29 Christmas Brunch Recipes to Add to Your Menu

Chef Bryan Voltaggio loves this make-ahead dish: a classic baked bread-and-egg casserole with bites of pepperoni, mushrooms and gooey cheese. It's as good for dinner as it is for breakfast.

F&W's Justin Chapple poaches a dozen eggs at once in a muffin pan in the oven, making his tasty breakfast sliders extraordinarily easy to prepare for entertaining.

Baking these cinnamon rolls in big batches makes the effort worth it—they take time but are so satisfying.

The solution to baking for a crowd is to stick with easy recipes like this moist buttermilk cake, which can be made a day in advance.

In this playful riff on a bagel with cream cheese and lox, Food & Wine's Justin Chapple makes a custardy rye bread pudding with capers, then tops it with smoked salmon and red onion. It's warm, comforting and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

"These biscotti spiced with cocoa nibs and anise seeds are my Italian interpretation of biskotso, a Filipino twice-baked cookie I grew up eating with hot cocoa," chef Merrin Mae Gray says. 

"The buttermilk dough bakes atop a pile of grated cheddar, bringing not just a wonderfully caramelized flavor, but a clever textural element in the form of crisp, lacy 'feet' that form around the bottom or each biscuit," Food & Wine's Kat Kinsman writes of this recipe from Megan Scott. "Add a hefty amount of chopped scallion into the mix and it's a savory, joyous match for the ages."

Traditionally the eggs for this dish are poached in red wine; it adds a bit of flavor, but the eggs take on a grayish-purple color. This version calls for eggs that have been poached in water, then assembled with the red wine sauce at the end.

This bread pudding from chef Sohui Kim is studded with bacon and Swiss chard, plus two types of cheese—Gruyère and Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can prepare it up to a day in advance and then bake it the day you serve it.

Reminiscent of a classic bread pudding, this sweet-tart crêpe casserole has a beautiful lacy top and tender-but-sliceable center.

This low-alcohol punch leans on tart cranberry juice and spicy ginger ale for a big punch of flavor, allowing the booze to take a back seat.

This treat might remind you of a tarte Tatin, since it's also topped with gorgeously caramelized apples. But the similarities end there. Instead of cake, the base is a buttery yeasted bread with a creamy almond-paste filling tucked inside. Even better, the apples sizzle in caramel before they're arranged in a baking pan that's been sprinkled with crystallized ginger, ensuring gently spiced flavor in every bite.

Lemon–poppyseed cake meets scones in this delightful recipe from Food & Wine's Justin Chapple.

Dry white wine helps cut through the richness in the gravy, bringing a balanced acidity to this hearty dish. Homemade sausage is well-seasoned and not overly sweet, so choose a savory or spicy blend if substituting for store-bought sausage.

Food & Wine Cooks contributor Andrea Slonecker channeled her lifelong love of pancakes to take this breakfast basic to a delicious new level. Toasty browned butter infuses the barely-sweet batter, which fries up on the griddle into fluffy, lacy-edged flapjacks. To top it off, her super-fast sheet pan fruit syrup comes together in just minutes; frozen berries burst in the oven, releasing their juices to mingle with caramelly brown sugar and a little bit of lemon for balance.

These elegant, savory herb-topped eggs bake up in a muffin pan, so it's easy to make breakfast or brunch for a few days—or for more than a few people. Serve any leftover breakfast egg cups sandwiched between buttered, toasted English muffins or brioche slices.

Bringing a skillet of chilaquiles topped with all the fixings to the table is a very wise weekend brunch move. Start out by firing up your broiler: Lightly charring the tomatillos, garlic, jalapeños, and onion until lightly charred gives the green salsa terrific depth of flavor. If you don't have time to fry the tortilla chips at home, just pick up a bag of your favorite store-bought brand.

"Nutritional yeast adds a rich and nutty 'cheesy' flavor, while the layering of herbs, spices, and add-ins really brings the scramble to life!" cookbook author and activist Haile Thomas writes.

Brown butter adds a deep, caramel-like note of nutty richness to this make-ahead banana bread. To hit the proper note, 2020 F&W Best New Chef Lena Sareini insists on waiting until your bananas are extremely ripe—very speckled and mushy. "Be patient," she says. "That's the only way the banana flavor is going to show through." For an easy next-level topping, make this Banana-Caramel Sauce.

This homemade hot chocolate recipe calls for just three ingredients—60-percent cocoa dark chocolate chips, sugar, and milk—plus whipped cream and marshmallows for garnish.

For his wild mushroom toasts, chef Michael Reed starts with griddled sourdough bread, slathers it with homemade hollandaise sauce, tops it with sautéed mushrooms and spinach, and then crowns it with a mound of rich scrambled eggs. The end result is an impressive dish perfect for brunch. Reed uses a mix of mushrooms such as enoki, morel, and maitake, but you can use a mix of any fresh mushrooms available at the market.

Puntarelle stays bright and crisp in this salad, while beets bring a tender, earthy sweetness. The former is a specialty buy—check your local farmers market, or substitute another bitter chicory.

"Spiced mulled cocktails are what I crave when I want to relax in the colder months," says chef Amy Brandwein of Centrolina in Washington, D.C. "Red wine is usually the base, but [former] Centrolina Wine Director Alissa Diaz developed this cocktail using Pinot Grigio to focus on citrus and ginger—it almost plays off the flavors of a classic panettone, which is a winter specialty in Italian culture."

The secret to high-rise soufflé pancakes is all about speed and temperature. Cold egg whites whip more slowly than room temperature ones, but they form stronger, more uniform bubbles, and whipping them on medium speed incorporates more air. Finally, piping the batter in one swift pass allows you to create more height from the beginning without overcooking each pancake.

These waffles call for sourdough starter discard—collect it in a bowl in the fridge, adding to it until you have enough for the recipe. If you can't find full-fat buttermilk at the market, you're better off substituting a mix of milk and sour cream instead.

This particular budin de pan recipe—which pastry chef Paola Velez calls "history in a bowl"—originated with Velez's husband's 101-year-old grandmother, and features a lavish custard made with what might seem like an excess of evaporated milk, but makes for an utterly dreamy texture in the final product. Mastering the homemade caramel portion calls for some close attention and meticulous stirring—Velez notes that even one undissolved grain of sugar may cause the whole mass to solidify—but the reward is sweet and filled with plenty of tropical vibes, especially if you opt for chopped mango on top.

Sour cream adds milky richness to both Dijon and whole-grain mustards with a splash of lemon juice for brightness. This simple, creamy sauce pairs with lightly bitter greens and rich, runny egg yolks for a beautiful breakfast. Try leftover sauce on baked salmon.

Inspired by a foot-long quiche that chef Cedric Maupillier served at Convivial in Washington, D.C., this quiche is prepared in a rimmed baking sheet. It makes plenty for the whole crowd, yielding 12 servings total.

Pain au chocolat, sometimes referred to as a chocolate croissant, means chocolate bread—so you want to ensure that there's chocolate in every bite. To do so, space the batons side by side with a layer of dough in between. Tuck the dough seam under the batons to prevent unfolding during baking. The end result should resemble binoculars.