So…bacon and egg cupcakes. They are a thing.
I saw these awhile ago and I’ve really wanted to try making them. I didn’t though because it involves a muffin tin and I only have muffin tins that make a dozen muffins at a time. I didn’t want to eat a dozen of these. Sure, I didn’t have to fill the entire muffin tin, but you don’t really get a good feel for a recipe if you only make like…one cupcake…thing.
I’ve seen several iterations of these recipes and most of them say to either cook the bacon completely or at least halfway before using them to line the muffin tin. If you’re making 12 of them, cooking bacon in a fry pan is really annoying. It takes forever because you can’t cook more than a few pieces at a time. And I needed 18 slices of bacon (12 whole slices to line each well of the tin and then two quarters of a slice on the bottom of each well). Unless you have like a 24″ fry pan. If you have a 24″ fry pan, how big is your burner?
What I ended up doing was to stick the bacon in the oven as it was preheating. Just spread them out on some sheet pans and stick them in the oven is still cold. When the oven is finished preheating (about 15min for my oven) the bacon slices are half cooked. Then you can use them to line your muffin tin. And this helps cut down on the grease. And if you wanted to cook a great deal of bacon all the way through, just leave them in the oven for longer. About a total of 20-25 min, depending on how crisp you like your bacon.
Before you assemble, REMEMBER TO SPRAY YOUR MUFFIN TIN WITH COOKING SPRAY. Or at least prep it in some way. I didn’t because I had forgotten and didn’t remember until I had already started the assembly process. You are dealing with eggs. They love to stick to everything as they are cooking. The residual bacon grease will not be enough to keep the eggs from sticking to your pan. It actually wasn’t that bad, but it still took some soaking and scrubbing to get it off. All of which could have been avoided if I had just sprayed the wells beforehand. So remember to prep the pans.
After you have your pan entirely lined with bacon, you can plop in the eggs. I did a whole egg in each well with some salt and pepper sprinkled on top. I’ve seen people do some kind of scramble with chopped onions or bell peppers and herbs too. I might try that next time.
I baked mine at 400degF for about 15min and the yolks had just turned solid. Adjust your time accordingly if you like softer or firmer yolks, I guess. The edges of the bacon were crisp and pretty good. The rest of it stayed a bit softer than I like. I think I might cook the bacon for a bit longer next time I try making this. The bacon would unlikely ever be entirely crisp since it’s stuck in a well and has egg mashing up against it, but I think I could get it a little less floppy. The crisp edges were good though.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I removed them from the pan via chopsticks.
Anyway, there you have it. Bacon egg cupcakes.
Random moosages as I see fit. 