Lemon Spice Bread Pudding

Sorry for the delay in posting the recipe... now humor me and read how this dessert came about:

Kroger is the main grocery store down here (if you don't do all your shopping at Wally World) and they often have "10 for 10" specials on things like frozen vegetables, some produce and this time, loaves of Kroger-brand bread. Usually I buy Bunny Bread Whole Wheat White-- sort of the local Wonder Bread. I like real bread a lot more than the fluffy stuff, but Bunny runs about $1.50 a loaf, and Joe will actually eat it. When I saw that yellow "10 for 10" sticker, like Pavlov's dog, my brain said "10 for 10...Must..buy..."

OK. It was horrible. Joe made a PB&J and the bread was disintegrating as he spread. I told him not to eat any more and I would turn it into French toast or something more palatable.

The bread sat in the cabinet, probably contemplating life as bread crumbs, while I busied myself with a bunch of other foods that needed eating... most notably the huge completely dried out pork loin that we cooked to an internal temp of 165 degrees --5 degrees less done than directed-- for 40 minutes longer than directed, and the rotisserie chicken Joe brought home on one of his impromptu shopping trips, and the sam's club chicken sausage featured in previous posts. Let's just say we had a lot of soups this week.

Then on Tuesday, amid drizzly skies and a day of longing for something sweet, Lemon Bread Pudding popped into my mind. I'd never made it or eaten it before, so I went first to my Amish cookbook. Sadly, no bread pudding recipes. Next I hit my copy of Joy of Cooking, which not only had plenty of versions to choose from, but several paragraphs discussing this history of the dessert. The best part-- the author said bread pudding is like a sponge that can absorb whatever extras you want to toss in. My kind of dessert.

So I followed the basic recipe, with some tweaks, and added lemon zest to satisfy my need for sunshine.

Lemon Spice Bread Pudding
12-16 oz stale bread cubes, crusts removed (this ended up being most of the loaf, minus heels and maybe 1 or 2 slices, I'm sure if you used a more substantial loaf of real bread, it would be less than a loaf)
4 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
grated zest of one lemon

Joy of Cooking called for 4-5 cups of 1/2 inch bread cubes, my fluffy stuff filled 6 to 7 cups, but I needed that much to absorb the egg mixture.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2 quart baking dish, then add the bread.
Whisk eggs, sugar, extract, zest and spices. Then whisk in milk. Pour over bread. Joy says to let it sit for 30 minutes, pressing bread down with a spatula to make sure bread is thoroughly soaked with egg. Again, fluffy bread needs no coaxing, mine was pretty much beginning to dissolve after 5 minutes, so I stuck mine in the oven directly. Oh, not quite.

Water bath: Place a thin dishtowel in a 9 by 13, place bread pudding on top, set in the oven, then pour in enough scalding hot water to submerge pudding casserole 1/2 to 3/4 of the way in water. Cooking it this way is supposed to help the texture. I liked how mine came out, and I'm not sure what bad things would have happened if I didn't put it in a jacuzzi to cook.

Stocking the fridge

I've been in a cooking frenzy the last couple of days... Last week I made a pumpkin pie without using condensed milk... or tofu (which some vegan recipes call for). The dessert was thrown together between baby duties so the crust is very messy.. just 1 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup canola oil, 1/4 tsp salt mixed and sprinkled with water and pressed into the bottom of a pie plate. (Stephen was crying at this point, so I didn't try to make it look pretty.) The filling: about 1 can pumpkin, 2/3 cup soy milk, 2/3 cup sugar and random shakes of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice. Oh and two eggs. That's it. Pour it in and bake at 350 until a knife came out clean.

I also filled my fridge with buttercup squash, nuked in 1/2 inch water per the sticker on the outside of the vegetable and mashed with butter and salt. A psuedo lasagna with spinach, mushrooms, chicken meatballs, prego and rotini with parmesan and mozzerella on top. Chicken fajitas using the sweet red bell peppers on sale at kroger for 68 cents. Turkey meatloaf with cauliflower and red bell peppers and oats. And an odd chicken potpie with zucchini, carrot, onion and spiced with curry and tandoori masala... with biscuits on top since i'm not so good at making pie crust!

Individual chocolate banana bread puddings

I was feeling frugal and decided to make a bread pudding to get rid of some old dinner rolls and a spotty banana before we go on our trip this weekend.
This is a Rachel Ray recipe that I didn't follow very well:

12 slices of white bread, toasted (I used the dinner rolls and two whole wheat white heels)
3 bananas (I used one fresh, 2 frozen)
1 T butter
2 T brown sugar
1 cup milk (I used half soy, half joe's milk that's about to expire)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
10 oz chocolate bar, broken (I used cocoa powder, and what few chocolate chips were left in the bag)

Caramelize butter and sugar, add bananas. Whip eggs, milk, vanilla. Toss bread with mixture. Let set 10 minutes. Add banana mixture. Add chocolate.

Scoop into muffin cups, bake for 25 minutes at 350.

They came out a little firm... I would have cooked them slightly less or added more liquid for a gooey-er texture.

Pumpkin pie for breakfast

And lunch.

So, did you know you could make pumpkin pie without condensed milk and even without tofu? Or that you could put it in a chocolate graham cracker crust?

That's what Joe did for me Thursday night. He used the ugly squash custard recipe, substituting canned pumpkin for the squash. It was probably about 2 cups pumpkin.

I know the ready-made graham cracker crusts are supposed to be for no-bake pies. But as long as the filling is liquidy enough, they come out great in the oven. This one had a fudgy-brownie like consistency on the bottom. Delish!

Danny Vowell, I'm still waiting for the recipe

... and for seconds.

For Michele's goodbye dinner at Mary D's last weekend, Danny made peanut butter chocolate banana cream pie... and IT'S DAIRY-FREE! Who knew you could make pudding with water? Not health food, of course, but super-yummy. And, no, I didn't eat the crust.

You might be wondering why this slice has my name on it. Danny brought the leftover pie to work and I wanted to secure a piece before the vultures other new era employees descended upon this decadent dessert.

Pumpkin sticky rolls

I always get the crazy craving to start some complicated baking project just before bedtime. This is last night's project.

Pumpkin Sticky Rolls (adapted from a recipe in East West Cooking: Innovative Mennonite Cooking from around the Globe)
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 packets yeast
4 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
more vegetable oil

Pecan topping:
1/4 cup oil
1 Tbs water
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup chopped pecans

Warm milk and oil, then add pumpkin, sugar, and salt. Beat in eggs and yeast, then the flour and mix well. Cover and set in a warm place until dough doubles.

Tur out dough onto floured surface and knead until smooth. Then roll out into a large rectangle. Brush with vegetable, then spread brown sugar and cinnamon. Roll the whole thing up like a jelly roll.

In a 9 x 13 metal baking pan (not a 10 x 10 square like I used) pour the oil, water, sugar and pecans mixture and spread evenly.

Slice rolls, then place them on top of the pecan mixture. Let them rise again as you preheat the oven... or longer if you're not impatient. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Immediately invert onto a serving dish so the pecans are a topping, not a bottoming (and so the sugar doesn't cement itself to the bottom of your pan).

Serve warm.

Pears puttin' me in a funk

Relish magazine (the monthly tab insert in the New Era) had a recipe for "Pearfection upside-down cake" that promised to be the most moist, pear-y, caramelized-delicious-upside-down cake ever... The pecans and the layered pear slices are what sold me. I was hoping for something that was a cross between a pecan sticky bun and a pear crumble.

Boy, was I in for a rude end to my labors. While I had fun arranging the ingredients in my new cast iron skillet, I was so disappointed with the results that I decided not to blog the results.

The cherries overpowered with suffocating sourness. The sugar and maple glaze never crisped, but rather bonded with some rogue batter to form a loose network of soggy lumps. The cake base was neither moist nor flavorful... I couldn't taste the pears and my pecans seemed to be a little stale tasting, which I suppose is the fault of Kroger and not the recipe. I contemplated throwing the whole thing away.
Fortunately for my husband and his unprejudiced taste buds, I didn't throw it away. And when I noticed Friday that the thing was half-gone, I decided to set it up for a little portrait. But I'm not going to unleash the recipe.

lemon cubes

Lemon cubes are what you get when you use a lemon bar recipe meant for a 9 X 12 in an 8 X 8 pan.

Crust:
2 sticks butter (it was difficult for me to do)
2 cups flour
pinch salt
1/2 cup sugar

Press it into the pan and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Filling:
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
zest from one lemon
4 Tbs lemon juice
4 Tbs flour

Pour over crust and bake 20-25 minutes (mine took 40 before the center stopped being giggly.) Sprinkle with powdered sugar and let cool before cutting into bars.

Schlabach's Bakery

Life Lesson

Something I've learned from my dear parents, Brad and Mamie Tilsch: Travelling means finding the best food an area has to offer and buying lots of it.

Yesterday morning (after our YMCA workout, of course) Mom, Dad and I drove out to Schlabach's Bakery in Guthrie, Ky.; a Mennonite store offering amazing pecan rolls and other delightful ways to counteract a morning YMCA workout.

Which angel food cake did we buy for my dad's birthday? They had plain, lemon, strawberry and chocolate chip.