Creamy mini quiches

Since the weekend is around the corner, thought it was time to share another recipe. This one is a recent addition, inspired by Ai Lei's contribution of a quiche at Ad's bakeoff, which I was unable to attend *sniff sniff*!

Ai Lei kindly shared her recipe and I looked up a few recipes for quiche lorraine on the internet. My first attempt was ok but the process was quite a hassle as the recipe called for flash baking. The filling turned out fine but unlike Ai Lei's, the crust was hard and having it in a large pie dish made it messy to serve and store leftovers.

So I made some adjustments for my second attempt this week, the major one being that I used my trusty six-dish pie pan, the same one I use for my chicken pies. I also dispensed with the flash baking. They turned out pretty darn good, if I do say so myself!

Ok, enough talk, here's the recipe.

Ingredients: (pastry)

250g plain flour, sifted
100g butter
milk or water as needed
pinch of salt

Ingredients (filling):

2 or 3 slices back bacon
4 large eggs
150g canned button mushrooms, diced (optional)
300ml thickened cream
50ml milk
200g cheddar cheese, grated
1 tsp parsley
½ tsp black pepper

Quiche:

1. Fry bacon until brown. Chop finely and set aside.
2. Make pastry. Rub butter into flour until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Add salt.
3. Add milk or water as needed, combine into a firm dough.
4. Knead until smooth.
5. Shape pastry into base of mini pie moulds. Crimp sides.
6. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.
7. In a large bowl, whisk eggs, cream, milk, pepper and parsley.
8. Sprinkle bacon and mushrooms evenly in each pie mould.
9. Top up with grated cheese.
10. Fill each pie mould to the brim with cream mixture.
11. Bake for 27-32 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.

Here are a few extra tips:

• There's originally salt in the recipe but the bacon is already so salty that I feel you don't need it.
• The beauty of a quiche is that you can add any ingredients you like. We added mushrooms but you can also include onions, spinach or whatever you prefer.
• Finally, you can change the proportion of cream and milk to suit your preference.

This is what it looks like inside. Lesley-Anne walloped 1½ mini pies for dinner, Andre had 2. 'Nuff said.