Jam and Bread Pudding

I can't believe that I haven't posted a recipe since Monday! It's been a crazy week here at our house. The holidays make things crazy enough, but on Tuesday my son had an accident while running in the house and hurt his two front teeth. We aren't sure what will happen; we have to wait another week to see the pediatric dentist again as only time will tell what will happen to his darling smile. So in addition to lots of tears shed by us all, it's been a challenging week in terms of cooking. Nothing too hard or chewy, of course. And trying to be clever with what's nutritous as well as soft.

Anyway, many, many weeks ago while reading a Food and Wine cookbook I came across this breakfast recipe for jam and bread pudding. It sounded decadent; a perfect breakfast for a once-a-year holiday treat. While the editors of the book chose to list it as a breakfast, it's also a delicious dessert.

Jam and Bread Pudding

One 1-lb loaf challah bread, sliced 1/2-inch thick

3/4 cup plus 3 tbsp strawberry jam or preserves

4 large eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 cups plus 1 tbsp whole milk

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup confectioners' sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 13-inch glass baking dish. Arrange half of the challah in the dish; tear the slices to fit. Spread 3/4 cup of the strawberry jam on top; cover with remaining challah.

2. Whisk the eggs with the granulated sugar, 2 1/2 cups of the milk and the vanilla and pour over the challah, pressing to soak. Brush the bread pudding with 4 tbsp of the butter. Cover with foil and bake for 24 minutes, or until set. Remove the foil halfway through.

3. Preheat the broiler. Blend the remaining 1 tbsp of milk with the confectioners' sugar. Add the remaining butter and strawberry jam and stir until the glaze is smooth. Spread all but 1/4 cup of the glaze over the bread pudding and broil until golden, about 2 minutes. Drizzle the bread pudding with the remaining glaze and serve.

The Verdict: Whoa, is this stuff decadent. And can you believe the recipe says that it's delicious drizzled with maple syrup? Who on earth would want to add more sugar?

This was a wonderful breakfast, but speaking of the sugar, feel free to play with the ingredients. You could probably cut the granulated sugar down by a 1/4 cup when blending with the eggs. The amount of jam can be reduced; I didn't measure out that much but just spread it from the jar onto the bread. I'm certain I didn't use 3/4 cup. Speaking of the jam, a nice addition to this recipe would be a layer of fresh or frozen (thawed) strawberries on top of the jam. One other sugar reduction is the glaze. We found that the glaze that topped the pudding was plenty; we didn't use any of the additional glaze.

I'm making it sound like this dish wasn't delicious because of all the sugar, but really it was. The already eggy challah bread puffed up wonderfully when soaked in the egg mixture. And the glaze was great. I think the only thing we were disappointed over was that the strawberry taste of the jam got lost. More fruit, please. By the way, the recipe didn't say how long to broil the pudding. With all that sugar, I should have known better. I thought four minutes would be OK and didn't watch it; two was plenty. What you're seeing in the picture was a little bit of what my mom used to call "pink." That's the nice way to say, yes, it got burned a little bit. The woes of being a home food blogger. I don't have a team of food designers to fix my mistakes.

I think with a little tweaking, this could become a holiday tradition.

Héloïse's Apples and Squash

Who's Héloïse? I don't really know; a friend of cookbook/memoir author Susan Herrman Loomis who shared her recipe for apples and squash (or in French les pommes et potimarron) and ended up in Loomis's book On Rue Tatin. The recipe is a combination of sautéd apples, smothered in a squash and béchamel sauce mixture, which is then baked until golden. Sounded like a delicious and special accompaniment to the mussels I made for Christmas Eve.

Héloïse's Apples and Squash

3 kuri or acorn squash (3.5 lbs) trimmed, peeled,
seeds removed and cut into 2" pieces
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 3/4 lbs cooking apples cored, peeled, and cut into eighths

(for Béchamel)
1 1/2 cups whole milk
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 13 x 2" dish.

2. Cook squash (boil or roast), purée, drain if necessary.

3. Melt butter in a skillet and add apples. Cook until golden and tender, about 15 minutes. Transfer to the baking dish.

4. To make the béchamel, scald milk with the bay leaves over medium heat in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and infuse for 10 minutes. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour and cook until mixture has bubbled and formed pale yellow foam, about 2 minutes. Pour in hot milk, remove bay leaves, whisking as you add to the flour-butter mixture. Cook until thickened like heavy cream. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Whisk béchamel into squash.

6. Pour squash béchamel over apples, dot with remaining butter, season with nutmeg. Bake until béchamel is golden, apples tender, about 25 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

The Verdict: My husband and son loved it. I liked it, but I think I was a little let down after all that work.

The squash and apples make a perfect pair and the béchamel adds a wonderful creamy quality to the dish. But honestly, apples, squash and even béchamel are rather mild foods. For me, it lacked a flavor punch that I can't put my finger on. Don't get me wrong: it was delicious. But I think I was expecting a little more.

The squash can be made in advance. And boy, am I glad that I did as I was very busy in the kitchen last night. This is one of those recipes that, in an almost French tradition, create loads of dishes. It's a good idea to have a sink full of hot, soapy water on hand or else an empty dishwasher to load as you go. Otherwise, in addition to all that time you take to cook, you get to spend a long time cleaning, too.

Loomis wrote that her family enjoys the leftovers of this dish slightly warmed for breakfast. I can see this as being a lovely breakfast; rich and filling. Unfortunately for us, we also have a ton of leftover jam and bread pudding from Christmas morning. Well, maybe not so unfortunate. That's another great recipe you'll have to stay tuned for.

PB&J French Toast Sticks

You might be seeing a pattern of easy foods this week. Sunday night we had the sloppy joes I previously blogged about, Monday night was grilled cheese with tomato soup, Wednesday night was homemade pizza and last night was this recipe: pb&j french toast sticks. The reason for the not-so-frilly fare is because of the Christmas holiday fast approaching. I have some new things I'm trying up my sleeve, so I wanted to save my culinary energy for the food I'll be preparing for my family Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Stay tuned for those recipes.

But the recipe for pb&j french toast sticks (pb&j=peanut butter and jelly), which came from the December issue of Woman's Day magazine, struck me as easy and fun. We're not yet giving our son peanut butter, so we substituted it for cashew butter. If you don't do peanuts in your house, you can use cashew or almond butter as a substitute. Likewise, I used good old grape jelly but you can use any jelly or jam that you fancy.

PB&J French Toast Sticks

8 slices of soft white or whole-wheat bread

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

3 tbsp grape or strawberry jelly

4 large eggs

1/4 cup milk

2 tbsp butter

Confectioners' sugar

1. Spread 1 tbsp peanut butter on each slice of bread. Spread a rounded tsp of jelly down the center of each piece. Fold bread in half, pressing edges to seal.

2. In a 13 x 9-in. baking dish, whisk eggs and milk. Place the sandwiches in the dish and let soak, 1 minute per side.

3. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a skillet over medium heat. In two batches, cook the sandwiches until golden brown, 2 minutes per side, adding more butter to skillet as needed. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar before serving.

The Verdict: Maybe not our healthiest meal ever, but was it ever fun!

Making these "sticks" is a snap. Really, as you've probably guessed, you don't need the ingredient amounts. Spread the nut butter and jelly on the bread, fold, whip up some eggs, cook in a hot pan with butter. I've just never thought to add peanut butter and jelly to french toast. But why not?

The original recipe asks for the crusts on the bread to be removed. I didn't bother. Your call. My son, who tends to be fussy about bread crust, didn't even notice. They're an odd size and very sandwich looking, so I served ours without forks and knives. To a toddler/preschooler this will probably be messy, but again, it was fun to eat egg-y toast oozing with jelly. My son actually exclaimed, "I like this!" which was interesting as his positive meal comments are minimal. (We hear, quite vocally, about what he doesn't like.)

This was fun. It's obviously a great breakfast, but makes a different and easy "brinner" (breakfast for dinner) as well!

Blueberry Pancakes

Meatless Monday has rolled around again, and while looking for this week's recipe, I wanted something different. My son is too picky about vegetables at the moment to make something like a vegetable stir fry or curry and I feel like half the vegetarian recipes out there are for pasta. So in trying to think outside of the box, I opted for blueberry pancakes.

Originally, I had suggested apple spice pancakes. We went apple picking on Sunday and loaded up on those crunchy and juicy gems. But because it's getting late in the season and we're unsure if we'll get to go again, Noyan suggested we hold off on using our bounty for cooking and just snack on them for the time being. I agree--the apples this year are wonderful. We all ate two today; one for breakfast with slices of cheddar and an apple cider donut, and one for an afternoon snack. Heavenly.

Anyway, that prompted the request for blueberry pancakes. I couldn't find any local ones today, so I opted for a bag of frozen. I say to use between a cup and two cups for this recipe, but really, it's whatever your blueberry mood is. We went for all-out berry explosion.

Blueberry Pancakes

1 1/2 cups flour

3 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups milk

1/2 stick butter, melted

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1. In a large bowl, whisk flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk milk, butter, eggs and vanilla together. Whisk wet ingredients into dry, until just combined.

2. Ladle 1/4 cupfuls onto a hot skillet that's been sprayed with cooking spray until bubbly. Just before turning, sprinkle with blueberries. Flip and cook until golden at the bottom. Adjust heat so that the pan is hot but not burning pancakes. Keep warm on a cookie sheet in a 250 degree oven if making many pancakes, if desired.

The Verdict: An easy recipe that produces fluffy pancakes that have just a hint of sweet.

At first, Amir ate just the blueberries rolling free on his plate, but soon discovered that each bite contained warm, oozing blueberries as well. So they were a hit with the toddler. Noyan asked if they were from a mix. What!? He meant that they tasted good, and pancakes that fluffy and smooth couldn't have been homemade. But they were. And speaking of homemade, when you make them yourself they are just bursting with berries (whereas in restaurants they tend to be stingy with the fruit) and you can be assured the berries are cooked inside of the pancake, not dumped on top when the pancake is finished. I hate that, don't you?

I was going to serve them with veggie sausages, however, I'd lost my patience at the grocery store by that point and figured pancakes alone would be plenty for dinner. They were; this recipe makes about 8 good-sized cakes.

Cranberry Scones

Who knew that a bag of cranberries would keep you busy in the kitchen for so long?

With so many berries leftover, I was psyched that I'd also be able to make the cranberry scones recipe that had also made it to the top of my pile. I've never made scones before but because I was feeling more confident about baking after the cranberry upside-down cake success, I thought I'd give it a try. I even bought a fancy new pastry from Target this morning just for the occasion.

It's only within the last five years or so that I started eating scones. When they first came on the scene, they were incredibly dry and tasteless. But I gave them another shot and am glad I did: it seems that cooks out there figured out that scones needed an overhaul and tweaked their recipes to make them more palatable. Not just palatable, but yummy, really. But they are, by nature, a dry dough. Don't be discouraged by how stubborn the ingredients are to mold themselves into something that resembles a scone.

Cranberry Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface

5 tbsp sugar, plus 1 tbsp for topping

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2/3 cup half-and-half, plus 1 tbsp

1/2 cup halved cranberries, drained on paper towels

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a bowl, whisk together flour, 5 tablespoons of sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or two knives (note: two knife method is difficult) until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in 2/3 of the half-and-half until just moistened. Gently fold in cranberries.

2. On a lightly floured surface, knead dough gently, around 10 times. Pat into a 1-inch-thick round. Cut into 8 wedges; place on a baking sheet 2 inches apart. Brush tops with remaining tablespoon of half-and-half; sprinkle remaining tablespoon sugar. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

The Verdict: These ain't the dry and tasteless scones of old. Make way for a new breakfast staple!

The outside is a bit crispy and the inside is slightly moist, making a great combination. The tartness of the cranberries are offset by the small amount of sugar on the top of the scones. I was ready to smear it in butter but found that the amount of butter used for cooking makes it rich enough to go without.

I'm dying to try it as different fruits come into season. Substituting blueberries for the cranberries seems like it would be heavenly; I'm also imagining fresh raspberries would be delish.