{Sausage & Egg} Baked Breakfast Cups

Good morning!  Becca here with a great, quick to get in the oven, hot breakfast for you & your family.  I've been trying really hard to fix a good, protein-packed breakfast; I can it makes a big difference for myself and the children (some of them more than others :) when we start the day off right.  They love both scrambled eggs and boiled eggs, but I get tired of them after a while, so I made these baked egg 'muffins' as they called them, and they were really good.  Each of us ate two with our fruit, even my baby (I can still call him that at 14 months, right?!).  I mix up several pounds of my Homemade Breakfast Sausage at a time and then either make sausage patties or just crumble it into the skillet and cook it before putting it into the freezer so it's all ready to go when I need it.  It takes the same amount of dishes to make either 3 pounds or 1 pounds of sausage, and I love having it already cooked. 

I put the {Sausage & Egg} in the cute little parenthesis because the sausage & rotel combination I used can definitely changed to suit your family's tastes.  I think green onions & cooked, diced bacon would be amazing, as would mushrooms & chopped asparagus with a bit of Parmesan maybe, or even just eggs and cheese with a little salt & pepper.  Or eggs, diced ham, and swiss cheese.  Be creative!  Just be sure that the meat is precooked, and check on the oven ever minute or two after ten minutes to make sure they don't get burned.

{Sausage & Egg} Baked Breakfast Cups - makes 12 cups easily

8 large eggs
1 pound breakfast sausage (I use Homemade Breakfast Sausage)
1 can (10 ounces) rotel

Preheat oven to 375.

Crack eggs into large bowl (a great job for kids!) and beat well*, until eggs are all a pale yellow color.

Stir in remaining ingredients (sausage and rotel). 

Spray muffin tins with cooking spray*. 

Pour egg mixture into muffin cups.  I use a soup ladle, or dry measuring cup with a handle to do this quickly & easily.  Be sure to fill them fairly equally, so they'll bake evenly.

Bake for 10-15 minutes.  After the first 10, check every minute or two so they don't burn.  The tops should puff up like a traditional muffin, and then begin to fall a bit when they're done.

*I have an old-fashioned manual egg beater like this one that works perfectly for this.
*Instead of cooking sprays, which can have all sorts of chemicals in them, I prefer to use an olive oil mister.