Our Favorite Winter Breakfasts to Celebrate the Holiday Season!

As the chilly fall air gets chillier and flavor profiles begin shifting from pumpkin spice to sugar plums and gingerbread, it’s beginning to look a lot like winter! Since we got such a great response to our Easy BBQ Recipes at the start of summer, we’ve decided to do something similar, this time by collecting our favorite winter breakfasts to celebrate the holiday season.

Like before, we asked the whole Kate’s Kitchen family to share with us their favorite recipes that are quick and easy. We tested them (several times—yum!), and now we’ve put them all into this sweet-and-savory list for you.   

Sweet

Eggnog French Toast

Cooking Classy made this French toast into an even better winter breakfast or brunch by using one of the favorite flavors of the season: eggnog! The eggnog elevates the usual (though extremely satisfying) golden and buttery dish into a flavor profile that’s almost custard-like, with the decadent eggy, vanilla bean, and spiced notes of the drink. 

You can use eggnog with or without alcohol, but fair warning: the spiked version will lead to a winter morning so cozy and comforting you might just decide to spend the rest of the day inside watching holiday movies!

White Chocolate Gingerbread Crescent Rolls

These sweet, gooey crescent moons from Lemon Tree Dwelling are all dressed up for the holidays with a drizzle of white chocolate and a crumble of crushed gingersnaps. On the inside you’ll find more gingersnaps and white chocolate, plus cream cheese. If this isn’t the simplest path to decadence at the breakfast table, we don’t know what is!

Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Homemade Whipped Topping

These pancakes have an amazingly light and fluffy texture that’s elevated by the addition of chocolate chips and homemade whipping cream. Perfect for a cold morning! Add festive sprinkles, like the ones on the recipe from Cherished Bliss, and you’ll have a Christmas breakfast to rival the visions of sugar plums dancing in your head!

Top Tip from the Kate’s Kitchen Recipe Testers: If you want a chocolate-overloaded version, just add ½ teaspoon of cocoa powder to the pancake batter and another ½ teaspoon to the whipping cream before whipping, then drizzle with even more chocolate and use chocolate shavings or sprinkles.

Savory

Savory Chive Pancakes with Sourdough Starter

Most people think of pancakes as being exclusively sweet, but we don’t want anyone to ever overlook the complex flavors involved in a good savory pancake. This one from Ahead of Thyme manages to be everything we were looking for.

It’s simple, with minimal cleanup (it only uses one bowl!), and a way to use your discarded sourdough starter without contributing to food waste. Plus, the interplay of the sourdough and the fresh, oniony flavor of the chives is something we didn’t even realize we needed in our lives until we tried it!

Mini Hashbrown Crust Quiche

Quiche can be a little tricky to master, even with a store-bought crust, since you have to make sure the crust and eggs are both fully cooked without either of them being overcooked. Pizzazerrie uses hashbrowns instead of the usual crust to make both the cooking time easier to get right and add a crispy, potato-y flavor to the savory egg pie.

Egg and Potato Breakfast Casserole

If you want something along the same lines that’s even easier, try this recipe from Ahead of Thyme. Since it’s a casserole, you just add the ingredients to your baking vessel and pop it into a preheated oven—no need to fuss with filling muffin tins or having to fiddle with layering! It’s perfect for feeding a crowd and easy to change up the ingredients based on food preferences or dietary needs.

Easy Frittata Recipe

Are frittatas casseroles? The methods are similar and there can be ingredients in common, but while casseroles are usually fairly dense and loaded with different textures, a frittata relies more on the light and fluffiness of the egg to make the dish, with a little assist from thoughtfully chosen flavor additions.

This recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen uses mozzarella and goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and arugula. If that flavor combination doesn’t sound like your jam, the recipe also has a simple template to help make up your own combinations.

Top Combinations from the Kate’s Kitchen Recipe Testers: We loved this with a taco cheese blend, chorizo sausage, tomatoes, black olives, and sour cream on top. Maybe shoot for a healthy winter breakfast by going heavy on the veggies with mushrooms, onions, and spinach with crumbled bacon on top. However, our best frittata tip is just to add bacon. Lots of bacon. All the bacon. Okay, wait, maybe that’s too much bacon.

Something Else

Rudolph Pancakes

This fun recipe encourages kids to play with their food by letting them create their very own Rudolph with different-sized pancakes! We started with this recipe from I Heart Naptime and used our own topping ideas to put a unique spin on it. You can use candy pieces or sliced fruits for the eyes, bacon for the antlers, and a cherry to make his nose so bright!

Donut Topiary

If you want a breakfast idea that will impress your visiting in-laws or create a stunning centerpiece on a breakfast buffet, try this riff on the French croquembouche from Tikkido. It’s super simple, using store-bought donuts, royal icing, and a nonedible cone to form the shape. No one will believe how easy it was to make, so you can just let anyone you serve it to think you were in the kitchen for hours to make it happen (we won’t tell if you won’t!). 

Kate’s Kitchen wants to help you celebrate the holidays! Come on down to Kate’s for a scratch-cooked meal anytime. It’s the perfect way to treat yourself after setting up your outdoor Christmas decorations and the best place to take a break during your holiday gift shopping—don’t forget to start the day by making and sampling delicious winter breakfast recipes like the ones featured in this article.

Take a look at our breakfast menu!

Give us a call if you would like to place a to-go order!

Kate’s Kitchen… (816) 436-7200

Ronnie’s Restaurant… (913) 831-8600