Mini Ham & Cheese Quiche with Caramelized Onions

Mini Ham and Cheese Quiche with Caramelized Onions – A mini, buttery pastry crust filled with a mixture of eggs, cream, diced ham, gruyere cheese, and caramelized onions. These small little quiche are perfect for serving at parties and brunches. 

Oh man…Easter is almost here, guys! I am so ready to dig into some rich, creamy chocolate. I have a huge chocolate peanut butter egg waiting for me to eat the second I wake on Easter morning. And then I’ll probably be making my favorite chocolate cake on the planet for breakfast. Yay!

If you’re new to the blog, I gave up chocolate for lent. It’s been strugglesville for the last 40 days and, man, am I ready it to be over. Clearly.

Today’s recipe is also a great one to serve on Easter: mini ham and cheese quiche with caramelized onions. It’s an adaptation of the first-ever quiche I made, which happen to be on Easter. I had a go-big-or-go-home attitude that year so I just had to make this deep-dish quiche from Tyler Florence. He made it look easy enough so why not?

Well, I failed to realize how long this baby took to bake in the oven. Sure, the recipe says it cooks for 1 hour and 45 minutes but scroll to the bottom and it says you also need to let it cool for 30 minutes so it can set. Otherwise, you’ll have a gloopy mess when you try to cut it. My family was not pleased about eating late, I’ll just say that.

But there was no denying the rich, creamy, buttery flavors of this quiche so I didn’t want to eliminate it from my repertoire completely just because it’s annoying to bake. Therefore, I opted of making this quiche into mini bites instead of a huge deep-dish. It cut out 1 1/2 hours of time! Man, did they turn out beautifully, or what?!

As I mentioned above, this quiche is super rich and creamy and buttery. But worth every bite! I could only handle a few before needing a break but my husband was eating them all night long. This recipe was definitely one of his favorites.

The best part about the quiche, in my opinion, is the crust. It is so crispy and buttery, as it should be, but it is also perfectly salty so the flavor just explodes all over your taste buds. I had some leftover crust that I just threw out because I didn’t know what to do with it. After tasting it with the quiche, I immediately regretted my decision; I should have just baked it by itself with a sprinkle of Parmesan for snacking. Learn from my mistakes!

I kept all the elements of Tyler’s recipe – crust, diced ham, caramelized onions, egg mixture- but I added one more that just had to be done: Gruyere cheese. Have you had it before? It’s super nutty and salty. And it’s the cheese most commonly found on top of french onion soup (and also in these sliders!).

There wasn’t a whole lot of real estate left in the quiche shells after adding the ham and onions so I decided to add the cheese on top instead on inside the quiche. I love the crispy edges formed by the cheese! It gives the fancy quiche a little rustic flare.

One thing that I wish I did differently was dice the onions instead of slicing them. When sliced, the onions take up too much room so I couldn’t get as much egg mixture in the shell as I would have liked. So that’s why I tell you to dice the onions in the recipe, even though they clearly looked sliced below.

I don’t have to tell you how perfect these quiche are for your next party or brunch. Who can turn down eggs, cheese, ham, and pastry?! And they’re in small size so no utensils needed! That’s a major plus when hosting a larger party. You don’t want to see people struggling for a seat so they can eat their food with a knife and fork.

Before you get going on recipe, here are a few extra tips for these amazing quiche:

1. It’s very important to chill the dough before you roll it out. Warm pastry dough does not get flaky, but rather it’s kind of doughy and greasy. No bueno. It only takes 20 minutes so it’ll go by fast while you work on the filling.
2. If you don’t have Gruyere or you don’t want to spend the $$$ on it, you can substitute Parmesan cheese. I would still buy it and shred it yourself, if you can. That way it will melt better.
3. To prevent the egg mixture from going all over the place, I recommend using a spouted bowl or measuring cup to pour the mixture into each muffin mold. I used my measuring cup since it has a handle. It worked like a charm!
4. I highly encourage you to use a 24-cup mini muffin tin. I used to have one with only 12 cups and I’d have to do everything in two batches because most recipes makes 24. If you’re in the market for one, this is the one I use and it’s amazing because it’s super non-stick. Even though the cheese melted all over the place, it wiped right off.

I hope you’re drooling after reading this post. If so, I’ve done my job. I also hope you make these for your Easter celebration or even for Mother’s Day next month! Once you do, let me know how they turned out by commenting below!

Here are all the kitchen tools and serveware that I used in today’s recipe. For each item sold below, I make a small commission. I only recommend items that I own and love so you can trust that each recommendation is tried and true. Thank you for supporting CPA!

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