Today’s post includes easy and delicious Easter brunch recipes, lots of helpful ideas and a menu including homemade IHOP pancakes, overnight French toast and breakfast sausage!
Easter Brunch Tips:
Our family loves having an Easter brunch! One thing that can be fun for your Easter brunch is to have different “bars” set up with bowls of fixings for all sorts of different things for example:
Breakfast Burrito Bar
Breakfast meats like bacon, sausage or ham, scrambled eggs, chopped hard boiled eggs, different cheeses, veggies or fruits, salsa or sauces and of course flour tortillas.
Don’t forget to put out a supply of soft butter and cinnamon/sugar mix or different flavors of jams for those who want to spread their tortillas with a sweet treat to go with their coffee.
Pancake Bar
A pancake bar is where everyone can request what they would like sprinkled on their own personal pancake while it is cooking. This is a great special treat for an Easter brunch. You can have a couple of electric griddles set up so more than one person can cook them.
Have things like an assortment of cooked and crumbled meats (bacon, sausage or ham), nuts, chopped fruits, or chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and other flavored chips.
Include a variety of syrups, flavored butters and powdered sugar. Don’t forget the peanut butter. Of course you will need whipped cream and sprinkles to top it all!
Breakfast Bar
For the breakfast bar, you can just set out a variety of breakfast food including meats, assorted fruits, muffins, donuts, coffee cakes, hash browns and breakfast casseroles.
If these aren’t enough ideas, then think of what kinds of things appealed to you at the last nice motel where you stayed or the last restaurant where you went out to breakfast and use their ideas.
Quick And Easy Breakfast Bar
Some Easter mornings can be hectic and you may want to have a quick Easter brunch. If that is the case for you then try laying out a large assortment of breads, bagels, croissants, English muffins, muffins, biscuits, quick breads, donuts and pastries on platters. You can put them on the platters the day before you need them and cover them. Then, at breakfast time, you can uncover them and serve.
Don’t forget to include flavored butters, jams and honey to go with them. Serve platters of fruit and slices of ham, bacon and sausage (made the day before and warmed right before serving). Add different juices and several flavors of coffee and tea.
Crumbles, Cobblers And Crisps
Sometimes we forget that cobblers, crunches and crisps are great for breakfast. They’re especially good for special occasions like an Easter brunch.
Crisps usually use oatmeal or granola like topping with lots of fruit in them. You can make a simple cobbler by topping a fruit filling (homemade or canned) with canned biscuits or crescent roll dough and then baking it until the crust is brown and the filling is bubbly.
Cereal Bar
Set out a large assortment of cereal. Don’t forget to add things like marshmallows, sprinkles, granola and brown sugar to use for toppings.
Easter Brunch Menu:
IHOP Pancakes
Overnight French Toast
Breakfast Sausage (From our Dining on a Dime Cookbook)
Ham and/or Bacon
Fruit Cups or fruit platter
Assortment of donuts, muffins and quick breads
Variety of juices, hot coffee and tea
Easter Brunch Recipes:
Here are a couple of recipes to use for an Easter brunch breakfast buffet or for a delicious breakfast treat any morning. Make sure to read the recipe for Breakfast Sausage because it needs to be made a couple of days ahead of time.
PrintIHOP Pancakes Recipe Copycat
- Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 Tbsp. melted butter
1/4 cup sugar
Instructions
- Stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, mix the egg with the buttermilk.
- Add to the flour mixture, stirring only until smooth.
- Add the melted butter and sugar.
- Fry on a greased griddle. Serves 4.
Overnight French Toast Recipe
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp. corn syrup
1 loaf Texas Toast bread or other thick sliced bread like French bread (cut about 1 inch thick)
5 eggs
1 1/2 cups half and half cream
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
dash of cinnamon
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, melt butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup over medium heat until smooth, stirring occasionally.
- Pour mixture onto a large, greased jelly roll pan (18″x13″x1″). Spread around to cover the surface.
- Place 12 slices of bread in a single layer to cover the pan.
- Mix together eggs, cream, salt, vanilla and cinnamon.
- Spoon mixture over each piece of bread.
- Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Bake uncovered at 350° for about 25-30 minutes.
- Remove from the pan and serve.
If you won’t be serving this immediately, turn each slice of bread over. (This will prevent the bread from sticking to the bottom of the pan.)
I never really thought making your own homemade sausage could be so easy and really taste so much better until Tawra put this recipe in Dining on a Dime Volume 1. It is really worth trying and is a perfect addition to your Easter brunch!
PrintBreakfast Sausage Recipe
- Yield: 4-6 servings
Ingredients
1 lb. ground pork
1/4–1 tsp. sage (to taste)
1/4–1/2 tsp. marjoram
1/4–1/2 tsp. thyme (optional)
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1–3 Tbsp. water
Instructions
- Sprinkle seasonings over the ground meat.
- Knead until thoroughly blended.
- Make into patties.
- Refrigerate in an airtight container for 2-3 days to allow the flavors to blend.
- Fry in a pan until golden brown. Freeze any unused sausage. Serves 4-6.
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Jamie
So many great ideas. I love French Toast so I think I’m going to try Overnight French Toast. Sound easy and delicious.
Maggie
I love sausage for breakfast and buy the tube packages that I have to cut open and try to freeze in small portions for just me because my husband likes bacon better. This recipe looks like it is easy enough for me to make and I could divide it into the portion sizes I need before I freeze it. Thanks for the great ideas for an Easter brunch. My son and I love French toast so that will be a great idea for our Christmas breakfast this year. I need to put this in a special place so I don’t lose it.
Susan
Love the receipe for the sausage! My family has always done the Easter Brunch. We try to do as much as we can the night before since we go to sunrise service and when we get back everyone is hungry. I am going to try to add more fruit this time and less sweets lol! Have a blessed day!
Diane
Don’t forget a yogurt bar!
Put out vanilla yogurt with side dishes of mix-ins. My favorites are mini choc. chips, raspberry or blueberry sauce,
chopped nuts, toasted wheat germ or flaxseed, and granola.
Rev. Eileen Douglas
I love all your ideas for Easter brunch. There is one comment I have: each of them costs a lot of money to fully stock with all that food that might not get eaten. In my circle, we would have leftovers for weeks before all of everything everybody likes was used up. I wish there had been one “budget” brunch—may next year?
I do love receiving your newsletter and find many usable hints.
Thanks,
Rev.Eileen
Jill
You may have misunderstood. You aren’t suppose to fix all of those things but pick and choose how ever many items you want, need or can afford to use. You really can’t get a whole lot cheaper then breakfast burritos with scrambled eggs, cheese and a little sausage or ham especially when those things are on sale for very good prices the week before Easter. The same with the brunch. Just serve pancakes, a little fruit, sausage, coffee and call it good. I could serve the pancake menu for way less then a dollar a person and probably closer to $.50 a person.
Sheri
ok,
How do you make your breakfast sausage?
1/4- 1 tsp sage (to taste)
1/4 – 1/2 tsp marjoram
1/4 – 1/2 tsp thyme (optional)
I have never made home made breakfast sausage. Therefor , I don’t know how much spices to put in so that I don’t just throw it away because I put either too little or too much spices in. Not with these prices. And I don’t eat pork, So, I would use ground turkey. Yum!
Jill
Sheri why recipes have 1/4 -1/2 is because you need to season to your own personal taste and everyone’s is different. If you are worried about messing it up then you might use just 1/4 lb of the turkey and start with just a pinch or 1/8 tsp. of the spices. If in normal recipes you really love the taste of sage or marjoram then add 2 pinches but usually I start small. It won’t taste bad this way it will just be lightly flavored but eatable and can add a little more the next time.