Baked Eggs with Heavy Cream and Bacon
Eggs, I love eggs. I have recently learned how to make an omelet and have perfected my scrambled egg technique. I’ve read multiple recipes about eggs and how difficult it is to make good eggs. A challenge, yeah!
A few months ago when searching through my cookbooks I came across a recipe in James Petersons’s book, “Cooking”, for baked eggs also called Shirred eggs. They looked great and I have been thinking about making them since, but I needed to get the scrambled and omelet down first. Yes I know, I’m 40 years old and have just recently learned how to properly scramble an egg, but better yet, I had never made an omelet until a few weeks ago.
So tonight was the night, I came home, opened up the cookbook and started this project. Since I’m trying to watch how many calories I’m eating I made mine with the eggs and heavy cream, yeah I know. For the rest of the family I added about ½ slice of crumbled bacon. YUM!
The instructions said to bake the eggs for 15 minutes and then pull them out. After 15 minutes the whites didn’t look set at all so I went another 10 minutes which was just a bit too long. The eggs still tasted great, but the yolks were definitely over hard. The heavy cream was marvelous, but the kicker was when I tasted the eggs with the bacon. The result was a creamy and heavenly combination of flavor. The bacon with the heavy cream made the meal “an indulgence” as my step-son Jacob commented. Honestly next time I’m going to do 1 tablespoon of cream and bake them without the water bath, but I will still put them in the roasting pan.
Along with the eggs, we had some toast with a very, very small amount of butter and some potatoes that Nancy pulled together with onions and the remainder of the bacon I had pilfered from the restaurant. Oh, don’t tell the IRS since I did write that $1.00 of bacon off!
After diner Nancy explained to me that the egg whites should be set while the yokes are soft and creamy. I also looked in Howard McGee’s Book “On Food and Cooking” and the limited information boiled down to “the dish should be set on the middle rack to avoid overcooking the top or bottom while the rest cooks through.”
With out further ado, here is the recipe loosely quoted from James Peterson.
Select ramekins with a capacity of 4 to 6 ounces. Generously butter the ramekins and crack the eggs into them carefully. He mentions that you can put many things on the bottom before adding the egg such as creamed spinach or caramelized onions. I was thinking Chorizo next time.
Add a tablespoon or two of heavy cream to each egg and season with salt and pepper. (I then added the bacon)
Set the ramekins in a baking dish and pour in enough hot water to come one-third up the sides of the ramekins. Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes until the egg white is set. The cream allows the egg white to set without getting hard and gives it a custardlike consistency.
These are a great dish for a biggish group, because you can prep them all ahead and bake them all at once, and serve everyone delicious hot eggs together (hard to do with omelettes or over easy’s). The cream adds an indescribable unctuousness, and a small amount of freshly grated or broken cheese such as fontina, feta, or cotija really puts this dish over the top. Don’t forget the black pepper when serving … eggs LOVE black pepper.