Easy Baked Frittata Muffin

I don’t know about you guys, but my friends ask me all the time – where to eat, what to cook with this leftover ingredient or how to make that dish. I may not be the most fantastic cook, but I am the Queen of Innovation when it comes to making the best out of stuff found in the fridge, so I am always happy to comply!

Just the other day, Ruby asked what to do with her opened box of cooking cream before it went bad. What do you know, I had the same problem a couple of weeks ago and back then, I didn’t have a solution.

Well, now I do! Besides a boring cabonara pasta, why not whip up a crustless quiche? So easy to make that even cooking noobs (that’s what my friend called herself, hahhaha!) can conjure up, this egg dish is fulfilling, comforting and healthy. Frankly, this dish works even without the cream (or milk), but the added richness gives it more flavour and body.

A quiche without a pie crust is essentially a frittata, and when it’s in a muffin tray, it becomes …. Baked Frittata Muffin! Ta da!!! It sounds so boojie that I’m totally stoked!

The proposed ingredients are changeable and you can’t go wrong even if you use more ham or less spinach or whatever. Go with your gut feeling and experiment!

Ingredients

4 eggs

1/2 cup ham, cut into small bits

2 cups spinach

One big onion, diced

100ml cooking cream (or milk, if you don’t have cream)

1/2 cup grated cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Before starting, heat up the oven to about 170 degrees C.

Using just about a tablespoon of oil or butter, give the ham a quick saute. Then remove from pan and put aside.

On the same pan, put a tablespoon of oil and sweat the diced onion before adding the spinach and some salt to draw the water from the vegetables. Saute the veggies by stirring constantly and once they have softened, remove from fire.

You can add just about anything you want – tomatoes, capsicum, spring onions, mushrooms – it’s really all up to what you like in your egg. Just ensure you’ve sweated the veggies so that your frittata don’t end up soggy.

Next the eggs – crack all four into a jug or a container with a pouring tip. Whisk the eggs, then add salt and pepper (and some herbs too if you like), then add in the cream and mix well.

The next part is the fun part. Firstly, grease the muffin tray, and then pour in a bit of the egg mixture to just about cover the bottom. After this, layer the frittata with some spinach, some ham and sprinkle some cheese on top for good measure. Lastly, cover all this with more egg mixture, up to 3/4 of the muffin hole as the egg will puff up. If you fill it to the top, it will spill over when cooking in the oven.

Bake for about 15 minutes, then take it out and let it cook before removing from the tray.

Ruby didn’t have a muffin tray so she used a baking dish instead, which works just as well. Some recipes recommend that you put this directly over the stove on low fire for 5 or 10 minutes for more even cooking if in a dish. But it’s fine even if you bake it directly in the oven – just that it’ll take longer, up to 25 minutes or more, depending on your heat and container, for the centre to cook properly. When done, cut into pieces and serve like a cake!