Eggs en cocotte à la crème

There’s something about the simplicity of Eggs en cocotte, a French recipe that’s essentially baked eggs with single cream served with what we call “mouillettes” or soldiers in English. The recipe below is purely for the eggs, and assumes you can do the soldiers yourself but I’ll provide some ideas for fancier version of soldiers for brunch.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs (per person)
• 100ml single cream
• 5g butter
• Salt & Pepper, to taste
• Optional: Provence Herbs and chili flakes as a topping

Method:

There’s many ways to go about this, either using individual ramekins or using a larger one to share as we do, but the method is effectively the same:

1. Pre-heat oven to 200C
2. Butter your ramekin on the inside
3. Pour single cream into the ramekin
4. Crack the eggs on top of the cream
5. Add salt, pepper and any other seasoning you fancy
6. Bake for 10 to 15min or until the egg whites are cooked and yolk are still runny.

Serve with the soldiers (made with toasted bread cut lengthwise into 3cm strips) or if you’re feeling fancy, you can prepare slices of bread with ham, smoked salmon or cream cheese to dunk it in the eggs, ideal if you’re aiming for an extravagant brunch!