IDEAS FOR A CHRISTMAS DAY BRUNCH

Christmas brunches can be so much fun!

Brunches are not as formal as an evening Christmas dinner, and they are easy to make pretty and festive.

The food can be extremely tasty and delicious, yet it is less expensive than cooking a huge heavy meal.

I think people relate to this style of entertaining more than the type where you overeat heavy foods and have to sit down and make long focused conversation for several hours while eating.

The flexible schedule of not breakfast and not exactly lunch; makes people relax and enjoy their time without stressing. No one seems to be clock watching. It is a good way to wait while you are anticipating an evening around the Christmas tree later.

BRUNCHES ARE MORE CAREFREE

You can just ease into a brunch with lots of help-yourself foods already prepared and setting around the room for people to nibble on as they sip their coffee.

After people find a cozy spot to park in the kitchen, you can prepare the main dish for everyone one-at-a-time as they sit and enjoy Christmas music in the background and unhurried fellowship as they all catch up on one another’s last few days of the season.

Just say a blessing before you start cooking, and hand a plate with a portion of the food from your main dish (hot-from-the stove) to each person as it becomes cooked.

There is something about doing this that relieves the tension in the room. Everyone just lounges around and relaxes while you flip the pancakes or prepare the eggs.

MORNINGS ARE GOOD TIMES FOR SOCIAL GATHERINGS

People are always fresh in the mornings, the stresses of the holidays haven’t had time to bog them down yet.

If you are doing the cooking and inviting guests to show up after giving them time to sleep late, yet still enjoy a late enough breakfast that they will not need to prepare lunch before Christmas dinner; I’m betting they will all be very happy-go-lucky and excited to be waiting around your kitchen table.

If you don’t want to spend all morning around a hot stovetop; prepare your sausage and bacon ahead. Just warm it up in the oven as you prepare the main dish on the stove. Maybe your family doesn’t eat pork. You can substitute turkey sausage or bacon instead. Cook it all ahead the day before, refrigerate, then heat up in the oven while you are doing other things on the day of the brunch. Anything you can do ahead will help.

I like to even have the table already set and ready to go when the first guest walks in the door. That leaves more time for visiting instead of cooking.

There are people (like my Mom) who do not like to drive after dark. Having a 10 a.m. brunch is exactly what they want to do. They can linger as long as they like after brunch. Yet; they can be safely home before the sun sets on a happy and relaxing day of your Christmas celebration. The evening will be full of cozy, happy memories of a day well spent with those you care about.

THE MORE THE MERRIER

Have you noticed how breakfast foods seem to stretch further than any other meal? If a few extra people drop in unexpectedly; you can easily add another egg, or piece of toast or a biscuit to the dishes you already have. No trouble at all.

We’ve done this “brunch thing” with my Mom for several years now. She loves it. Our grown children who are able to make it on Christmas Eve morning come over to join in with us; even though they will be back around our immediate family Christmas tree that evening.

They love stretching the seasonal family celebration into a whole day instead of just one evening, and getting to focus on their grandmother (great-grandmother for my grands who attend.)

CHRISTMAS DAY BRUNCH MENU SUGGESTIONS

So what do we want to serve this year?

Start out by offering your guests a good hot cup of coffee. I purchased a special Christmas blend in honor of our celebration. Be sure to have sugar and creamer available. I’m also going to serve orange juice and water with slices of lemon.

Let’s pick a main dish.

I’m feeling ambitious.

For the main dish I’ve found a new recipe from a blog called Spoon Fork Bacon. I’m sure they won’t mind me posting a link from their blogsite so that we all can look it over together.

The recipe I like is called CORNED BEEF HASH EGGS BENEDICT. You can find the recipe at this link: https://www.spoonforkbacon.com/corned-beef-hash-eggs-benedict/.

CORNED-BEEF HASH EGGS BENEDICT

I did change this recipe up a bit to reflect my own taste.

They liked their corned beef in cubes and I prefer it shredded. I used shredded corned-beef instead of cubes. They cooked and diced the corned-beef in a skillet to make it crispy. However; I prepared mine on the stovetop in a pot full of boiling water. I let the water simmer while covered for three hours once it came to a boil.

This long cooking time on the stovetop makes the corned-beef shreds very moist and tender. I added the spice-packet that comes with the corned-beef package into my water as the corned-beef cooked in the pot on simmer with the lid covering the food.

When the meat was done, I let it cool. Next I shredded the meat with a fork. I prepared the corned-beef ahead, froze it until needed, then thawed it on the day of our brunch.

The original recipe called for the corned-beef to be sautéed for 2 minutes before adding potatoes. I rearranged this part of the cooking schedule a bit too. Instead I sautéed the finely chopped potatoes in a skillet with oil over medium high heat first, for about five minutes.

While the potatoes were cooking, I reheated the corned beef shreds in the microwave for about 2 minutes. When the potatoes were almost done, I mixed the corned-beef, salt, pepper, onions, garlic, red bell pepper and chives into the skillet. These items all cooked together for approximately 10 minutes.

It takes a lot of time and careful attention to make hollandaise sauce the old fashioned way (as called for with this recipe.)

If you are determined to have everything from scratch, then please go ahead and follow the directions in the referenced recipe to make your own hollandaise sauce.

I’m planning on concentrating on my guest as much as possible for this brunch. As I’m preparing their food, we will be talking and exchanging Christmas greetings. I don’t want to overcomplicate anything that is distracting from the moments activities.

Because of this; I’m going to take an easy route for this Christmas brunch and use a mix of already prepared hollandaise sauce.

Easy and simple are my motto for the day.

If you decide to take this short cut too; just follow the directions on the hollandaise packet. I’ve found the taste of several prepared mixes to be just as good, if not better, than making the sauce from scratch.

The instructions in the original recipe from Spoon Fork Bacon for poaching eggs are great. If you are like me though; you probably do not poach eggs that often. I would recommend trying a few before this brunch to get the hang of it. It is an acquired skill; but you can develop it.

If you are still very worried that your eggs will not all poach right on the day of your brunch; you could layer your corned-beef hash eggs Benedict in a casserole dish and top with perfectly poached eggs (just throw away those that don’t turn out and keep trying until you have made enough servings.)

Toast the English muffin and turn one half up in the dish. Lay enough English muffin halves down in the bottom of a casserole dish to meet the number of people you are serving. Top that with the potatoes and corned-beef. Make a third layer over each muffin half and hash mix with a poached egg on top of each serving.

Do not pour the hollandaise until time to eat.

Heat the casserole dish for 20 minutes in the oven, then spoon the hollandaise over each serving allowing the poached eggs to show through around the edges. Sprinkle the whole casserole dish with fresh chopped chives for a garnish. Let everyone help themselves. That would be the easy, not hard to mess up way to serve this tasty and so-worth-the-trouble dish.

But if you are brave, and have the time and energy; cook each dish as a separate order and prepare each layer accordingly.

Toast your English muffins ahead of time and add the warmed hash mix, then top with the fresh poached egg. Top the egg with hollandaise sauce and chopped fresh chives. Serve each portion while hot and ready from the stovetop. Then move on to making more for the other guests plates.

You can have all of the other sides for the brunch already prepared and setting around so the crowd can add what they wish to their plates whenever the main dish is received.

TWELVE FRUIT SALAD

Our menu this year will include a 12 fruit salad. This is a salad which we have used on many other special occasions. I know we have shared on this blog during the Pentecost season. It is the best fruit salad recipe I’ve ever discoverd.

I love to serve this fruit salad at Pentecost every year because the twelve fruits are symbolic of the fruits of The Holy Spirit. This colorful salad will also be great for our Christmas Brunch. It is always served very cold and will present an interesting contrast to the main dish that is being served very hot.

Here is the link to the article from our Pentecost blogpost. It contains the fruit salad recipe. Sorry to mix Pentecost with Christmas here; but maybe it will give us a more “spirit-filled” brunch: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/pentecost-in-the-park/.

For our bread choices, I’m going to serve some cranberry muffins. Also we will have a batch of Mini Cheese Biscuits with a few special butters and jellies to choose from. Look up my Pinterest pages at this link: https://www.pinterest.com/search/my_pins/?q=butters&rs=typed&term_meta[]=butters%7Ctyped for “butters” if you want to jazz up your butter choices. We have used so many great recipes from those pins.

Here is the muffin recipe I want to use:

ORANGE CRANBERRY MUFFINS

Ingredients for Muffins:

½ cup melted unsalted butter

½ cup sugar

¼ cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

½ cup yogurt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Zest if two oranges

1-3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons orange juice

2 tablespoons milk

1-1/2 cups frozen cranberries (do not thaw)

Ingredients for Orange Glaze:

1 cup confectioner’s sugar

3 tablespoons orange juice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare your muffin tray with cooking spray. 

Beat butter until smooth and creamy.  Turn mixer to high speed and add both sugars.  Add eggs, yogurt and vanilla extract.  When all ingredients are mixed well add orange zest and blend. 

In another bowl mix dry ingredients; the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Whisk the wet ingredients from the first bowl into the dry ingredients, mixing well.  Add orange juice and milk, then mix in the cranberries. 

Sprinkle brown sugar in the bottom of each muffin tin.  Pour mix into muffin tins, filling each to the top.

Bake for 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. 

While muffins bake, mix together the glaze.  Drizzle glaze over the muffins after they are baked while they are still hot. 

The other “bread” side dish will be made from the following biscuit recipe:

MINI CHEESE TEA BISCUITS

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1 cup sugar

2 cups shredded cheese

1-1/2 cups buttermilk

2 eggs well-beaten

8 tablespoons softened butter

3 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all ingredients well and spoon dough into a prepared mini muffin pan. Bake 15-20 minutes. Make about 24 tea biscuits.

The muffins and the mini tea biscuits can be prepared ahead and frozen. Just thaw them and heat them again right before serving time.

Just for fun (and to make all of those with a sweet tooth happier,) I always like to add a festive and colorful assortment of cookies, fudge, candies, etc. on a small wooden board to the table. This counts as dessert.

My Mom is bringing her famous bananna bread too!

This brunch should turn out to be a whole lot of fun.

Merry Christmas Everyone!