Bake52: Asparagus and Cheese Mini-Quiche

Our first Bake52 post!!!  Don't you think this is so exciting?  I really do.

Clare was our host this week (thanks for hosting on the first week Clare!) and she picked quiche.  I am a quiche lover myself so I was pretty happy with her pick.  I have been wanting to make mini-quiche since my sister-in-law's baby shower 4 years ago.  I thought it would be fun to make for her shower, but decided maybe it would be too much work and I also didn't have a mini-muffin pan.  A lot changes in four years because I now have a mini-muffin pan.  And when I turned to the quiche pages of the book, there were mini-quiche instructions.  It's almost like it was meant to be.  Destiny.  And I don't mess with destiny.   

My only problem was that there weren't as many options for the mini-quiche, as far as ingredients, as there were for the pie-sized variety.  I decided to make a pie sized option work in  my mini-sized pastries.  I debated whether or not I should use my regular pie crust recipe or one from the book.  I was ready to use one from the book but I didn't realize there were more than two options.  And of the two I looked at, I didn't have the right ingredients so I went with the usual.  Jen later informed me that there were more than two options.  Oops.  I should have flipped the page.  

All in all, it went pretty well.  The mini-quiche recipe is a double pie crust recipe with half of the filling ingredients.  If you wanted to make the mini-version, you would adjust the ingredients accordingly.  Clare has the recipe posted on her site.  I used about a half of a bunch of asparagus, chopped 1/4 inch.  The only thing I might do differently for next time would be to grill the asparagus before putting it into the quiche.  It was good, but I think the grilling might have added extra flavor.  And now that I have made mini-quiche, I would probably stick with the pie-size most of the time.  Especially as an entree for dinner.  When I started making them I thought that the mini-size might be good since we are trying to cut back a bit on calories, but then when I stopped to realize that there were only half the filling ingredients (with the only good-for-you things in the dish) and double the pie crust, my error was obvious.  I did use fat free half and half.  How's that for healthy?  :)

I rolled the double crust pie dough out to 1/8 of an inch, as specified in the recipe.  I used a ruler, because I have found that I don't know how thick things really are otherwise.  Especially things that are rolled out.  The recipe also called for a 3 inch round cutter to be used.  I measured mine and it was more like 2 3/4 inches but I thought it was perfect and I had exactly 24 circles without having to roll it out again.

 Kind of pull all the sides together and place in muffin tin.

It took me a few to get the hang of it and embrace the wrinkles.  After noticing that the wrinkles around the edges kind of made it prettier.  Or that's what I told myself anyway so that I could embrace it.  The first few I did (on the right) were flatter because I kind of manipulated the dough that way and pressed it flat.  They did hold more of the filling than the "pretty" ones.

 After pre-baking the pie dough at 375 for about 15 minutes, and letting it cool slightly, place a few pieces of asparagus into each shell.

 I tried using a measuring cup to pour the ingredients but settled on a measuring tablespoon.  It's hard to only pour 1/2 -1 tablespoon in with a measuring cup, especially with the cheese mixed in with the eggs and half and half.  I had some left over that I will probably use for breakfast tomorrow.  Bake for 10 minutes and then let cool for 20.

If you want to check out what everyone else made there are links to all of their sites in the tab at the top called "Bake52 Crew."  I can't wait for next week. :)