Skillet Breakfast Pizza

Have I ever told you how much I love breakfast? I do. I could eat breakfast for every meal and never get tired of it.

Breakfast feeds the soul. One of my favorite meals is cooking up a hearty breakfast with biscuits, eggs, and bacon on a cold winter night. It's comfort food to the max.

So why not combine these favorite foods into one dish? Not breakfast casserole... been there, done that... This is a Breakfast Pizza cooked in a seasoned cast-iron skillet. This recipe is a piece of cake to make, and very satisfying.

Start with the pizza crust. This isn't just any crust... this is a crumbly biscuit crust that will hold your toppings. Mix flour, bread, and milk into a dough, then spread out your dough with a rolling pin, and place in the bottom of a cast iron skillet.

Next, the toppings! Bacon! Eggs! Cheese!

The finished product will blow your mind!

I hope you like it!


Skillet Breakfast Pizza

Crust:
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup flour
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp salt

Toppings:
6 eggs
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, divided
8 pieces bacon, sliced in 1/4-1/2 inch slices

Preheat oven at 450*.

For the crust, combine butter and flour together with finger tips. Combine until you get the texture of coarse sand, then add salt and milk. Mix, and then roll onto a flat surface, and knead for about a minute. Next, roll the dough out slightly, and place in a buttered cast-iron skillet. Then, use your fingers to spread the dough to evenly coat the bottom of the skillet. Bake at 425* until golden brown or about 18 minutes.

While your crust is baking, start on the bacon. Slice 8 pieces of bacon into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces, and cook in a skillet under medium heat until crispy. Set bacon aside, while reserving bacon grease in the pan. Next, whisk six eggs together, and pour into pan. Next, stir with spatula until eggs are scrambled and cooked.

After crust is finished, turn oven off, and turn broiler on high.

Top the crust with one cup of cheese, then add the eggs. Next, add another layer of cheese, and then complete with bacon on top.

My favorite tools...

Tis' the season for graduation! The office where I work threw myself and fellow graduates a lunch to celebrate 4 years of college. ...and we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.

I knew it would be like this, see? Our office knows how to do it. We don't just celebrate, we go all out. In an effort to feel better about myself, I got up and ran 4 miles before work to compensate for the binge-eating I was about to behold.

A lot of times, people will ask me about my favorite tools to use in the kitchen, so I thought I'd share with you the things I can't live without!

#1: My iPhone.

It's true! More so Siri actually. Have you ever seen this Apple iPhone ad?



This is basically me in the kitchen. From setting timers, converting measurements, and asking how many calories are in the ingredients I use, there's no way I could make it in my kitchen without my iPhone.

#2. My cast-iron skillet.

I'm a southern boy... what can I say? And I use this skillet to cook up anything from biscuits, to chicken pot pie or skillet apple pie! If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, I'd suggest an investment, because it's not just the flavor they give your meals, it's also the texture as well. Joy the Baker wrote an excellent post on seasoning and cleaning your cast iron skillet.

#3. My Le Creuset.

This is definitely NOT a requirement to cook great meals in your kitchen, but I LOVE every single Le Creuset item I have. There's quality there that can't be matched... and no one is paying me to say that! The texture of the breads I cook, the casseroles I make are incomparable.

#4. My Kitchenaid.

Again, not something required, but definitely something loved. Whether I'm whipping up my fresh homemade whipped cream for my wife's Strawberry Cake, or making homemade cookies, my Kitchenaid is a staple in my kitchen. Recently, we celebrated my Mom's 50th birthday, and my wife and I were at my grandmother's house preparing for her surprise party, and I didn't realize she didn't have a stand mixer, so I literally had to whip homemade whipped cream by hand. It was the first time I'd ever done that, and I proudly boasted about it for days afterwards. So, like I said, it's not a necessity, but I love mine.

I could dig in to one of these right now...

I've got some great posts coming up over the next couple of weeks. Please accept my apologies for the lack of posts... I've been a busy dude. Between the end of the semester, and now finals... I've been pretty booked, but I want to stop... and say THANK YOU! ...for all of your support! It's overwhelming, and I feel blessed!

Lately...

... there's been a lot of this! Accounting has taken over my life... literally! The good news is it's almost over!

...and a lot of this! A food bloggers nightmare!

I have found a little time to cook for Ashlynn and I. This is a homemade pizza I definitely think you should try. It's a store-bought pizza dough, with a homemade sauce I'll tell you about further down, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, fresh roma tomatoes, and chicken. It was literally one of the best pizzas I've ever made.

My secret sauce:

2 cups Newman's Own Tomato and Basil Pasta Sauce
1 cup sour cream
1 T Oregano
1 T Thyme
3 cloves minced garlic

Mix, bring to a simmer for about 5 minutes, and your done!

Then there were these for Dessert! I call my adaptation of this recipe Chocolate Covered Strawberry Profiteroles because I changed the recipe slightly, but you can find the recipe I started with HERE!

Let's not forget Easter! Easter is a huge celebration for our church! We gather at a local basketball stadium on campus, and invite the entire community to join us. We house usually 20,000 people total every year! It's phenomenal!

I can't do this post without telling you about my new favorite place to eat! The City Cafe! I've only been for breakfast, but it's amazing! My favorite thing on the menu are their home fries, which are just thinly sliced potatoes fried... but man, they're good. I usually get the Preacher's Breakfast, which is Eggs, Bacon, Biscuits, and Grits for only... $3.09! The prices are incredible and the service is amazing as well!

Last, but not least, I can't believe graduation is almost here! Crazy how 3 and a half years have flown by! We're so ready for the next chapter in our life! Bring it!

Whole Grain Vanilla Bean Scones

It's Good Friday y'all! ...and these scones are the perfect way to start out your day... your snack... your lunch... or your dinner for that matter. I always talk about portion control on this blog... but...

I've got bad news...

I've had five of these scones since this morning! FIVE.

They're whole grain, so that makes it okay, right? Don't answer that.

Something about Spring gets me pumped. It makes me want to hike, go fishing, camp out, and take my wife on picnics with our dog.

...but my life these days has me consuming more of this than anything else. Ashlynn and I graduate in less than a month!... and the pressure is on! Projects, tests, assignments, presentations... you name it, it's due in the next 3 weeks.

But at least now I have something to go with the coffee!

These scones are light, buttery, and just sweet enough, and go perfect with a tall glass of Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

I hope you like it.


Whole Grain Vanilla Bean Scones


1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1 egg
3/4 cup Vanilla almond milk (Regular will do fine)
1 vanilla bean, scraped
1 T pure vanilla extract

for icing:

1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp water
1 T pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix together the vanilla bean, milk and egg in a small bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in the butter with a fork or by hand until the mixture has the texture of sand.

Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together until a wet dough forms.

Pat dough into a large rectangle on a baking sheet and cut into sixteen triangle pieces. Separate the pieces about an inch apart and bake for 16 minutes or until golden.

Let scones cool completely, then drizzle icing over scones, and serve!

Kountry Kitchen

I'm not even sure if Georgetown, Mississippi is on the map, but if you can find it, you HAVE to go to the Kountry Kitchen and try southern soul food at it's core!

Ashlynn and I went to Mississippi to celebrate my Mom's 50th birthday that's coming up tomorrow! While down there, my grandmother suggested we go out to eat at this place called the Kountry Kitchen, and am I glad she did!

They had every southern food I could think of. Fried catfish, chicken, cabbage... etc, etc.

...and some of the best sweet tea I've ever had!

I definitely think Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives should hit up this joint. It's practically in the middle of nowhere, but at 11:00 a.m. when they opened, their were cars down the street! I couldn't believe how busy they were, but once I took my first bite, I understood.

We ate good that day... no lie. After that we had a surprise birthday party for my mom with Ashlynn's Strawberry Cake in cupcake form, not to mention my grandmother's famous bread pudding. It turned out to be a great weekend!