Toasted Breadcups

If you need canapes in a hurry and don’t have time to mess around making the pastry, then toasted breadcups are exactly what you are looking for. Just toast slices of buttered bread in a muffin tin and fill with your favourite ingredients for instant snacks

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Breadcups

I just love making these little breadcups. They are so easy to make and taste so good.

I like to breadcups with a variety of different fillings, to hand round as an appetizer/starter if I’m having a get-together. They make the perfect finger-food because the bread casing doesn’t crumble like pastry would when you bite into it, so there are less crumbs to sweep up afterwards 🙂 .

Breadcups filled with creamy mushrooms also make a delicious accompaniment to a roast dinner, instead of the usual yorkshire pudding.

What like about them is the fact that I’ve always got the ingredients on hand. There’s no pastry involved, all you need are a few slices of day-old bread and you can throw these together in no time.

In the picture above, I’ve used creamy mushroom and onion filling, which is cooked on the stove top and spooned into the cases.  You could also fill the breadcups with your favourite quiche filling and bake them in the oven, as in the picture below.

Ingredients for breadcups

You can get the complete list of ingredients and full instructions on how to make this recipe on the printable recipe card at the end of this post.

• 12 slices bread – I’ve used white bread here, but you could use any sliced bread of your choice. I think wholewheat would work really well. The seeds would add extra crunch.
• Sufficient butter to spread on each slice.

I’ve provided ingredients for mushroom or egg and bockwurst. Each is sufficient to fill 12 breadcups.

Mushroom filling

• 250g (8 oz) mushrooms finely chopped
• 1 large onion finely chopped
• Small amount of olive oil for frying the mushroom and onion
• Shake of salt
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) milk
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) cream
• 1 teaspoon cornflour

Egg and bockwurst filling

• 2 bockwurst cut into small cubes
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) cream
• 1 large egg
• Cheese to sprinkle
• Salt to taste

How to make breadcups

• Use a rolling pin to flatten slices of bread. You need to flatten the bread slightly to press it together. It will hold its shape much better if you do this.
• Cut the bread into rounds.  If you have a large enough pastry cutter you can use this, but I find a large coffee cup is the ideal size to get the bread to fit into the muffin tin. You may find you need to use a knife to cut around the cup.

Tip – blitz the bread offcuts in your food processor and store in a plastic bag in the freezer for ready-made breadcrumbs. 

• Butter one side of the rounds and press into a muffin tray, butter side down.
• Bake in the centre of a hot oven (200C / 400F) for 10 to 15 minutes.  The bread will dry out an become crispy and golden brown.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Spoon spoon in your filling of choice.
• For extra crispness you could switch the oven off once the breadcups are baked, and leave them to cool in the switched off oven with the door open.

Breadcups are best eaten fresh on the day. If you allow them to stand too long they will tend to lose their crispness so don’t prepare them too far in advance.

Fillings

To make the mushroom filling:

• Chop the mushrooms and onions finely and sweat gently, in a saucepan, in a little olive oil until the moisture from the mushrooms has evaporated and the onions are translucent. 
• Season with salt to taste,
• Mix the milk, cream and cornflour together and add to the mushrooms.
• Stir over a gentle heat until thick and creamy.  The mixture should not be too runny – it should hold its shape on a spoon.

• If the mixture becomes too thick add a little more milk. Let it cool and then spoon the mixture into the toasted breadcups.

• If you are serving these as part of a roast dinner, fill the breadcups with the hot mushrooms and serve immediately.

To make the egg and bockwurst filling

This filling is baked in the oven in pre-made breadcups – so in effect you are baking the breadcups twice.

• Chop the bockwurst into small dice, or slice them thinly. Keep them as small as possible.
• Place a few bockwurst cubes into each of the pre-baked breadcups.
• Mix the egg and cream together, season with salt and pour over the sausage in the breadcups.
• Sprinkle with a little grated cheese, place on a baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for approximately 15 minutes until the egg mixture has set and the cheese is golden.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Additional fillings for breadcups

For the fillings, you are limited only by your imagination – here are some ideas to get you started.

• Mix shredded cooked chicken with finely chopped spring onion and mayonaise. Garnish with a little chopped parsley.
• Leftover cold coronation chicken or chicken a la king
• Chop advocado and tomato, and season with salt and pepper. Be careful with this filling – the breadcups will absorb any excess moisture from the filling and may not retain their crispness for very long.
• Fill the breadcups with scrambled eggs and top with a piece of smoked salmon for a quick and easy breakfast.
• Place a juicy meatball into each breadcup and top with homemade chilli tomato sauce.

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Additional resources

Don’t forget to check out my handy Cookery Conversion Calculator if you want to convert any of your recipe measurements from grams to cups, ounces, tablespoons or millilitres and vice versa. You can also use the calculator for converting oven temperatures between Fahrenheit, Celsius and Gas marks.

If you live at a high altitude you may find you need to adjust your baking recipes to compensate for this. You can read all about it in this post on baking at high altitudes.

Recipe – Toasted Breadcups

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