Bread pudding

What's better than have a sweet bowl of steaming dessert in your hands, when the weather gets colder ?

Maybe knowing that this bowl is made with love AND stale bread that you forgot about on your counter. No spoilage !

Winter is there already !

Gosh, I feel like time goes by so fast ! Just yesterday, I think I remember that the top of one particular tree around where I worked just had started to be yellow-ish... then BOOM ! snow came, with the sub-zero temperatures, along with the end of the year festivities. It has been an awful lot on me. Since I changed departments at my job, I knew christmas would be a busy time, but I never realized it would be THAT busy. I litterally came home some days, and never got around to eat before I crashed and slept until the next day.

We had a birthday to celebrate (Guyuk's uncle), for which I made an almond paste cake, along with some honey-pear icecream. Also, we had a wonderful christmas eve supper with my dad and my in-laws, where I cooked a lamb leg, that we had with fresh diner rolls, roasted winter vegetables and some cranberry sauce I had canned earlier. I got compliments from my mother-in-law about the lamb... wow, was I proud !

The christmas eve table



I'm also glad that we were able to spend the new year's eve with my in-laws, and 3 more friends of ours. This is quite special, as my mother-in-law is a chef, and Guyuk can barely remember when was the last time she was off on new year's eve !

One of the lovely drinks made by DeathBreeze



Snails in garlic butter

  

We had a great chinese fondue, with all kinds of meats (rabbit, deer, boar, buffalo, chicken and beef !) along with summer rolls, duck rillettes, duck liver with port, cheeses and garlic butter snails. We ended the meal with leftover honey-pear ice cream and a slice of delicious rum infused fruitcake, and of course, sparkling stuff for the new year (the majority of us had a go with pink champagne, but I kinda dislike champagne and opened a sparkling apple cider instead).

 Cheeses, nuts, bread and spreads

 

The meat: beef, buffalo, boar, rabbit, deer, chicken



Those three occasions have been full of warmth, comforting, filled with laughter, friend and family. I wish I could repeat that every year. Everyone came to have some relaxed fun and we sure did !

This bread pudding is simple comfort food. It's really not expensive to make, and you can pull it off for unexpected guests as well without too much hassle. It's delicious served hot, with vanilla ice cream, or with maple syrup. Please don't use the cheap immitation "maple" syrup, which we call "sirop de poteau" here, you deserve the real stuff.

Simple classic dessert

For those wondering where this expression is coming from, to make maple syrup, we have to stick little tubes in the maple trees, to get the maple water. In the case of sirop de poteau, it refers as if we were doing the same thing, but sticking it in false trees (basically in electrical posts), which would then give a "fake syrup". Don't worry tought, the false is mainly only sugar and water...

With maple syrup

Bread pudding
by Kirsa

Ingredients
Stale bread (wathever you have on hand)
Raisins
Milk (can also be cream, half and half or even soy or almond milk)
Powdered cinnamon

How to
Cut or shred the bread with your hands (depending on how stale it is), in a baking dish.

Depending on how hard the bread is, you need to add your milk. Pour as much as it takes for the bread to completely soak and become soft and mushy. Near the end, preheat the oven to 375 F.

When it's done, mix in the raisins and sprinkle with cinnamon powder on top. Get in the oven and let cook for about 30 minutes or so. The pudding is done when the top is getting drier and with a slight "crunch", and the pudding seems like it all fused together. There should be very little to no liquid in the botton of your dish.