Sunday Brunch

when i was browsing through tastespotting i came across this blog and thought these pop up pancakes would be really great for Sunday brunch since i had my nephews for the weekend! they both love eating pancakes and thought this would be a neat take on something they love. unfortunately my six year old nephew is extremely picky (i don't know where he gets it from!) and was a little concerned and kept telling me they didn't taste like pancakes- even after i assured him several times! my three year old nephew on the other hand loved them, and finished up his plate...and then some!!

the recipe is really simple, and it gave me a chance to try out our new blender/food processor! (our blender broke about two weeks ago, and going without our afternoon smoothies for that long was pretty brutal!) this is the one we got and i have to say, we loooove it!!

(i just halfed the original recipe since there were only 4 people eating. the original recipe made 2 dozen pancake pop-ups which would have just been way too many leftovers for my house!)

ingredients:

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• dash of salt

preheat oven to 400 degrees.

blend all ingredients in a blender.

grease muffin tins and pour batter about halfway into muffin tins.

bake for approximately 15 minutes.

top with anything you want and enjoy!

i love eating pancakes/waffles with fresh fruit, so i went with the traditional strawberries and confectioners sugar since i didn't have any whipped cream. this was also how the Make and Takes blog had theirs pictured!

i also decided to make an egg dish with the pancakes. i wanted to try something different from typical scrambled eggs and had seen several recipes for baked eggs. i decided to make baked eggs in ham. yet, another really easy recipe! (very simple, none of that lets add creme fraiche and all sorts of other stuff in it! just the basics!)

ingredients:

• 4 slices ham
• about a dozen mushrooms (chopped)
• 4 eggs
• handful cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• 1 tbsp parmesan/asiago/romano cheese blend (optional)

preheat oven to 350 degrees.

in a small frying pan, saute the mushrooms and tomatoes. this should only take about 5 minutes or so. i also ended up adding a little of the italian cheese blend to give it a little more flavor, but you could just add salt and pepper if you'd prefer not to have cheese.

in a small ramekin, put a slice of ham inside. (if you wanted were making more than 4 servings, you could use a muffin tin instead of the ramekins). (i didn't have to spray my ramekin with a non stick spray, but i suppose you could if you wanted!)

put about a tablespoon of the mushroom/tomato mixture into the middle of the ramekin.

crack an egg on top of the mixture.

bake for approximately 15 minutes. the whites should be set and the yolk should be thick but not hard.