Happy Easter and good morning!!! This morning I’m up early to make baked eggs… I call them Maria’s Eggs, because the first time I ever had baked eggs was at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. They were yummy and ‘my favorite’, simple. I loved the concept of baking the egg, so I started to play with all the different ways I could serve this little gem. Recipes like this can be made in so many different ways once you have the basic premise. Perfect for a morning like today Easter Sunday. 

Baked Eggs
2-4 ramekins (depending on how many you are cooking for).
2-4 large eggs (for this recipe the eggs all had two yokes so I used 1 for each dish)
1 Tbs butter
salt and pepper to taste

Butter the inside of the ramekins and crack an egg into each one, (try not to let any egg shells fall in. Nothing is worse than taking a bite of a shell in your cooked eggs).

Basic Bechamel Sauce
2 Tbs of butter
2 Tbs of flour
1 cup of milk
salt and pepper to taste

(The ratio here is 1 Tbs butter = 1 Tbs flour = 1/2 cup of milk… so if you need to make more, use this formula)

Melt butter, add flour and cook for one minute, stirring constantly with a whisk. Add milk and stir for 30 seconds more. The mixture will begin to bubble and thicken. Add salt and pepper.

This is where the process can start to take on whatever culinary design you can imagine. To our breakfast this morning I added…

2 Tbs ricotta cheese
2 Tbs pecorino romano cheese
1/4 tsp basil
dash of onion powder
dash of cayenne

Whisk these ingredients into the Bechamel sauce, (some call it a white gravy).

Pour into your ramekins on top of eggs in equal distribution, top with 2 Tbs of desired cheese, (I used a muenster cheese) and 1 Tbs chives. Bake at 350 °F for 15 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes and there you go!

Just a little footnote; these little gems can really be versatile. I’ve been known to add crab meat and aged cheddar to the  Bechamel then top it off with caramelized onions. On other occasions I added chopped dried apricots and almonds with a little sour cream in the Bechamel. Like I said, the sky is the limit with these little gems!!! Have fun with it!

Enjoy!

Heidi