Basking in the warm summer sun and relishing the sweetness of Orange, Maple and Walnut Pudding
As I’ve mentioned a few times now, I love shooting food in natural light. Not only do I capture food in its natural beauty but it saves me a lot of time with the editing process.
These days I am shooting food either by the window or outdoors (not necessarily in direct sunlight, but somewhere nicely lit at the same time shaded).
More than the number of times I mentioned my fondness for shooting in natural light is the number of times I declared, and announced quite proudly, my absolute love of stale bread. I mean of course freshly baked bread is always the best to appease most people’s discerning carbohydrate cravings, but for me, I can do much more delicious dishes and make much more humble uses for stale bread other than smearing butter or pb & jam on slices of its fresh-out-of-the-oven counterpart.
With stale bread I make breadcrumbs (even better, I make my own seasoned breadcrumbs) to use as binders and extenders for meatloaf and meatballs, as breading for deep-fried dishes like schnitzels (scallopine) and to make crunchy toppings for baked mac and cheese, potato gratin and casseroles.
If I am not blitzing the semi-dry bread into crumbs, I occasionally end up making croutons and butter and sugar snack toasties (my mother’s fav to eat with coffee). But of all the possible and palatable things I can make with stale bread, making it into bread pudding (with dozens of varieties/flavors) is my most looked forward and much more pleasurable plan that is always already mapped out anytime my house is over-stocked with bread.
I found a page from my all-time favorite book Simple Pleasures : Soothing Suggestions & Small Comforts for Living Well All Year Round. The topic is about Comfort Foods and specifically how a most humble Bread and Butter Pudding can caress a most homesick heart.
“Bread pudding may be the all-purpose comfort food that is easiest to reproduce. It has inspired everyone from Leon Lianides of New York’s legendary Coach House restaurant to Marion Cunningham, who updated The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. (Cunningham pointed out that bread pudding was a “great pacifier” for boarding school students for generations- sometimes the only decent dish in the dining hall.)” - (Spring Chapter : Friends and Family, p.41)
Ingredients:
8 slices Egg & Milk Loaf bread (can also use brioche), sliced into triangle halves
4 large eggs
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup half and half (1:1 milk + cream)
1/3 cup melted unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
zests of 1 orange
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup light brown sugar + 1 teaspoon cinnamon (to sprinkle over bread pudding before baking)
Procedure:
- Preheat oven to 350’F. Brush butter onto an oven/baking dish.
- Layer and overlap the bread slices in the buttered baking dish.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk eggs, maple syrup, sugar, half and half, melted butter, vanilla, orange zests, salt and walnuts.
- Pour the egg mixture over the arranged slices of bread in the baking dish. Let the bread soak up the egg mixture, about 30 minutes.
- Mix the light brown sugar and cinnamon together. Sprinkle the mixture over the unbaked bread pudding. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until bread pudding is puffed-up and golden.
- Serve warm.
Makes 5-6 servings
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
Orange, Maple and Walnut Bread Pudding (unbaked)
I am very happy about how this bread pudding shoot turned out. All the lighting and the warm glow in this photograph were courtesy of the warm summer late afternoon sunlight.
I did not do any color correction or tweaking on this photo other than adjusted the size of it.
Not only that natural light made this bread pudding gorgeous in this photo, but it caught the natural bright yellows and orange hues of all the ingredients there is in this dessert dish of mine.
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
BANANA BREAD PUDDING LOAF
In everyday cooking (or baking) there should always be the presence of sensibility and a conscious effort to as much as possible not be wasteful of food.
I love, and I mean LOVE stale bread and overripe bananas. For me, overripe bananas always presents the promise of very dependable banana bread slices and muffins which I (and any member of my family) can wrap up and take anywhere to eat with a cup of tea. While stale bread, I admit, with unabashed reasonable frugality and high pride, has turned me into a more sensible cook. I never buy those salad crouton bags, never buy breadcrumbs, never buy instant stuffing and never ordered a bread pudding dessert in any restaurant! Because I just know that bread pudding is the most customizable dessert that is almost, always fool-proof.
So what better way to argue and defend my case but to present the evidence produced by the happy union of overripe bananas and stale bread. -jeannie :)
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
BLACK FOREST BREAD PUDDING
I always feel an unabashed pride every time I make something out of a few ingredients, even, out of some ingredients that were either in a coma or were almost about the end of existence. It’s like I just did a fabulous make-over!
I love stale bread. I think it’s the only thing in the world that becomes even more versatile as it gets past its due.
I made this bread pudding from a stale black forest loaf of bread (overcast by that one loaf of freshly baked coffee cake I made). I just added chocolate chips, vanilla extract, eggs, and half and half. After it baked, I anointed it with raspberry puree and dusted with powdered sugar… you see, happily ever after does come from all sorts of ways, and it’s specially even more well received when it has a “Cinderella story” behind it.
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
CHOCOLATE BREAD PUDDING WITH RASPBERRY SAUCE
…WHEN IT RAINS… IT OVERFLOWS WITH CHOCOLATE AND RUBY RED RASPBERRY SAUCE. ;)
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
CHOCOLATE BREAD PUDDING WITH RASPBERRY SAUCE AND ORANGE CONFETTI
Source: goddessofscrumptiousness
