Brunch + Puppies

I love a good potluck. Sharing and tasting other people's tasty food is what I call A Good Time. However, most of the ones I participate in end up being dinner potlucks. I'm not a morning person so a breakfast/brunch potluck has to be for an extra special occasion for me to get up early and cook. I jumped at the idea of an Easter Brunch since I always want to find an opportunity to bake this tasty breakfast treat.

The Maple-Bacon Biscuit Bake was love at first bite for me. I discovered the recipe a lil over a year ago from the King Arthur Baking Blog (one of my favorites). I even entered it in the NWS Bake-Off last year just to help fill out the Breakfast category and unexpectedly won that category (thanks King Arthur!). 


The best way to describe this breakfast entree is to say it's like sticky buns topped with bacon. And they're super simple to make. The most labor intensive part is cooking all the bacon (messy and always a chore for me). King Arthur suggests the easiest way is to cook the bacon in the oven set on top of a rack, which is on top of a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. I usually ignore the rack part since I don't think my cooling racks are oven proof (they came from the dollar bin at Target). So oven-baking bacon for me ends up being a greasy fatty mess, which usually results in bacon fat spilling all over my oven. BIG MESS.


I have now found myself chopping up the bacon into bits before it lands into my frying pan. I try to do this the night before I know I'm going to make the Maple-Bacon Biscuit Bake just to make the morning cooking time even shorter. 


The key to this recipe is to make sure you have a good non-stick cake pan. I have baked these biscuits in several different pans and have found out the very first pan I ever used was the best. The biscuit bake came out perfect.

Beginner's luck. 1st try: perfect! 

I used two pans for my bake-off biscuit bake, one was not a very non-stick pan and ran into a burnt mess. 

This Sunday's Biscuit Bake wasn't perfect since the middle section stuck a lil bit to my cake pan so I'm thinking maybe I might have to super grease the pan OR use parchment paper. 


So, how do they taste? The bacon topping isn't too sweet but has the right combo of maple syrup and brown sugar. The biscuits underneath the ooey gooeyness are mild but simply a good biscuit, not too buttery and not too bland. The biscuit bake is a good combo of salty/sweet and is a great new addition to the breakfast repertoire.


As for the other stars of the potluck, Twin Sista made some creamy, delicious scrambled eggs and Erin made tasty deviled eggs. 


To work off the brunch, Erin took us to her new favorite spot in Houston: The Boneyard. The Boneyard combines a dog park with a bar to create a truly unique place. Dogs can roam indoors and outdoors, while mingling with other four-legged friends and their owners. 

located at: 8150 Washington, Houston, Texas

My friends and I don't actually own a dog but we enjoyed sipping on passion fruit mimosas and watching all the funny dogs running around. Perfect Sunday afternoon.