Sweet Omelet with Berries

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: So many sweet things are egg-based -- why can't omelets join the party? 

One of my best friends married a man from Finland, and she moved there for several years to teach preschool. Besides the stories of the wonders of the Finnish educational system (hands-on learning! Hours outside everyday! Why am I not a preschooler in Finland?!), I received many reports from her about the foods they were eating. Most of them sounded delicious -- rye pastries filled with rice, cardamom rolls with melted butter, cardamom donuts with a name that sounds like monkey, savory sausages for grilling in the woods (when I went to visit her, I tried them all, and I can attest they were, in fact, delicious). But, when she told me about eating omelets filled with jam, I thought, “An omelet with jam? Yuck. This confirms my suspicion that Finns are the oddest of the Nordic peoples.”

I wished to stay self-satisfiedly biased against the idea of a sweet omelet, except the idea kept niggling at me until I finally had to admit that it wasn’t as odd as it had first sounded. So many sweet things are egg based -- crepes, popovers, Dutch babies, soufflés, custard -- and making a sweet omelet was only a baby step away from all those. So I decided to give it a chance. And, while my favorite omelets will remain those that include cheese and vegetables, sweet omelets with jam or fruit have now earned a place in my breakfast lineup.

I like to make a two-egg omelet -- generous enough to be filling, but not so over-the-top for the morning as a three-egg omelet is. I also like to whisk one of the whites to a foam and fold it in, so the omelet becomes lighter, but not fully so airy as a soufflé (but I whisk in dishwasher-safe bowls so I don’t have to clean the extra bowl!). Raid your freezer for any combination of frozen berries you have, and simmer them briefly with sugar or honey to make a filling that doubles as a sauce. As you might expect, the omelet makes a sweet, eggy backdrop for the syrupy berries, or you can use sliced fruit or jam -- like the Finns. It’s yummy. (But, I still think the Finns are probably the oddest of the Nordic peoples.) 

Sweet Omelet with Berries 

Serves 1

About 2/3 cup of mixed frozen berries
1/2 tablespoon honey or sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons plus a pinch of sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon butter
A little cream or crème fraiche for finishing, optional

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here. 

Photos by Emily Vikre