THE QUEST FOR THE KWISH CONTINUES…

So obviously I’ve been experimenting with eggs in the toaster oven because eating protein in the morning helps me lose weight, eating breakfast is just good for you, but I don’t have any time to make breakfast in the morning because of this whole job thing, so the toaster oven seemed like the perfect solution to my dilemma. The thing is though, baked eggs are actually kind of gross.

The first time around, I documented here. I used bacon wrapped around the inside of the ramekins, then added my scrambled egg concoction and put it in the fridge over night to be baked in the toaster oven in the morning. It was alright, but just alright and the bacon wasn’t cooked properly so it was kind of gross.

The second time I cut the bacon up and cooked it the night before, adding it to the egg mixture inside the ramekins, left them over night, cooked them in the morning and they were like salty rubber. Totally gross. I mean, the flavour was okay, but the texture was absolutely disgusting. Eggs should not be chewy.

The third time, yesterday, I decided to look up quiche recipes rather than shirred egg recipes and found that quiche is basically just scrambled eggs with stuff in it and then baked as opposed to a real recipe where you’re making something specific like “quiche Lorraine”. Even better was the fact that most of the recipes I was finding were actually for the toaster oven, even Martha Stewart had a toaster oven quiche recipe, so hey, I figured I was golden! I made two individual quiches in ramekins in the toaster oven with onions and cheese and they turned out pretty good, although it needed some alterations for it to be awesome and that’s where we are today.

I am about to tell you my top secret (not at all) recipe for awesome toaster oven KWISH.

First you get some bacon. Then you take some scissors and you cut the bacon into little chunky pieces.
Easy, right?

Put the bacon in the preheated pan, smoosh it around a little with a flipper to break apart the pieces that are stuck together.

As the bacon is cooking, dice an onion or two and shred half a block (the big, long block) of the cheese of your choice. I just used cheddar because I’m not all that fancy and actually I did this bit of prep work the day before because I want to be able to assemble these easily the night before so I can just pop them in the toaster oven half an hour before I want to eat so they can cook while I’m working.

Spray butter is your friend.

When the bacon is done (I actually cooked mine about 10 minutes too much, oops), transfer it with the flipper onto a thick stack of paper towels to absorb the grease. Please note that the white thing in the picture is a flipper, not a spatula. I don’t care what Weird Al says. THIS is a spatula. It is used to frost cakes etc. THAT is a flipper, it is used to FLIP things. DON’T ARGUE WITH ME.

Not pictured is milk because I didn’t think to take a picture of it.

Crack your 3 large eggs into the measuring cup and add enough milk that the total volume adds up to a touch less than 1 cup of liquid, then whisk it with a fork until blended. (I also added 5 turns of the sea salt grinder.) Then set the mixture aside and place your ramekins (the white things, $6 for a set of 2 at Wal*Mart, perfect toaster oven size) in the center of your cutting board and spray the insides with spray butter.

Put a generous layer of diced onions on the bottom of the ramekin. That is, if you like onions. If you don’t like onions, skip this or just put a few in. I’m not a huge fan of onions normally, but I like them in this, especially because they cook so well in the egg that they practically dissolve, so you can taste them but they aren’t crunchy or noticeable.

Pour in your egg mixture evenly between both ramekins. Some of the onions are going to float, that’s just how onions are. Misbehaving little things!

Next, add a generous heap of cheese. I used about a handful and a half for each ramekin. I like cheese.

By then your bacon should be cool enough to grab a handful, so throw a handful on top of each ramekin. As I mentioned, I cooked the bacon a little bit too long so it was crispier than I like it, especially since it cooks more in the toaster oven. Therefore, next time I think I would undercook it a little bit so it would be this texture when it came out of the toaster oven.

Throw your kwishes in the toaster oven on a pan. My toaster oven came with that pan so I assume they all come with pans. If you don’t have one, use aluminum foil because they kwish may overflow while it’s cooking and you don’t want to clean up that mess so it’s probably best to avoid it.

Bake your kwishes for 30-40 minutes at 325 degrees F.

Kwishes puff up like crazy when they’re almost done. The one on the right actually touched the ceiling of the toaster oven. When they’re puffed up like this, it probably means they’re done. You check by inserting a knife into the middle of one of them and if the knife comes out clean, they’re done. If it’s gooey, cook them a little bit longer.

Kwishes deflate as they cool.

Kwishes are VERY VERY VERY hot when they come out and they take a pretty long time to fully cool enough for you to actually eat them. Like 10 or 15 minutes. In that time, they’ll deflate a lot and kind of sink in the middle. That’s okay, it’s just what kwishes do. Or at least, that’s what mine do.

The inside of a kwish is very light and fluffy and looks like it’s been whipped. I’d never had eggs that texture before until this weekend and I’ve gotta admit, I think I’m in loooooove.

The beauty of this, if you work from home like I do or you have a toaster oven at work (?) or even if you’re just a busy person, is that you can prep a week’s worth of ingredients on the weekend in the span of about half an hour and then you can assemble your kwishes the night before (minus the bacon, add that just before baking), put Saran Wrap on them and put them on the counter when you wake up so the ramekins are room temperature when you put them in the toaster oven and they don’t explode from the temperature change. Then 30 minutes before you think you’re going to be hungry, pop them in the toaster oven, turn on the timer and listen for the “ding!” half an hour later. Then set them on your desk or whatever until they cool and dig in while you work. It’s perfect for me anyway, I don’t have time to keep running in the kitchen to stir my scrambled eggs or the time/desk space to sit down and eat eggs over-easy, let alone cook bacon and stuff.

An alternate version, that I think I’m going to try next week, is broccoli (cooked ahead of time so it’s tender-crisp), with pieces of ham and then cheese on top. Again, you can prep a week’s worth of ingredients within half an hour on the weekend and then assemble at night before bed for easy baking the next morning. As I said before though, make sure your ramekins are room temperature before putting them in the toaster oven or they could crack or even explode.

This concludes my great quest for the kwish. If you make it or think of a good variation, let me know!