Blogtober Day 9: Quickest, Easiest, Yummiest Cheese & Tomato Quiche

 Hi Honeys, 

How are you today?  Well, I hope and staying warm 💗 Well, we've reached day 9 of Blogtober, we're into the second week already!  Time really does fly when you're having fun 😊    

On to today's post then and have I got a delicious treat for you! It's essentially a little bit of a cheat version of a fabulous quiche, made easier and a lot quicker, so it's perfect when you want dinner in a hurry and it really is so easy to make it practically makes itself 😊

Do you love quiche honeys?  I do.  This ones a little different though. It doesn't have the usual "quiche-like" shape, such as those baked in a traditional flan dish and it's made super quickly because it uses a roll of ready made shortcrust pastry from the chiller unit of the supermarket.  Shameful I know.  I love homemade pastry but there are times when you want something delicious but you don't want to grow old waiting for dinner to be ready 😄

This is designed to be put together quickly, baked and enjoyed.  It's beyond yummy when served with a huge dish of crunchy, green salad and maybe some garlic bread 😋      

Let's get started then shall we?  To the kitchen and into our pinnies dear ones...

Ready-In-A-Flash Cheese & Tomato Quiche...

Ingredients:

1 sheet of ready made (unsweetened) shortcrust pastry 

(usually sold boxed and rolled up in it's own parchment/baking paper)  

3 to 4 medium to large Tomatoes

2 balls of Mozzarella cheese

4 medium eggs 

Grated cheddar cheese to top 

Italian herbs or fresh basil (yum!) (optional) 

Directions: 

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 C or 320 F or gas mark 3.

2. Fetch a cookie sheet/flat baking sheet, open the pastry, gently unroll the sheet of pastry and lay it on the baking tray.  The one I buy now and again from the supermarket is sold as a sheet, rolled up in its own baking paper so that it just needs to be unrolled and placed onto the baking tray on it's own parchment, but if yours isn't, place baking parchment/grease proof paper on the baking tray, roll out your pastry and place it onto the baking tray. 

3. Since we're going to bake the sheet of pastry "blind" - that is to say, we're going to place another sheet of baking paper on top of it and weight the top sheet down using ceramic baking beans if you have them but if not, don't worry, just use a couple of handfuls of rice. You don't need to use too much either, a little will be fine.  The rice can always be placed into a container to be used again next time you make pastry.

4. Very carefully place the tray with your pastry into the oven, on the middle shelf, for 12-14 minutes.    

  

5. Even more carefully (it's hotter than it looks!) remove your pastry from the oven and allow it to cool before very gently removing your baking beans or rice from the top sheet.  The baking beans can go back into their container or (if you've used rice) you could carefully lift the paper and pour the rice into a container for next time.  

When this is done, gently remove the top sheet of baking/grease proof paper (it might stick so care is needed.)  Place your pastry back into the oven for a further 2 or 3 minutes, no longer, just until the surface is a light golden brown.     

6.  This is when it gets fun! 😊  Fetch your tomatoes honeys (I chill mine in the fridge, it makes them easier to slice) and very carefully slice them.  Feel free to use a little or a lot (as you can see we love tomatoes) they're a very healthy treat since they're full of an antioxidant called lycopene  as well as being a wonderful source of vitamin C and potassium. 

7. Carefully arrange your tomato slices across the top of your pastry sheet...

8. Next, we fetch a mixing bowl and our eggs, beating the eggs together until combined.  Sit the bowl to one side for a few minutes and next, drain and cut the mozzarella into small pieces or you could grate the mozzarella instead (to see how, read this post honeys, it's so easy and you end up with a much lighter mozzarella.)  

Alternatively, you could just buy a pack of grated mozzarella instead but it tends to be more expensive than grating it at home and I've never bought grated mozzarella that's as light as when you do it yourself. 

9. Add your diced or grated mozzarella to your beaten eggs and mix very gently till all of the cheese is combined with the egg.  At this stage, if you'd like to (I usually do but somehow forgot to when I made this one) add a few sprinkles of Italian herbs.  

From the spice rack is fine but if you're blessed to have fresh basil on hand, adding some fresh basil (roughly chopped) to your cheese and eggs mixture makes this quiche heavenly 😋   

10. Pour your egg and cheese mixture over the top of the tomatoes, using a fork to make sure the egg mixture has coated all of the tomatoes.  Top generously with grated cheddar cheese (or any other medium soft cheese - I'm Scottish so for me it has to be cheddar 😍)

11. Return the baking tray to the oven and cook until the egg mixture is set.  You should be able to (carefully! hot cheese is like molten lava!) poke the middle with a skewer.  Cooking should take between 16-18 mins.  

12. The result will be too delicious for words honeys.  Perfect shortcrust pastry with the tastiest (and if you did happen to have that fresh basil, perfectly heavenly) gooiest, most wonderful cheesy goodness for a topping 😋   

Enjoy! 

If this has put you in the mood for more quiche,why not try this two cheese and red onion version...

You can find the recipe here (as well as a recipe for perfect homemade shortcrust pastry)

Or, why not try this mouth-watering spinach & feta cheese version too...

 

Again, honeys, you can find the recipe here and again it's made using homemade pastry but you could easily swap it for shop bought to hurry the process along.  When food tastes this good, your loved ones won't want to be waiting around for dinner 💖

Well, that's all from me for today dear ones, but I'll be back tomorrow for day 10 of Blogtober.  Hope to see you then, till next time, stay warm and safe everyone, hugs always xx