Make It For Your Date: The Breakfast Edition

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Toasts from Better Homes & Gardens*

We all know the saying “The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. This can also be a fairly speedy route to the female heart as well. Staying in and making your date dinner (or making it together) rates high on the romance scale. You get to show off your creativity and appreciation for nuance and details, even if it’s a simple dish. It’s no different from putting an outfit together. That’s what this series is all about. She or he will be left impressed, and you won’t need the skills of Wolfgang Puck.  

• Familiar Ingredients: English muffins, bacon, eggs, heavy cream, dijon mustard, green onion
• Not So Familiar Ingredients: Gruyère cheese, Cajun seasoning
• Number of Pans/Pots you’ll need to make this dish:  One large saucepan to boil eggs, one small saucepan for the sauce,  one baking sheet.

What? You’re making breakfast for your date? You sly devil. Oh wait, you just invited your date over for brunch next weekend? Well, either way, no judgement here. We humans gotta eat in the morning, just like we do in the evening. Truth be told though, if the one you’re dating is a breakfast-any-time-of-day kind of person, you could easily serve this as a dinner entree.

There’s nothing really complicated about this recipe, and for all intents and purposes, it’s a pretty common breakfast item. I mean, we’re not that far off from an Egg McMuffin. But the sauce and addition of green onion and herbs on top take it over the edge. It’s packed with protein, and complex carbs if you opt for whole wheat English muffins, so it will give you plenty of energy post breakfast, for whatever activities you and your date have planned. You sly devil.

The sauce and presentation makes this fairly normal breakfast item look like highfalutin dining.

Eggs – One of the tricks to making this dish look a little better is to not get that grey ring around the outside of the yoke. It doesn’t affect the taste at all, it just looks better if you don’t have it. I use Martha Stewart’s method for boiling eggs, and I never get the grey ring. I’ve not yet mastered peeling hard boiled eggs though. As you can see in the picture below, some of the outer edges of the egg whites leave something to be desired. Wish I would have found this before I peeled that batch. That just might be a trick to impress your date with. 

Cajun Seasoning – This is just a mix of salt, oregano, paprika, cayenne pepper, and ground black pepper. You can make it yourself, of just buy it pre-made at the grocery store. If you’re local grocer has a bulk spice section, you can likely find it there and buy the amount you want.

Gruyère Cheese – Gruyère is a type of Swiss cheese that’s fairly mild and melts easily (it’s popular in fondue). When I was shopping for it, I came across a smoked Gruyère from Boar’s Head that piqued my interest. I’m glad I got it, the smoked flavor really added to this dish. If you want the smoked flavor, but can’t find a smoked Gruyère, used smoked Gouda. That would be just as good, perhaps even better.

English Muffins – You don’t have to do this, but I always like to toast my bread before building a hot sandwich, open face or not. It’s just preference. (One note; sometimes toasting can make the bread harder to cut through.) If you don’t toast previous to broiling, the edges of the muffin will still get toasted during the broiling process.

Herbs – The recipe only calls for green onions to sprinkle over the top of the toasts, but I had some fresh basil and tarragon on hand, and decided to chop some up and mix it in with the green onion. It was so delicious, I can’t imagine making this recipe again without the addition of one or both of those herbs.

Final Note: Morning booze recommendation: If you are serving brunch, have a bottle of drier champagne chilled that you can make orange or grapefruit juice mimosas with. If you want to dress the mimosas up, drop a few blueberries and raspberries into each mimosa. If fact, throw some of those berries into a salad with watermelon and perhaps a bit of chopped mint to serve on the side.

Sarah is a self proclaimed foodie and regular contributor to theprettyguineapig.com. She will not eat green eggs and ham, but normal colored eggs and meat is fine by her. For more MIFYD posts, click here. And if you have a tried and true way to peel hard boiled eggs, share your secret to success in the comments.