Eggs, bacon, Cheddar cheese and a packet of frozen puff pastry are the core ingredients of this breakfast pie, which doesn’t take much time and effort to assemble and then cooks in less than half an hour.

Other than that, all you need is some fresh full cream milk and salt and pepper. The key ingredients are mixed in a bowl and poured into the pastry base, and into the oven it goes.

It’s a great item for a breakfast buffet, or share it as a family meal.

You need a deep baking dish for this as the egg expands during cooking, so be sure that there is space above the filling once poured in for it to rise. I used a baking dish of the kind you might use for lasagne or moussaka, rather than a round, fairly shallow conventional pie dish.

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

Butter for greasing the pie dish

1 sheet of frozen puff pastry, thawed

8 large eggs

1 cup full cream milk

2 cups Cheddar cheese, grated

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 packet of streaky bacon, about 10 rashers

Method

Preheat the oven to 200℃ (or 220℃ if it’s an ornery old gas oven such as mine).

Grease your dish with butter.

Break the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk them vigorously. Add the milk and whisk again.

Grate the Cheddar cheese and stir it in along with salt and pepper to taste.

Roll out the pastry and trim it so that you have a large rectangle of pastry that will fit both the base of the dish and all the way up the sides. Arrange it in the dish. Crimp it along the top edges with your fingers.

Add most of the grated cheese to the egg mixture and stir. Keep some aside for scattering on top of the filling.

Pour the mixture into the prepared base and scatter the rest of the cheese on top evenly.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until the egg has set perfectly.

Fry rashers of streaky bacon in the meantime and arrange them on top once it’s out of the oven and/or serve alongside. DM

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.