Share these with your friends.

One of the great pleasures of entertaining overnight visitors, or of being a houseguest, is enjoying breakfast with your friends. Sure, we city-dwellers enjoy our fair portion of shared brunches, and more than our allotment of shared dinners, but we rarely see our friends spreading jam on toast while still wearing their footsie pajamas.

Maybe it's because I live alone, but, to me, eating breakfast with friends is a real treat, a true novelty, and something I really look forward to when traveling. And it doesn't have to be a fancy pancake breakfast, either (though those are fun, too) - sometimes the best breakfast is just coffee and a brioche smeared with butter and jam.

Louisa and I made our first loaves of brioche together last summer, and during my visit this year we decided we couldn't let the opportunity to create a true tradition pass us by. This time, though, we decided to make one full loaf and six small, traditional brioches, the better to snack and breakfast on.

The little guys were just as easy to make as the big one - we followed the same recipe as last time and used half the dough to fill Louisa's silicon brioche pan (with a cookie sheet underneath to lend stability to the flexible material) and half for the loaf. You could also use the more traditional brioche molds - again, just stick them on a cookie sheet to make the whole thing easier. We topped the individual brioches with the same egg wash used on the loaf, and added some muscovado sugar for added crunch (and to make things all pretty-like).

The result? A loaf for French bread and sandwich-making, and six perfect breakfast treats, perfect for enjoying with friends and a big pot of coffee.