The past several weeks I’ve been wanting to have friends over for brunch but morning soccer has cramped everyone’s style. So I settled on a compromise: I would make brunch for lunch, using mostly make-ahead recipes, and we’d gather at noon after all the soccer games were done. It went very well!
My special considerations for the menu were 1) a meatless main dish as one friend is vegetarian, and 2) things I could l make ahead of time completely or cook in half an hour between soccer and serving. I settled on the following:
Ina Garten’s Slow-Cooked Scrambled Eggs (see note below) Smooth and velvety because of butter and cream! Decadent!
Taste of Home German Sour Cream Twists Essentially a glazed doughnut with no frying!
Great Grandma’s Fruit Salad (Recipe below) A favorite of mine since I was a little girl in Michigan – kids adore it.
Pork sausages from Boulder Sausage A Colorado company!
The night before brunch I cracked all the eggs and measured the cream for the scrambled eggs into a very large mason jar that I left in the refrigerator overnight. The eggs took about 20 minutes to cook so I was able to do that right before our friends came over.
The twists are not difficult to make but they take a lot of time for dough to rest and pans to chill, so I baked them the evening before, let them cool completely on racks, then covered them with tea towels overnight. Next morning I glazed them before we left the house, leaving them uncovered on the countertop so the glaze could firm up while we were out.
I washed and cut up all of the fruit for the fruit salad the night before, placed it in the serving dish, covered and refrigerated it overnight. I made the glaze that evening too — it needs to cool completely before you add it to the fruit, so I refrigerated it in a glass dish overnight and mixed it into the fruit in the morning.
Note about the eggs: I make these eggs from the recipe in Ina’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style
Great Grandma's Fruit Salad
This glazed fruit salad is a favorite among kids and grownups. A people-pleaser for brunch and pot-luck meals. Easy to customize with your favorite fruit and you can also decide just how much glaze you want to add to it.
Ingredients
- 1 3.5 oz package vanilla cook-and-serve pudding
- 11 20 oz can pineapple tidbits (in its own juice)
- orange juice
Instructions
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Drain pineapple - save the juice (I pour it into a 2-cup measure). Add enough orange juice to make 1-1/2 cups. Whisk the pudding mix into the orange juice in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens (about 10 minutes).
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Cool completely before adding to fruit. This can be made ahead of time until you want to make your fruit salad -- this recipe makes enough glaze to cover 5-6 cups of fruit of your choice. My favorites: halved grapes, quartered strawberries, sliced bananas (glaze keeps them from turning brown!), mandarin orange segments, fresh blueberries and pineapple tidbits.
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The glaze will keep in the fridge for a week -- leftover glazed fruit salad will last in the fridge two to three days.