauce and onions in a bowl with fresh buttery toast on the side.

I loved the creamy eggs with the tang and heat of the tomato sauce and bite of the onions. In many ways, you can dress up your shakshouka any way you like by adjusting the heat and spices in the sauce. You could take it an Italian route and serve over polenta, or take it down an Indian path with curries and serve with naan. As with most egg-focused recipes, the possibilities go on and on.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Boozy Book Club Brunch

Last weekend, I hosted the brilliant and beautiful women in my book club for brunch. I wanted to go as girly as possible. Pink roses, floral napkins (that I made! The hems are atrocious!), fancy tropical juices in prosecco, the whole nine yards. My menu was girly as well:

Mini pesto frittatas: fluffy, cheesy, and tiny met my feminine criteria.
Cream currant scones: evocative of a tea party which, girly.
Lavender butter: butter + flowers = girliness.
Grape tomato & basil salad: girls love salad.

I started with the butter. It sounds fancy and it looked fancy and it tasted fancy and it required about 5 minutes of hands-on time. You pour heavy whipping cream into your stand mixer and you turn it on. You continue to check on it until you think it's ready - nope, it's whipped cream. Keep going. You keep mixing until the fats start to solidify and the buttermilk pools at the bottom.

Now, you get your hands all buttery. Squeeze all of the solids together into a lump and press any additional liquid out. Then, you start rinsing the butter. This basically entails pouring a small amount of very cold ice water over the butter and continuing to squeeze liquid out until all liquid from the butter runs clear. You'll end up with a lump.

I split the butter into two different ramekins - one got a pinch of big crunchy flakes of salt and the other got about 1/4 teaspoon of dried lavender flowers.

Then I moved on to the eggs. Martha inspired me with a pesto and tomato frittata, but I decided that mini frittatas were easier for a group and made a tomato salad on the side. I simply halved a box and a half of red grape tomatoes and a box of yellow grape tomatoes. I tossed them with a little olive oil drizzle, a little salt, and some ribbons of fresh basil.

For the frittatas, I scrambled a dozen eggs with some grated fresh mozzarella and half a cup of pesto. I also had to mix it with my little piglet whisk, a gift from our book club's Secret Santa back in December. Thanks, B - I continue to love this little pre-baconous dude.

I poured the mix into a greased cupcake pan (one with 12 cupcake holes). I baked these last after the scones came out of the oven. And the scones were super tasty. I am very particular about scones. I don't want too much grease and I certainly don't want any frosting on top or any additional Starbucks-esque bastardizations. They are perfect in their driest, crumbliest form, which is how the baking gods intended it to be. This scone recipe (also Martha) is absolutely perfect. They're a cinch to prepare and I followed her recipe (almost) to the letter. She has you cut the dough into six wedges, but I had seven attendees, so I went with eight wedges. If I were to do this recipe over, I'd still go with the eight wedges - I think six would have netted too much scone at once.

While the scones cooled a bit, I popped the mini frittatas into the same 400 degree oven and baked for a little over 10 minutes. Basically test the middle for doneness with a toothpick, cool them on a rack for a couple of minutes, and then pop out onto your serving dish.

I snapped one last picture once all the food (and a few of the tropical fruit bellinis) was on the table and then we got down to business.

I don't have any fancy pictures of the drinks area, but I did have these phenomenal (and 100% true) cocktail napkins.

The food was all delicious. The frittatas needed a little work - mostly, additional salt and pepper - but there was only one left at the end of our noshing. The scones, as mentioned, were exactly what I wanted scones to be and they were perfect with the lavender butter. All in all, our dainty yet delicious menu balanced out our insightful yet raucous afternoon, very little of which centered on the book!

Nora French Toast

Happy Friday! Today I'm sharing a sweet, simple, scrumptious recipe for you to try this weekend. My friend Nora made this one morning after a wine-fueled day gallivanting around Long Island and it's the perfect way to start a lazy weekend morning.

The ingredient that makes this French toast fancy is a jar of orange marmalade. Blend the entire jar with milk and eggs (I used about six) until it's all smooth.

My favorite French toast bread is challah. It's so spongy and airy and is perfect for soaking up all of the milky egg blend. Slice to your desired thickness (I went about 1/2"), butter both sides, and arrange into a baking dish. Pour the orangey egg/milk mixture over the bread, ensuring all of liquid soaks in fully.

If you're making this a day ahead of time, cover and put in the fridge. If you're ready to eat, bake! I had it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, just until all of the egg cooked through.

Serve with fresh fruit and you're in business! I'm not usually a Sweets At Breakfast person, but paired with some nice strong tea and fresh bacon, this absolutely hits the spot.