Author: Jamie

While Steve and I are currently in the midst of our busiest time of year, and have been working around the clock to deliver beautiful and smooth weddings, we have been holding onto a very special and exciting secret…

We are anticipating the arrival of Baby Moore before the end of the year!

Steve and I couldn’t be happier or more excited to share our big news. We are so grateful and thankful for a healthy baby and smooth and very easy pregnancy so far. We are eagerly and joyfully anticipating this new adventure into parenthood together.

 

Photography: Matthew Land Studios

Calligraphy: Marabou Design

Who doesn’t love eggs and bacon for breakfast? Now add in a soft, flaky pie crust and that combination becomes irresistible. For our Easter Brunch menu, Steve and I chose to serve a deep dish quiche containing some of our favorite ingredients. Quiche is great for a brunch, because it can be fully made ahead of time and reheated just before guests arrive. This frees you up to enjoy your morning while keeping your kitchen clean as all the dishes were done well before anyone comes over. For non-morning people like myself, this also gives you a few extra minutes to hit your snooze button.

This recipe can be adapted very easily and you can add or subtract different ingredients depending on what you love. Steve and I have made different variations of this before, but seem to always fall  back on the bacon, goat cheese, artichoke, caramelized onion combination that we have here. For our spring brunch we made two quiches, one with bacon and one without for a vegetarian option. Both were delicious and it was a tough call to decide which was tastier.

To start, fry up your bacon in a large pan or skillet. While the bacon is cooking, slice up your onions nice and thin with your sharpest knife. Once your bacon is done, remove it from the pan and allow to cool. Don’t clean the bacon pan at all as you’ll add the sliced onions into the bacon fat to cook. This is where I warn you that this is not a necessarily healthy or low calorie choice for breakfast, but it is delicious!

I like to make quiche in a deep dish pan, because it gives a good ratio of filling to crust. Pans like this can be found at Williams-Sonoma, or super stores like Target will usually have them too.

While your filling is cooling, it’s time to roll out the quiche crust and line the pan with the pastry. Now, usually I take a strong stance in the all-butter pie crust camp (as something inside of me screams at the thought of shortening), but Crisco is simply needed for this particular recipe. My all-butter pie dough just doesn’t work for this quiche, and I’ve come to accept it. The pastry recipe makes a very soft and flaky crust that just works much better than other recipes I’ve shared.

This recipe is much softer than butter crusts, and it rolls out much quicker too, so beware. It can be frustrating to have the entire dough crumble and fall apart at the touch of the rolling pin. That happened to me during this shoot. If that happens to you, just take your dough and squish it all back together again and roll it out one more time. It usually helps to add a bit more flour to it, too.

If your crust does fall apart or tears (like mine did), the pan is very forgiving and you can add scrap pieces to any holes in the dough like patchwork. Once it bakes, you won’t be able to see the parts that you had to ‘mend’.

After you’ve lined the quiche pan with the crust, place in the refrigerator or freezer to chill while you finish up the filling. Here’s when it all comes together: combine your eggs, cream, cheese and onion filling all together in a large bowl and mix it up well. Once all is combined, pour into your chilled shell and use a spatula to dunk the filling underneath the egg mixture so the top stays relatively smooth. This will also keep anything from browning too much on the top.

Lastly, loosely cover the pan with foil and pop it in the 400-degree oven for an hour. This will give you plenty of time now to clean up your kitchen and take in the yummy smells as it bakes. If after an hour it looks undercooked, remove the foil and allow to bake 5-10 minutes longer. When the quiche is done, it should still be jiggly in the middle, and more firm around the outside perimeter.

Give your quiche plenty of time to cool, then push it out of the pan from the bottom and voilà! It should easily slide out and showcase your beautiful crust’s fluted edges. The quiche is bound to be a big hit and makes for great leftovers, too. Enjoy!

Photography: Matthew Land Studios 

Recipe design and calligraphy:  La Happy

I’ve always loved breakfast. Hands down it’s my favorite meal of the day, and I am fairly certain I could eat breakfast foods for every meal and never get sick of it.

When Steve and I first started dating, a pancake breakfast was the first thing I ever made for him. And let’s be honest, breakfast is one of the only meals I (know how to) cook. Over a stack of homemade banana walnut pancakes in New York City, we got to know each other better and began navigating our long distance relationship. On a second trip when he came out to visit, I just had to show him the best pancakes in the city, even if it was a two-hour wait. The wait was absolutely worth it, and pancakes have become a staple for us. While we don’t do very much cooking in our kitchen, we do know how to make delicious breakfasts and a mean stack of pancakes.

The pancakes that I made for Steve were just from a box, but the ones from the restaurant were the real deal made from meticulously sifted flour and whipped egg whites. There’s nothing wrong with making pancakes from a box, but if you want to experience a taste of fluffy homemade goodness that you’re surely going to be proud of, you must try this recipe.  I’ve included a few tips to help make this a successful recipe for you.

Sifting may not be fun, but it makes a world of a difference. Don’t be tempted to skip this step. It’ll help make your pancakes light and fluffy.

When separating egg whites from the yolks, it’s really important to make sure that no yolk gets into the bowl of egg whites. Make sure to only separate one egg at a time in an isolated bowl (we like to use a cup), so that if your yolk breaks into the white you have not destroyed the entire batch.

When you whisk the egg yolks and the butter and milk together, it will be a bit lumpy and you may think something went wrong. Just keep moving forward. It will all combine together in the end.

When you pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and whisk together, make sure not to over-mix the batter.  You want the batter to be lumpy. Over-mixing will create dry and flat pancakes.

Whip your egg whites with an electric mixer so they form medium peaks. This means that that when you whip the egg whites, the mixture should be able to hold its shape and stand up, but the tip of the peak will fall back on itself and curl over. When you combine the egg whites with the batter in two stages, be gentle as you fold the batter together with your spatula. You will not want to completely mix in the egg whites, so make sure to leave large bits still floating in the batter. This will also add to the fluffiness of your pancakes.

We like to use an ice cream scoop to put the batter onto the hot griddle. It forms the perfect sized pancake.

Fresh blueberries work better than frozen, as frozen fruit  releases more liquid as they thaw out, which can make your pancakes soggy. Dropping the fruit into the batter after the pancake has started to cook is a more successful technique than mixing all of the blueberries into the batter  before cooking. This technique allows your pancake to cook thoroughly through the middle, instead of being undercooked around the fruit.

While your pancake is cooking, you can start heating your maple syrup. We like to create maple butter syrup by heating up 2 cups of real maple syrup and adding 1 cup of cold butter cut into small squares, and whisking it  together over medium heat. This isn’t healthy (at all!), but it does create a thick and rich syrup that tastes amazing and complements these pancakes perfectly. You can hit the gym another day.

Presentation can make the most simple food look artistic. Who doesn’t love a tall stack of pancakes garnished with even more fruit? This recipe makes quite a large breakfast- about 12-14 medium sized pancakes. So if you are making breakfast for two, you should cut the recipe in half- you will still have plenty of batter!

Now pour on the syrup and dig in!

download our recipe for buttermilk blueberry pancakes

recipe design and calligraphy: la Happy

photographer (and happy pancake eater) Matthew Land Studios