Bread Pudding

This is the recipe that I followed. It came from the website Moms Who Think

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk (or 2 cups half & half)
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar (light or dark, depending on taste preference)
3 eggs
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups bread, torn into small pieces (French bread works best)
1/2 cup raisins (optional)


Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, heat the milk just until a film forms over the top. Combine the butter with the hot milk stirring until the butter is melted completely. Cool to lukewarm.
2. Combine sugar, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer at medium speed for 1 minute. Slowly add milk mixture.
3. Place bread in a lightly greased 1 1/2 quart casserole.
4. Sprinkle with raisins if desired. Pour batter on top of bread.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 50 minutes or until set. Serve warm.


Without a doubt I can say this was an absolute success. Everyone loved it! My brother was the first taster and he wanted al of it for himself. But despite his enthusiastic review on it I was still a little skeptical. I thought it was all right but my first taste the pudding was still too hot for me to appreciate the taste of it. I was more or less just checking that the consistency of the inside was fine. And that it wasn’t a gooey raw mess of batter.

I went over to my friend’s house that night and I told him that I’d bring some for him. I went there armed with my bread pudding, more than a little apprehensive about letting an outsider try it. I gave it to him and he rested it on the dining table and then told his mother that there was some she could try if she liked. Nerves racked my stomach as I went to get a fork for her to try it. She liked it, not only that she really seemed to love it. And now she wants me to make her one. All of this took place while she was on the phone with one of her daughters and she proceeded to talk about how good my bread pudding was. Then the daughter wanted to know how comes she didn’t get any while she was visiting last month so I promised her one as well the next time she visits. I was so thrilled that so far everyone liked it. Eventually my friend tried it and he liked it too (he wouldn’t admit it though but I could tell). He said it tasted like a mash up of French toast and bread pudding.

By the time I got home my mother had already gone to bed so the following morning when I asked her what she thought of it she too loved it. I think that means it is officially a hit. She even asked me to send her the recipe because the ones that the housekeepers make at home is nowhere as nice as mine was.

Due to a lack of space and not having a real oven I had to half the recipe and make a smaller version of it using the toaster oven. Doing half a recipe was a little tricky when it came to certain parts like using one and a half eggs instead of 3. I literally used half an egg, without the second yolk though. I had started by using a large egg and a small one but the total of them both just looked like way too much so I took out what I thought would have been equal to a half an egg. Although when I told Mummy about that she laughed and said I should have just used two small eggs, which in hindsight would have made a lot more sense.

I began by putting the milk on to boil and waiting for the film to form on the top. While that was happening I figured that I could combine the other ingredients and beat them but then my milk started to burn just slightly. I quickly took it off the heat and put it on a cool burner and added the butter, stirring pretty constantly to ensure that all of the butter melted out evenly and there were no little clumps left in the mixture. While it cooled to lukewarm I combined and whisked my other ingredients. I don’t have an electric mixer at this house so for all my mixing I tend to rely on my whisk and myself.

After doing all of those while the milk was still cooling I began to tear up the bread into pieces. Again having halved the recipe I was left with using a cup and a half of bread that amounted to about a slice and a half. When I put those pieces into the greased casserole dish there were still quite a few empty spots so I tore up some more bread and filled in the gaps; in all I probably used about two slices of hardough bread. Then I sprinkled with raisins strategically positioning them so that they were relatively evenly distributed throughout the pudding.

Once that was done I added the milk/butter mixture to the other stuff and blended them together. Then poured it all over the bread in the casserole dish and made sure everything looked as good as I could make it and then into the oven it went. The 45-50 minute baking time was the perfect length to wash up the utensils I had used and then shower and get dressed. When my timer went off 45 minutes later I was dressed and pretty much ready to go.

I’ve decided that it’s the perfect homemaker recipe. You can do it like an hour before your husband is due to get home from work and once it goes into the oven you’re free to clean up the kitchen and yourself and by the time it’s ready your husband should be arriving home to the smell of cinnamon and vanilla permeating the house.

I would definitely give this five out of five stars =)

Bread Pudding

I really really feel for bread pudding right now and I don't know where to get any =( and while this recipe looks idiot proof I don't have the ingredients because my brother consumes anything edible like a vacum does dust bunnies. I also don't have a container to make it in. Sigh.

Bacon White Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Apologies in advance for the somewhat poor quality and selection of photographs. Everything was cooking far too quickly for me to keep up with.

I know this sounds kind of completely weird but I promise you it was amazing. Aunt Jemima and I got to know each other a little better today. I woke up at after noon expecting that I would have to rush and get prepared for a performance that I had. Instead I woke up to the news that there was no performance. While a bit disappointed it meant I could go back to my bed which I was dying to do since I didn't go to be until 6:30am. So I picked up a book and decided to enjoy the unexpected leisure time. I obviously picked up the wrong book if I had planned to go back to sleep because once I opened Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me I was filled with the instant desire to cook something. I lay in bed for a while thinking what might have been available in the cupboards of a household that rarely cooks. First I decided on eggs but then my brother informed me that we had no milk and there went my plans for delicious fluffy scrambled eggs. Then while flipping through the book I landed on one of my favourite looking recipes, bacon pancakes.

"Bacon pancakes and Bacon French Toast both remind me of pussy. When you press the cooked bacon into the raw pancake batter or French toast, it really likes to sink in. When you flip the pancakes back to serve them bacon side up, the bacon is in there, enveloped by soft walls. It's really very sexy." (page 91)-  Kenny Shopsin's words on bacon pancakes and French toast. While being a heterosexual female the idea of pussy doesn't appeal to me, but bacon anything in my books is just amazing.

The process began with me cutting up the frozen bacon (real bacon not turkey bacon or any other substitue- not that I have anything against them) into small pieces but not small enough to be considered bacon bits. Shopsin uses entire strips in his pancakes. I didn't expect that there was enough bacon left for me to do this so I cut up what was left and then fried them in the frying pan. When the bacon was done I removed the pieces and rest them on a plate with a paper towel to remove the excess oil.

While the bacon was cooking I mixed two cups of Aunt Jemima Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix with one and a half cups of water and whisked the batter together. In the end I added a little more water to make the mixture slightly thinner. After the bacon was done I put some of the excess oil into the batter to give the pancakes a general aura of bacon flavour.

I scooped out the first quarter cup of batter and poured onto the hot frying pan. Then I added the bacon, about three pieces and pushed them into the batter. I waited for bubbles to appear and then I flipped it. I was actually disappointed in the way it came out. The first two that I made I did using Shopsin's method and I found that when I flipped them the bacon it cooked it even more and I didn't like that. Generally I don't like my bacon really crispy so the extra cooking wasn't for me. Then I decided to pour the rest of the bacon pieces into the batter, stir things up and cook it like that. It worked so much better and all my pancakes came out better after that.

Somewhere when the batter was half finished and my brother and his friend had eaten their first helping I remembered the fun sized packs of M&M's we had and I wondered how M&M's pancakes would be. Then inspiration struck and I remembered the Hershey's white chocolate chips that were in my fridge. I opened the bag and sprinkled a few into the remaining batter and cooked the rest of pancakes.

When they were all done and I sat down to my "breakfast" at three in the afternoon I bit into one of the pancakes with a chocolate chip and there was a flavour explosion in my mouth. The sweet complemented the salty savory flavour of the bacon and it was all just beyond great. Domo (my brother's friend) said, "they are awesome" and Doodie (my brother) said, "it was like my taste-buds got head".