10 Recipes For The Perfect Easter Brunch

10 recipes to help you pull off Easter brunch without a hitch.

By
The Serious Eats Team
The Serious Eats Team
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Updated March 30, 2021
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J. Kenji López-Alt

It doesn't take a lot to convince us to stop whatever we're doing on a weekend morning and enjoy a long, drawn-out brunch. And there's no better excuse for a pull-out-all-the-stops midday meal than a sunny Easter Sunday in early spring. Although the day is normally spent gathering with friends and family, social distancing measures may change the way many people are celebrating this year. Nevertheless, there's no reason you can't go all out, whether you're spending the day with close family or doing a virtual get-together with friends. That means easy eggs Benedict, a tall stack of fluffy pancakes, and the best bacon around.

Need more than 10 recipes to get inspired? Check out our complete Easter brunch page.

  • Soft-Scrambled Eggs

    0:49

    How to Make Soft-Scrambled Eggs

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    Serious Eats Team

    Scrambled eggs—plain and simple—are one of the easiest and most delicious breakfast and brunch staples. They're easy to whip up two people, but it's not much more work to crack some more and scramble in bulk. This recipe produces soft, moist, just-cooked curds, perfect for piling on toast or eating with a spoon.

  • Foolproof Eggs Benedict

    J. Kenji López-Alt

    When paired up, our foolproof hollandaise sauce and foolproof poached eggs make truly, uh, foolproof eggs Benedict. A toasted English muffin—make them from scratch if you have the time!—and ham crisped in butter round out this classic brunch dish.

  • Easy Mixed-Cheese Quiche

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    Daniel Gritzer

    Quiche is an ideal brunching dish because it's easy to make with whatever you have on hand. This particular one has the added benefit of using up any bits of old (but still perfectly good and edible) cheese you've got hanging around in your fridge, resulting in plenty of gooey pockets in the silky custard, all of it contained in a flaky pie crust. The quiche's simplicity lets every one of its elements shine.

  • Monte Cristo Crepes

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    Morgan Eisenberg

    This lovely brunch dish was inspired by the iconic Monte Cristo sandwich, which is traditionally stuffed with ham, cheese, and a tangy mixture of jelly and mustard. Here, we swap out the sandwich bread for thin, golden-brown crepes, which can be made in advance and refrigerated to save you time on the day of. Once rolled with all the sandwich fillings, the crepes are dipped in an egg mixture, French toast–style, then pan-fried until crisp.

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  • Thick and Fluffy Pancakes From Homemade Pancake Mix

    7:01

    How to Make Easy, Shelf-Stable Pancake Mix

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    Serious Eats Team

    These pancakes are amazing for more reasons than we can count, but let's run through the first couple of lines on the list. First, you can make the easy homemade pancake mix that acts as their base months in advance; it'll keep until whatever the expiration date is on your coconut oil. That means you can theoretically do most of the work for these fluffy, rich pancakes weeks before Easter. Once the day rolls around, all you'll have to do is add milk and an egg (or several, if you've scaled up the recipe) and get cooking. If you prefer thinner pancakes, you can use the same mix and just add a little more milk.

  • Baked Bacon for a Crowd

    J. Kenji López-Alt

    Though this recipe was designed with big crowds—and therefore lots of bacon—in mind, you can use the same technique at home even if you're preparing only five or six strips. While the cooking method should be adjusted slightly depending on how you like your bacon, the basic idea is simple: Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, lay out your bacon strips, slide it into the oven, and wait patiently until strips have reached ideal crispiness.

  • Perfect Quick-and-Easy French Toast

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    J. Kenji López-Alt

    We're of the opinion that French toast is best kept simple. It's a dish that relies on pantry and refrigerator staples—bread, milk, eggs, and a few spices—and it should be easy to whip up for a bunch of hungry guests. Our recipe uses a ratio of egg, milk, and sugar that results in delightfully custardy French toast, not too dry and not too soggy, with a golden crust and crisp edges.

  • Classic Banana Bread

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    How to Make the Best Banana Bread

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    Serious Eats Team

    Banana bread might not be an Easter brunch classic, but having a warm loaf at the center of your table is never a bad idea. Ours is loaded with coconut oil, oat flour, and thick Greek yogurt, so it's tender and moist, and it gets a kick of warm spice from cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Once you make it, you just might turn it into a yearly Easter tradition.

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  • Blueberry-Lemon Scones

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    Vicky Wasik

    If you ask us, having one sweet on the table is never enough, so you'll probably want to get a batch of these blueberry-lemon scones in the oven, too. Though the scones contain both coconut oil and coconut milk, they don't taste too much like coconut; instead they're light and lemony, and the coconut milk and oil produce a fluffy crumb that's indistinguishable from a scone made with butter and cream.

  • Torrijas Caramelizadas (Spanish-Style Caramelized French Toast)

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    Sasha Marx

    For a Spanish version of French toast, add custardy, crunchy torrijas to the menu. The recipe works best with thick slices of bread that are a few days old or have been oven-dried, as they'll soak up more of the custard base. Once cooked, you can sprinkle the bread pieces with sugar and caramelize their tops with blast of a blowtorch, an optional but highly recommended step. As for the soaking liquid, we turn what's left into a sweet crème anglaise for serving, which eliminates waste, yes, but it also produces something incredibly delicious.

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