If you haven’t guessed it by now, I am a foodie. I know that eating is supposed to just be for sustenance, but come on, it is just too good to eat only for one’s survival. We eat it to celebrate, to compensate, and to appreciate. I am aware it can be a bad habit, but this time I say oh well. Oh and I also use it as a gift. I believe it is one of the cheapest ways to make someone really feel special and excited so when I was digging around in my brain trying to figure out something nice to do for my pregnant cousin (with her second), it should come as no surprise that I thought of food. This time I chose breakfast, but days before her breakfast gift, she notified me that she would be going in to work for a bit that morning. Instead of cancelling completely, I decided to make her brunch, but to go.
Baking sweets is probably my favorite form of cooking so of course, I started with this coffee cake recipe I had on my pinterest. I was trying to be as cost effective as possible with this brunch idea so I swapped out the requested Amaretto, which I did not have in stock, with rum. It still came out great, but the rum flavor was very strong despite needing to cook the cake for over an hour to compensate for a faulty oven.
I first cut the cake in half so one half could stay at home with us to enjoy. Then I cut slices of the remaining half and wrapped them up to go.
Next up is the cherry tomato feta cheese quiche. I don’t have a recipe listed because my exhaustion led me to freestyle the recipe. I prepared a crust from scratch and blind baked it for 20 minutes. The filling is egg, heavy cream, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil. You just mix it together in a bowl and pour into the crust. Note from the picture the overflow of egg mix, this is what happens when you don’t use your pie weights.
It still came out delicious and was actually easy to remove from these tarlet springform pans.
Next up was a delicious parfait. I added each layer carefully and one at a time so that it can have that nice layered look. I enlisted the help of my son since I stole his granola cereal (it is just plain granola so no fancy cherry granola as the recipe lists) for the treat.
It was easy and looked so delicious when I was finished, I somehow had the strength to not devour the four that I made and give one to my son who, honestly, deserved it and my mother-in law. The final two went into the basket. In order to save time and money, I opted out of finding a clear plastic cup with a lid and just tightly covered the cups in plastic wrap and tied a plastic spoon to the front.
The final touch was to present it in a ready to travel picnic basket and add some fruit. I have to say, I wanted this one for myself, but it was really nice to see my pregnant cousin opening that basket with the biggest grin on her face.
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