Feliz Cinco de Mayo! This has several steps, but a lot can be done in advance. Before Easter, an online food magazine had a piece on different Eggs Benedict versions. I make regular version and a smoked salmon version with mascarpone and roasted red pepper sauce – evil, but delicious. So I combined some of my recipes and came up with this. My husband, who is slim, ate two, so I was happy with one.

Makes 6 servings (or 3 only if you’re very hungry)

Cornbread Toaster Cakes

Makes about 6 muffin tops

I like to make my quick breads in muffin top pans (I use a Cuisinart 6 cup muffin top pan). I find that in muffin top pans, breads cook quicker and more evenly than in a muffin pan. I make half a batch (6 muffin tops) at a time, keep them in freezer and toast them fresh from frozen as I want one. And to be good, I use eggs and egg substitute and olive oil not butter. Helps a bit.

There is a great difference in the gluten-free cornmeal/corn flour available. Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free cornmeal is stone ground, which means it remains quite gritty and coarser than I like. Bob’s Red Mill corn flour is too fine for me, but it’s up to your preference. I use Arrowhead Mills gluten-free cornmeal (normally from Hannafords/Whole Foods), which is far finer.

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup and 2 Tbsp. (1½ oz.) my gluten-free flour mix
• ¼ cup (1 oz.) almond meal for better nutrition
• ½ cup (2¼ oz.) cornmeal (I use gluten-free Arrowhead Mills)
• 1½ tsp. (7 ml.) gluten-free baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt (You will probably have to adjust the amount of salt to your personal taste preference. I found that, without sugar, the corn muffins needed more salt.)
• No xanthan gum needed
• 3 Tbsp. (15 ml.) sugar (Decrease after first baking if corn bread is too sweet for you)
• ½ tsp. gluten-free vanilla extract
• 1½ large eggs OR 1 large egg and 2 Tbsp. (30ml.) egg substitute
• cup milk (I use fat-free and have also used buttermilk, lactose-free milk and almond milk)
• ½ stick of butter OR 2 oz. Earth Balance, melted OR ¼ cup (60ml.) even mix of extra virgin olive oil and regular olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together.
3. Whisk egg, butter or oil, milk and vanilla together.
4. Pour wet mix over dry mix and gently stir together. Don’t overwork. You can use an electric mixer, but do make sure to mix in all the dry ingredients, as they don’t disappear on baking. Mix will look very wet, so leave batter for about 2 minutes to thicken.
5. Divide up amongst greased muffin top pans. Wet your fingers and spread the mix out to edges and only about fill muffin top well about halfway. I measure the oil in ¼ cup measure and then use oily cup to scoop out batter, which glides out of cup because of oil.
6. Bake for about 15-18 minutes, or until bottoms are golden brown, but the tops are barely colored if you are going to toast them. They don’t mound above the pan, but rise evenly. Each oven is different, so start checking at 12 minutes and even cook longer than 15 minutes if needed. Dark colored pans will brown outsides before inside is cooked through. I poke a fork into the middle of biggest muffin to test. A moister gluten-free batter often takes longer to cook than regular flour batter.
7. Remove from oven and let cool for 10-20 minutes before removing from pans. I do toast them.

Sausage Topping

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
• 2 red bell peppers, deseeded and cut into thin strips about 2×1”
• 1 cup corn, canned, raw or frozen
• 2 Al Fresco Chipotle Chorizo fully cooked gluten-free sausages, skin peeled off, quartered length-wise and cut into ¼” to ½” pieces. Substitute other spicy sausage, chorizo or even shrimp.
• Oil

Directions:

1. Heat oil in 4 cup (1 l.) saucepan. Add onion and cook until starting to soften, then add red bell pepper and cook until that starts softening.
2. Add corn and sausage, mix well and leave to cook for a few more minutes until onion and bell pepper is as soft and cooked as you like. I don’t like raw onion and pepper, so I cook until very tender and also sweeter.

Eggs

Ingredients:

• 1 egg per muffin top

Directions:

1. Put boiling water in 3” deep skillet and add 1 tablespoon of vinegar.
2. Break each egg separately into small cup or ramekin and gently slide into boiling water. Turn down to a simmer and cook eggs for about 3 minutes until white is set, but yolk looks runny inside not set.
3. Use a slotted spoon to remove eggs from water and pat dry with paper towel.

Lime Hollandaise Sauce

I found the idea for lime hollandaise sauce in a book on cooking with salmon. I make traditional lemon and wine vinegar hollandaise by a non-traditional method, so decided to adapt my recipe to lime. It is quite tangy, so I only make a small quantity since a lime hollandaise probably doesn’t marry with as many recipes as lemon hollandaise.

Ingredients:

• 2 large egg yolks at room temperature
• 2 oz. butter (½ stick, 56 g.) OR coconut oil
• 1 Tbsp. (15 ml.) gluten-free white wine or apple cider vinegar (Make sure it says made from wine or apples, and not distilled from alcohol, to be genuine.)
• 2 Tbsp. lime juice, about the juice of 1 small lime. If it measures more than 2 Tbsp., DO NOT add more.
• ½ tsp. sugar
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Zest of half a small lime (I found the zest from a larger lime made the sauce just too tangy and overpowering.)

Directions:

For this small quantity, I make it in either a 2 cup jug or a coffee mug wide enough for the head of my immersion blender.

1. Put the butter or coconut oil in a small cup or bowl and melt in microwave. Don’t overheat the coconut oil, test with your finger. Since it’s colorless, it’s too easy to overheat.
2. Place wine vinegar, lime juice, sugar, salt, pepper and lime zest in another small cup or bowl. Place in microwave and bring to the boil. I stick a spotlessly clean finger into liquid to check that it is extremely hot. Lukewarm liquid will not cook the eggs. Watch this one carefully, since the vinegar evaporates on heating and fumes can take your breath away.
3. Meanwhile, blend the egg yolks in the jug or coffee mug using your immersion blender.
4. With the immersion blender running, gradually add the hot lime and vinegar mix. Heat the butter again so it is bubbling and obviously extremely hot. Start to pour butter in very slowly with the immersion blender running all the time, until all the butter is added and the sauce is thickening. Add the lime juice/vinegar mix and butter in this order. (It didn’t thicken when I tried reversing the order just to test. Because we nowadays store eggs in the fridge, they are normally too cold to thicken sufficiently at this stage.)
5. If it is not thick enough, I cook it in the microwave. For this small quantity and today’s more powerful microwaves, I cook it for about 10 seconds at 10% power. If your eggs are room temperature and liquids hot, the sauce might be thick enough. I had to cook it for 35 seconds in 5 second increments at 10% power when I used cold eggs and didn’t have juice and butter mix hot enough. Whisk every 5 seconds until microwave stops. The sauce is ready when it is a bit thinner than instant Jello pudding or whipped heavy cream. When you stir the sauce with a metal spoon, it should be possible to draw a line through the sauce on the back of the spoon and have the sauce stay in two separate sections either side of the empty center line. If it gets a few lumps, then give sauce a quick whirl with immersion blender.
6. Don’t cook on high power, you will end up with scrambled eggs.

The FDA says that eggs need to be cooked to 160° F to avoid salmonella. I find it impossible to cook the hollandaise to this temperature without it curdling. As Julia Child said, if you buy fresh eggs from a reputable source, store correctly and use correctly, you should have no problems.

Assemble

The cornbread and sausage mix can be made in advance, refrigerated and then reheated. The hollandaise can be made in advance, and extremely carefully reheated in microwave or just by relying on heat of sausage and peppers to warm hollandaise enough to start melting. I prefer to cook eggs at the last minute.

With ordinary hollandaise, I like to spread some on the cornbread and also put it on top of the egg. With lime hollandaise, I prefer it just on top of the egg. Layer cornbread and sausage and pepper mix, make a ‘hole’ in the sausage mix to help the poached egg stay put, top with 1-2 Tbsp. of lime hollandaise and finish with chopped chives or cilantro.