I love spending rainy days in the kitchen! Saturday, it was pouring rain and though the kitchen wasn’t mine, it was still fun! I attended “The Brunch Class” at The Gourmandise School of Sweets and Savories. We made Homemade Ricotta, a Broccoli Mushroom Cheddar Egg Bake, Homemade Lemon Curd, Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, a Mediterranean Frittata and Fluffy Ricotta Pancakes!
Of course, it didn’t hurt that class started with a cup of coffee and a Mimosa (or two…)

I went to class alone but was paired up with a very nice woman named Javi! (Hi, Javi!) We started with the Ricotta because it takes the longest. I’ve made Ricotta before, but their recipe is different from mine. It was still easy and ours came out beautifully!

I love getting new variations of recipes!

As the Ricotta was draining, we made the Broccoli Mushroom Cheddar Egg Bake. This is one of those dishes you can make the night before and let it sit overnight in the fridge. In the morning, pop it in a hot oven and an hour later you have breakfast!
We browned some onions and mushrooms in a small skillet…

Then we cut up these warm, amazing sourdough baguettes and spread them on a buttered baking dish. Thank goodness there was half a baguette left for of us to nibble as we were cooking! Mmmm… bread…

Next we beat eggs and milk together, then added onions and mushrooms, broccoli and cheddar cheese! We poured all of it over those wonderful bread chunks and it looked like this:

We wrapped everything in plastic and put it in the fridge for an hour so the bread had time to soak up all that eggy goodness!

The Lemon Curd to top our Ricotta pancakes was next! Lemon Curd has about a million different recipe variations! Seriously. Google it sometime and you’ll see. 🙂 This was a great version for pancakes. Very light and fluffy with a light tang from the lemon. Javi and I took turns whisking and this was the result!

Next up were the banana muffins! Now that I think about it, all these recipes would be perfect for my daughter. Everything is vegetarian friendly! We mixed bananas, sour cream and fresh vanilla in a food processor, then added eggs, lemon zest and pulsed it together. We added the typical dry ingredients and the most important ingredient – chocolate chips!

This is what it looked like when it was all together!

Into the baking cups! Can you see the flecks from the vanilla bean?

Delightful!

We took a break for a few minutes… What? Refresh my glass? If you insist.

We started the Mediterranean Frittata next. This was super cool! We roasted red peppers on the stove top!

After a few minutes they were blistered and toasty.

We put them in a plastic bag to steam while we chopped olives, zucchini, tomatoes and red onions.

We put it all together in a skillet to sauté, then we peeled and chopped the roasted red pepper and tossed that in too. We whisked eggs together, added feta, fresh basil, oregano and parmesan cheese.

While the frittatas were cooking, we made the last menu item – pancakes! We whipped egg whites until we had stiff peaks!

Then we folded the egg whites into the rest of the ingredients, including our beautiful ricotta from the beginning of class!

The pancakes were cooked on a hot, buttered griddle and topped with our lemon curd! I’ve never had ricotta pancakes before and these were fluffy with a rich, slightly nutty flavor from the cheese.

Everything came out of the oven and off the stove at the same time. You know what that means? Time to eat! A pancake with lemon curd…

Another muffin…

And a slice of our Mediterranean Frittata…

What a lovely (and delicious) way to spend a rainy morning! I know I’ll be trying these recipes with my family (and sharing with all of you) very soon!