Mini Quiche

I was invited to a joint birthday/mother's day party yesterday, and I wanted to bring some food.  I love excuses to play in the kitchen...  I came home from school with 3 gallon ziploc bags full of spinach straight out of the garden last week, and I knew I wouldn't be able to eat that many salads by myself!  I thought about making a giant salad to bring, but salad is boring.  And not all that much fun to make.  So I decided to try making mini quiches.  There were several times during the process where I was rather afraid that it would turn out disastrous and I would end up wasting all that spinach, but I lucked out.  The quiches were delicious. 

lots and lots of fresh spinach, just washed

 I cooked the spinach with nothing but the water that was still clinging to the leaves from the washing

it drives me crazy that so much fresh spinach becomes so little cooked spinach...

make sure you sqeeze as much water as possible out of the cooked spinach

Pie Shell

I've always used crisco for my pie crusts...but it's been awhile, and when I unearthed the crisco from the depths of a cupboard and opened it...it looked kind of...orange.  So I figured I had better use butter instead.

1/2 c butter

1/2 c wheat flour

1 c white flour

1/2 tsp salt

3-5 tbsp cold water

I put the salt and butter in a mixing bowl, then cut the butter up into chunks before adding the flour.  Then I used a pastry cutter to break up the butter smaller and mix it into the flour.  I added the water one tbsp at a time, until the dough seemed like it would all hold together...I forget how many I used, but it's usually about 5. 

I rolled the dough out and used a small glass to cut rounds, which I then put into a mini-cupcake tray.

I baked the the crust at 425 for about 15 minutes.

The Egg Mixture

4 eggs

1/3 c heavy cream

handful of shredded cheese

garlic powder

salt

basil

The Quiche

While the crusts were baking/cooling, I cooked some bacon.  When the crusts were cool, I put a little bit of spinach in each one, then poured the egg mixture on top.  I put bacon pieces on top of half of the quiches. 

pouring the egg stuff got a lil messy...

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.

I was worried that they would get stuck in then pan but they actually popped out pretty easily, all I had to do was stick a knife around the edge of each one.

Deliciousness.