Recipe: Baked Egg Frittatas

Breakfast. Ohhhhh breakfast. Unequivocally, wholly and without doubt my favourite meal of the day. If you ever find yourself having accidentally filled a bathtub with guacamole, just give me a call and hand me a spoon on the way in. If I could have avocado on a drip feed, I would. The scale of my egg consumption is a running joke, but they’re just the perfect food; for a diabetic, or anyone else. I can’t remember the last day I didn’t eat an egg. Oh wait, Christmas day. I was saving room for the colossal lunch and the 4395 Ferrero Rocher that followed. Ok ok, I ‘m a fan of the egg.

So yeh, breakfast. It’s the king. But it’s only the king when I make it myself (read: my actual Masterchef boyfriend does it. Seriously, LOOK at that page) or I head to one of East London’s ridiculous and glorious array of brunch spots. Or in Australia. Australia kicks breakfast ass, but sadly I am not in a position to hop over for some griddled asparagus of a Sunday morning.

So in the week, when I’m running around trying to get ready having hit the snooze button one too many times, I have more of an issue with filling my face in a decent way. Not only do I reallllly take issue with being charged £3 for a pot of porridge that cost 3p to manufacture, it is also pretty much impossible to get a decent breakfast on the hoof that doesn’t involve swallowing a carbohydrate brick.

Why should I care about the carb count? Well, on those shitty occasions when you wake up with a blood sugar of 15, not only do you have a raging hangover without the justification of preceding alcohol fun times, but putting anything between your lips is only going to sustain the high glucose levels. So yayyy, no breakfast. See above as to why I’m not really down with that.

Even when I’ve navigated my night time BG levels successfully, I am much less responsive to insulin in the morning than I am at other times of the day (more fun), so keeping the carb count low in the morning is generally a decent idea.

I know I’m not the only pancreatically-challenged person affected by this, so after successfully turning to my beloved eggs for a healthy, low-carb breakfast that travels well and can be eaten on the go, you might find the below a nice little way to start your morning. The muffin tins make perfect little bite-sized moulds, and I’ll have two or three of a morning at my desk without the need for cutlery: bonus points. Make these of an evening and they’ll keep in the fridge for a few days, so you can grab them as you run out of the door.

If you’re not taken with the flavour combos below, the glorious thing here is you can fill them with whatever the devil you fancy; the procedure remains the same. So go to town on the ham, spinach, salmon if you’re feeling fancy, or whatever you need to use up in the fridge. My favourite other combo is red onion, mushroom, blue cheese and pine nuts. All hail the eggs.

Seriously Handy Baked Egg Frittatas

Makes 12 bites

– 8 medium free range eggs (if you buy eggs from caged hens, we’re gonna have a problem)
– 1/4 medium red onion
– 12 cherry tomatoes
– 1/2 fresh red chilli
– sprinkle dried chilli flakes (optional, for the spicy little saucepots)
– Fry Light oil spray
– 30g parmesan cheese
– handful of basil leaves, roughly torn
– handful of pumpkin seeds
– salt and pepper

LET’S GO

1. Finely chop the onion and quarter the tomatoes.

2. Spray oil in each of the muffin moulds (this is so the frittatas don’t stick).

3. Evenly distribute the onion and tomatoes into the muffin tray. Pop into the oven at 180 degrees for 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, finely chop the chilli. Crack and beat the eggs together into a jug and season very generously with salt and pepper. Add the dried chilli flakes if you’re using them.

5. After 10 minutes, take the tray out of the oven and pour the egg mixture into the moulds. Riiiiight to the top. Bit more, go on. Don’t be shy now.

6. Place them back in the oven. After five minutes, once they’ve set but are still liquid on the top, take the tray out again.

7. Add a few pumpkin seeds to each frittata, followed by a couple of bits of the torn basil. Finally, sprinkle a nice amount of parmesan on the top. Putting the cheese on last will ensure the seeds and the basil attach to the rest of the frittata.

8. Pop them back into the oven and bake for a further 5-10 minutes. They will rise up like a heavenly souffle and you will get VERY excited at their golden, puffy transformation. No, just me?

9. Remove from the oven once they’ve browned slightly on top and the cheese is good and gooey.

10. LEAVE THEM THE HELL ALONE. Do not attempt to remove them from their muffin tray pocket of love until they are fully cooled.

11. Once they’ve cooled, use a spoon to prise them out of their moulds. This should be fairly painless.

12. Wrap three at a time into greaseproof paper, and then foil. Pop them in the fridge and eat your eggy little heart out the next morning.