Some people wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to greet the day while for others, the morning transition is… um, a little more difficult. For those of us who fit into the latter category, recipes that take the early morning work out of a big breakfast are a blessing and a half. Enter the oh-so-amazing overnight breakfast casserole.

This easy bake is cheesy, meaty and full of comforting hash browns, and all of the work can be done ahead. That means that all you have to handle before your morning cup of coffee is preheating an oven. That, we can handle. You simply brown some of your favorite ground breakfast sausage with some onions before mixing it with some frozen hash browns, a whole lot of eggs, a bit of cream, shredded cheddar, and some earthy rosemary and thyme before letting the whole thing sit overnight in the fridge. It gives a chance for all the flavors to really come together and for you to get a little bit more shut-eye.

An overnight casserole is the perfect thing when you have a house full of company, so we love making this around the holidays. We also find it’s really handy to make up a batch and divide it into three or four little loaves to be baked up on any given busy morning. We’ve included baking times for each option below. When we make this up, we like to keep one loaf pan in the fridge to bake the next morning and freeze the rest for later. As long as they’re wrapped up tight, they freeze really well. If you’re baking from frozen, it will increase the baking time a little bit, so you’ll be looking at the longer end of those baking time ranges.