Bird's Nest Breakfast Cups

This is a Pinterest find and the original recipe is here.  These require a little prep time up front but taste awesome and are great if you are having guests for breakfast.  I really should have people over for breakfast more often now that I have all these great recipes!  Also, my son seems to be more agreeable to hanging out in the kitchen first thing in the morning than when I'm trying to make things at night these days.

Ingredients:

1 24 oz. bag of shredded hash browns
1 tsp salt (They called for 2 tsp but it was a little too salty for us and I LOVE salt.)
1 tsp pepper
2 tbs oil (I use olive oil)
1/3 cup shredded cheddar
Bacon bits or 8=10 pieces of cooked bacon, crumbled
Eggs
Extra shredded cheddar
Muffin tin  ( I used 2 muffin tins: a 12 cup muffin tin (shown below) and a 6 cup muffin tin.)

 

Take your bag of hash browns and mix in the salt, pepper, oil and 1/3 cup shredded cheese.

Grease the muffin tin.  (I used Pam Olive Oil Spray.)  Divide the mixture into each cup in muffin tin. 

(I had some of this mixture left over so I put it back in the freezer for another day.)

Bake hash browns at 425 degrees for 15-18 minutes.  I was expecting them to be browned, but they were just cooked, but still light colored. You could probably cook them for a bit longer, but make sure you check on them so they aren't burned. - FYI.
Take them out and lower the temp of the oven to 350 degrees.

The original recipe calls for cracking an egg into each cup, but that seemed like a lot to me so I took about half the amount of eggs, whisked them up and put some into each cup.

Then top with bacon pieces and a sprinkle of cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 13-16 minutes (or until the eggs are as firm as you like them).
Slide a knife along the edges to remove from pan when cooled.

Note:  As you can see above, I used an ancient muffin tin to make this but I also used a newer, nicer one as well (not pictured).  It was a little hard to get them out of this muffin tin, but the nicer, nonstick ones popped out very easily.

These were really tasty and pretty easy.  Except for the fact that they were a little too salty, I would definitely make them again!