Breakfast Ideas and Tips for a Small Crowd
We’ve collected some Breakfast ideas and Tips you can use when you serve a small crowd, like at a family reunion or birthday brunch.
If you read this post,
you know that we had a family reunion at my son’s farm in Nebraska.
The man of my house still muses at times how we could have made this “vacation” easier for our son and DIL. He especially feels we should have done more planning for the breakfasts, so the burden of preparation didn’t always fall on her. We tried to help where we could, but sometimes that help seemed so inadequate.
We are left hoping that the good memories outweigh the exhaustion and overwhelm I’m sure they felt entertaining 7 extra people for 4 days.
So this experience left me thinking about the breakfasts they made, and how well planned they were.
These are the breakfast menus:
- Breakfast Hash Brown/Egg Pizza, Pillsbury Caramel Sticky Buns, blueberries and cream
- Sour Cream Pancakes, Homemade Cream Syrup, Loaded Breakfast Scramble, grapes
- Cinnamon and Raspberry Rolls (baked and brought by our AZ DIL), bacon, apple wedges
- Biscuits and Sausage Gravy, mixed-fruit slush cups
Note: the dishes in gold type are links to the recipes.
Tips for planning ahead:
We didn’t have time to do all these plan ahead tips, but if you have time it will save a lot of last minute work.
- Make a list of each ingredient for each recipe and buy in advance. She bought all the cans of Pillsbury ahead for the recipes for the first breakfast.
- Mix your pancake dry ingredients ahead and cook and refrigerate the syrup. On the other hand, these are easily made while the rest of the family sets the table, gets around for breakfast, and empties last night’s dishwasher.
- Have the vegetables and sausage for the Loaded Breakfast Scramble prepped and refrigerated (frozen).
- Bake the bacon in the oven on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. You can cook lots of bacon at one time, and there’s no messy clean up.
- Freeze the Fruit Cups ahead, either individually, or if you don’t have time for that, in a covered bowl the size you’ll need for the breakfast.
- A large supply of paper table products on hand to cut down on dishwashing.
What made her breakfasts extra special:
- She has free-range hens on her farm that lay delicious brown eggs. You need eggs, they’re right there in the nesting boxes every evening.
- Fresh greens and herbs like mint and scallions growing in her garden.
- Milk and cream from a neighbor’s Jersey cow. The neighbor has the cow because her son needs something in his diet that only Jersey milk can provide. Because a Jersey is very high-producing, she has extra to sell.
- Eating on the front porch in the fresh morning sunshine. And watching the children feed the leftovers to Frieda who jumped as she shook a paw for her food. Very efficient, that pup.
A couple of recipes to try:
Sour Cream Pancakes
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Instructions
- Heat a cast iron griddle on medium-low heat while mixing batter.
- Whisk all the dry ingredients together.
- Plop the sour cream on top of the flour.
- Whisk the eggs and vanilla, and pour over mixture.
- Stir just until mixed. Overmixing will make hard pancakes.
- Melt butter in skillet, and pour the pancakes. Flip when bubbly.
Homemade Cream Syrup
Ingredients
- 1 cup light syrup
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup cream
- 1 tsp. vanilla
Instructions
- Cook syrup and sugar together until it strings.
- Heat cream till hot, but not boiling.
- Let both cool awhile, separately. Then mix together and add vanilla.
