Quiche Lorraine

I have made mini quiche Lorraines in the past, however, not for many years and therefore no longer remember which recipe I used to use. So I did a quick search online and found a recipe on the BBC Good Food Website. 

I made the pastry the night before, just to save me a task, the recipe doesn't even state to place it in the fridge at all but I've always been told to cool pastry before rolling (prevent shrinkage) and I wanted to try and minimise tasks on the day. 

To make the pastry I mixed together flour and margarine until a breadcrumb like mixture and then added water to bring the mixture together. This was then wrapped in pastry and placed in the fridge overnight. 

When ready to make the quiches I got my mum to roll out the icing and cut them out using an 8cm cutter which is the correct size for a cupcake tin. I wanted to make mini bitesize quiches, I suspect the recipe is for larger quiches, however, it doesn't state this anywhere. 

Pastry cases ready to be filled

While mum was doing that I prepared the filling. I combined the milk and egg in a jug and then added the cheese. I then fried the bacon, onion and tomatoes. No where on the recipe does it say to chop these up but since I clearly wasn't going to get 1 rasher into 24 cases I guessed this step was missing. Gary chopped up the onion and the tomatoes into little pieces for me and I cubed up the bacon. I ended up using double quantity of onion and bacon to ensure there was enough mixture for all the cases and to balance out with the tomato. 

Filled with the fried ingredients

Close up view of the case with filling, no liquid added yet

Once this was fried I then spooned this into the pastry cases (which don't need prebaking) and carefully poured the liquid mixture on top. I found this quite tricky as the cheese and egg made it come out in chunks. If I was to make these again I would grate the cheese up more finely, which I think would help. 

The quiches were then baked in the oven for around 30 minutes until the tops were golden brown and they were nice and firm. 

Mini Quiches are cooling

I served this in a butterfly basket 3 tiered stand having had a night in the fridge. 

Stand in the left, bottom layer, contains the quiches ready to eat. 

Verdict: I really enjoyed these and have happily finished off the extras we had. The balance of the filling was good making them not too eggy but certainly not dry and I like them being that small size. For me I would give them 9/10. Gary gave them 8/10 and stated he would have preferred them warm but they were much nicer than the store bought equivalent  I would agree with this, I'm not usually a fan of quiche and wouldn't choose it but homemade is completely different and so easy. No excuse not to make them!!