Maple Waffle Breakfast Casserole with Sausage and Bacon–Luke Approved!

Make Ahead Maple Waffle Casserole with Bacon and Sausage for Breakfast or Brunch is perfect for Christmas morning or a weekend when you want something extra special! 

I have been dying to tell you guys about this dish for a while now. See what happened is, the first time I made it, I did not account for the dish starting cold from the fridge, how long it might take to bake, so I ended up taking it to my brother’s house where we were visiting rather than waiting for it to bake through. It was a particularly large batch too, I think a triple recipe of what is below. So we had it for breakfast there, where I did not take any pictures of it. Which was a shame because it was a big hit. In fact, my 4 year old nephew, Luke, spent all morning waiting for me to emerge from bed (they woke up at a normal hour early and ate before me) just so he could tell me how much he loved it. How cute is that? So now when I make this, I always think of Luke.

This is Luke, albeit on a different occasion eating a Peppermint Ganache Glazed Chocolate Bundtlette

This time I made it for Christmas morning. And I made it smaller, but still bigger than the recipe below. I wish I had made the smaller recipe because as much as we loved it (and we did except for John who is not a huge fan of maple and therefore just liked it), it was still too rich for us to be excited about leftovers in the middle of all of the other rich food over Christmas. So I wrote the recipe as below, which is much closer to the size that Cathy over at Noble Pig made in the waffle bread pudding recipe that I was inspired by.

 Assembled before baking…

After a go-round on Christmas morning…

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Maple Waffle Breakfast Casserole with Sausage and Bacon--Luke Approved!

Adapted from Noble Pig

Course: Breakfast, Brunch

Keyword: eggs

Author: TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

• 10 cups 1" waffle pieces, stale or dried out in a warm oven (I used my Clinton St. Waffles recipe)
• 5 large eggs
• 1 cup 1% milk
• 3/4 cup plus 2 T heavy cream
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/2 t pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 t maple extract (optional)
• 1/2 t kosher sea salt
• 1/2 lb bacon, cooked until somewhat crisp (do not overcook because it will crisp up further on the casserole), broken into pieces
• 1/2 lb sausage, browned and crumbled

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Make homemade waffles. Cut into bite-sized pieces and place on a baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes to crisp them up. (Or use stale waffles.)

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine eggs, milk, cream, syrup, vanilla, maple extract and kosher salt. Whisk until combined.
3. Grease a 9x9 baking dish (the recipe as pictured is doubled). Add the crisped waffle pieces and crumbled sausage. Pour the egg mixture over the waffles and sausage. Top with the broken bacon pieces. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight in the fridge (or a cold garage if it is winter).
4. At least 60 minutes before you plan to serve the dish (and another 15-20 minutes would not hurt to allow it to set first), remove the plastic wrap, cover with foil and place it in a cold oven and turn the temperature to 350 F. (This will allow the casserole to gently warm up in the beginning.)
5. After 45 minutes, remove the foil and let it bake uncovered, until the bacon has browned and a knife inserted into the center comes out mostly clean and dry. The eggs should be cooked through.

6. You can serve it right away, it will taste great, but it will firm up if you set it set for about 10-15 minutes.

For the collage lovers….