Egg Breakfast Muffins with Cheese and Peppers

Mornings in our house used to be a scramble. Someone was always looking for their shoes, someone else wanted a different breakfast, and I was trying to get something warm on the table before we all had to leave. Then I started making a tray of these egg muffins on a Sunday evening, and everything changed. A dozen little baked eggs, full of cheese and sweet peppers, that you can grab from the fridge and warm in a minute — they are the best thing I have done for our mornings in years.

These egg breakfast muffins are like tiny frittatas baked in a muffin tin, and they are as easy as they sound. You whisk eggs with cheese, peppers and a few herbs, pour the mixture into a tin, and twenty minutes later you have breakfast for the whole week. They travel well, they reheat beautifully, and you can change the filling to whatever you have in the fridge. If you want a morning that runs itself, this is the recipe to learn.

Watch: Egg Breakfast Muffins with Cheese and Peppers

Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 20 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 8 large eggs
• 100 g grated cheddar cheese
• 1 red pepper, finely diced
• 1 green pepper, finely diced
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced
• 100 ml milk
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, for greasing the tin
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• A pinch of smoked paprika
• A small handful of fresh parsley, chopped

Method

1. Heat the oven to 190°C (170°C fan) and grease a 12-hole muffin tin well with olive oil, or line it with paper cases. Egg muffins love to stick, so be generous with the oil — a good greasing now saves a lot of scraping later.
2. Dice the peppers small — they need to be small enough to cook through in twenty minutes — and slice the spring onions. Put the peppers and spring onions in a bowl with the grated cheddar, and toss them together so the cheese coats the vegetables; this stops the vegetables sinking to the bottom.
3. Crack the eggs into a large jug or bowl, add the milk, the smoked paprika and a good pinch of salt and pepper, and whisk until the yolks and whites are completely mixed. Whisking well is what makes the muffins light instead of dense, so give them a good minute.
4. Spoon the pepper and cheese mixture into the muffin holes, dividing it evenly between the twelve, and press it down lightly. Each hole should be about half full of filling before the egg goes in.
5. Pour the egg mixture over the filling in each hole, filling them to about three-quarters full. The muffins will rise as they cook, so leave a little room at the top — overfilling is how you get egg running across the tin.
6. Sprinkle the chopped parsley over the top, and put the tin in the oven. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until the muffins are puffed up, golden on top and set in the middle — they should not wobble when you shake the tin gently.
7. Take the tin out of the oven and let the muffins cool in the tin for five minutes. They will sink a little as they cool, and that is completely normal; they are still soft and warm inside.
8. Run a knife around the edge of each muffin and lift them out carefully. Serve warm, with a little extra parsley, or cool them completely and pack them for the week ahead.

Serving and Storage

Serve these muffins warm from the oven, with a piece of fruit or a slice of toast, and they make a proper breakfast. They are just as good cold, straight from the fridge, and they are a wonderful thing to pack in a lunch box. Once cool, keep them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days, or freeze them for up to a month — warm them in the microwave for thirty seconds, or in a hot oven for five minutes, and they come back to life beautifully. Make a double batch and you will never be stuck for a morning again.

Tips

A few things I have learned along the way. Grease the tin properly, or use silicone cases, because egg muffins stick to everything. Keep the pieces of pepper small and the filling evenly spread, so every muffin has some of everything. And do not be afraid to change the filling — ham, mushrooms, spinach and feta all work, as long as you keep the egg and the cheese the same. These are the kind of recipe that gets better the more you make it.

That is breakfast for the week, made in half an hour, and mornings that run themselves — what more could you want from a dozen eggs and a muffin tin? Make a batch this Sunday, and see how different Monday morning feels. If you try them, tell us on our Contact page; we love hearing what home cooks do with the recipes here.