Bread Pudding for Dummies Like Me

It's ALIVE!!! Yes I am Still alive and kicking. Two kids under my wing and a computer older than Jesus makes it hard for me to blog nowadays. I am going to slap together this post in hopes that I can start back up a blog I have been meaning to get back to for ummm about 2 and half years now. It's going to be sloppy at first, forgive me, but I just want to start. Once I start, I can keep going.

So tomorrow will be, I kid you not, our 10th family Christmas party. I am so ready for Christmas to be over. It will be a simple affair at great-grandmother's house. Chili, soup, warm bread. A simple affair to be rid of what has turned into an accursed season this year.

I have been tasked with dessert, and seeing as how my kitchen has been in a constant state of disaster since the week of Thanksgiving, I cannot bring myself to do something decadent. That being said, I also took into account the simple fair that we were having. So instead of a fancy cake, heavy candy, or multitude of pie, I opted for a simple, 11th/12th century dessert with a rich history: Bread Pudding.

Bread Pudding is a flexible recipe that basically calls for a loaf of stale bread, a custard of some type, a "sweets spice" like nutmeg, cinnamon, or ginger, and a dried fruit or nut. It is synonymous with comfort food.

Originally the food of paupers, it utilizes common household staples so nothing goes to waste.

Bread Pudding KK Style
10 cups or so of coarsely cubed white bread.
6 large eggs
3.5 cups of whole milk
1.5 cups of heavy cream.
2 cups of sugar
1t vanilla extract
1T of cinnamon
1 cup of raisins
Butter for greasing pan

Sauce:
1 cup of packed brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of whipping cream
3/4t of cinnamon
2T of whiskey

Tools you will need:

• 9x13x2 baking dish, preferably with a lid. (lid not mandatory, but hella convenient.)
• Plastic wrap or foil if you don't have previously mentioned lid.
• Whisk
• A large bowl
• measuring cups and spoons

I have no pictures of process for you today, but hopefully a finished product. We will see.

The recipe I am using today called for 6 cups of bread, cubed. I didn't have a stale loaf of bread, just one pushing stale and mostly gone, so I had to add almost an entire loaf of fresh bread. Then again, I used more than 6 cups. Probably closer to 10 cups of cubed white bread. I decided to add more bread because when I used 6, my bread pudding looked like soup. The flimsy white bread just disappeared in the custard mix. This is not really surprising since white bread is so soft and has, like, zero nutritional value. If you opt to use a heartier bread like challah or whole grain, maybe 6 cups will be enough. If you have ever read my blog before, you know to just trust your gut, go with your instincts. Unless your instincts are terrible. In that case just hope and be ready with a fire extinguisher.

So I digress. Cube the bread or tear it in tiny pieces or strips or whatever totes your goat.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat your eggs. Then add all the remaining ingredients, except the raisins and bread, stir to combine.  You see here is where I messed up. After I combined all these fluids to make the custard, I put all my bread cubes in the bowl, only to immediately (and messily) add them to the baking dish. Don't be an idiot. Use the butter to grease your baking dish, put the bread cubes in said dish, then pour your sweet custard mix on top of the cubes.

This is when you can tell if you need more bread or not. Mine was super soupy. Granted it needs to be wet, not drowning though. So I added 2-3 cubed slices until I felt the dish was not just a pan of non-alcoholic eggnog. Remember also that you need to leave enough room to add your cup of raisins and account for the pudding to rise. So don't pack that bad boy to the rim of the dish with bread. In fact, I just checked on mine in the oven and it is DANGEROUSLY tall. Hopefully this will not end in disaster because bread puddings are meant to fall.

Once you have gotten the amount of bread and what not into the pan to your liking, cover it and refrigerate it a couple of hours. You see, I didn't read the recipe all the way through when I started my pudding so mine only got to chill an hour. I think the point is to give everything time to soak up into the bread. Again, I used white bread and I actually got in their with my hands to stir in and coat everything. I have little fear of things not marrying well. Those who choose thicker breads, proceed with caution.

After it is done chilling, marrying, whatever, put it in a 350 degree oven for an hour and 15 minutes. Your house will start to smell amazing around 30 minutes. Unless you overfilled the pan, then your house will smell like burned eggs and toast.

The original recipe calls for a rum sauce, but we are more a whiskey family. Therefore, I am subbing whiskey for the rum. There are as many sauce varieties as there are pudding varieties. Find one that suits your tastes if mine does not.

While your bread is cooling, melt your butter and brown sugar in a saucepan. Don't burn it, you have to  stir consistently. Once everything is smooth, add the remaining ingredients on a medium heat until it reduces to a thick sauce, about 5 minutes.

You can pour it over the whole pudding or set it aside to rewarm and garnish when you are ready to serve it. My God, that sauce tastes like winter under a stack of warm blankets, in front of a roaring fireplace. Enjoy. Thanks for taking me back.

Scout the Leapfrog Dog Cake

It's been about a year since I made a cake due to that pesky morning sickness/ prego nausea, but it's Oliver's fourth birthday, and he just had to have a Scout cake. Well google was no help, only showing 2 cakes that were big and sculpted. Certainly outside my skill level, so here was my inspiration and my outcome. What do you think?

Desperate Times Call for Desparate Grub

So still a stay at home mommy here. It's been almost a year since I was laid off from the craziness that was my last job. Money is tight which necessitates some budgeting and belt tightening. That being said, I have tried to restrict grocery shopping to once a month. When we run out of something, I try to wait until the next month to purchase more (except staples such as milk).

Well, the end of the month approacheth, and since I am exclusively breastfeeding, I am hungry ALL THE TIME. Like, revisiting my teenage years hungry all the time, but with a sweet-toothy vengence. I had been cooking a cake once a week or so for family consumption. Unfortunately, we ran out of eggs last week, so cakes, cookies, brownies, breads are out of the question. While my waistline is probably thankful, my stomach was resentful.

After doing some searching, I turned up a recipe for an eggless chocolate chip cookie dough. For all of us that enjoy eating dough raw, this is recipe will be music to your ears. Also, since it has no risk of salmonella, you can eat it without the fear of being nagged at by anyone other than your personal trainer.

It's super simple, and can be tweaked to your individual tastes.

No Egg Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
1/4 cup of flour
1 Tbsp + 1 teaspoon of brown sugar
1 Tbsp + 1 teaspoon of white sugar
pinch of salt
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp milk
handful of chocolate chips

Simply mix all the components together in a bowl and enjoy with a spoon. Sometimes this mixture is a bit thin and runny. I added a little bit of flour until I got the texture I wanted (about a teaspoon at a time). This is a very rich recipe, next time I might cut a little sugar and butter, too. However, as is, it certainly satiated my sweet tooth. I am refrigerating it now to make dough balls for later. Yum! Enjoy.

A 10 Minute Pie to Solve a Thanksgiving Day Crisis

I hate the holidays. Maybe this comes from being a kid of a divorced family, being drug hither and thither all over the place every holiday instead of being able to stay at home and play. I thought that when I got married it would be better because things would happen at my house, but no. Jon has a huge family of frail, elderly types that insist we go to their home on X day because that is how they have been doing that holiday since 1956. It is exhausting. This year even more so with a newborn and still fighting the postpartum depression.

That being said, there can never be an occasion in which some catastrophe doesn't try to ruin the holiday. It's just Murphy's Law. My personal favorite from my mother's side: one time the turkey slid off the platter while my grandma was carrying it, and it fell into the open, running washing machine. She didn't tell a soul, just rinsed it off and served it. Yum! Downy fresh!

That being said, hopefully your holiday catastrophe will be limited to your brother bringing a drunk girlfriend, Aunt Martha inviting a few more people than you anticipated, or you forgetting to bring a dessert to the party. I have a quick solution for that last one.

I've talked about my peanut butter chocolate pie before I'm sure, but let me refresh because I don't want you to be searching all over the blog or interwebs to find the recipe. That will only bring about a second catastrophe:

     
      Wouldn't want your mobile device battery to die while you were searching. How would you
        entertain yourself for the rest of the day?

So basically, most pantries have the 4 ingredients you need for this pie and it can be ready in 10 minutes. You will need:

1 graham cracker pie crust
Peanut butter (any variety)
3 cups of milk
1 large package of instant chocolate pudding

Distructions:

Use an ice cream scoop and put 3 heaping scoops of peanut butter in a bowl. Nuke in the microwave for 30 seconds or so to melt a little. Don't over heat like I did or your house will smell like burned peanuts.

Make pudding according to directions, I.e. whisk 3 cups of milk into pudding. Set aside, try to keep the kids out of it.

Pour slightly melted PB into the bottom of the pie crust. Use a spatula or back of the spoon to evenly coat the bottom.

Pour the pudding on top and chill. Or serve, whatever. There will be a little bit of pudding leftover in the bowl. Feel free to gorge yourself on it, no one will be looking. Remember, they are watching your brother's obnoxious, drunk girlfriend flirt with Uncle Joe.

Then you can walk out with this and yell, "Ta Da"!!!!

Well, except it will be a whole pie.

Let's just hope the next holiday catastrophe isn't that someone is allergic to peanuts and goes into anaphylactic shock.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Bread Goof

Today I decided to bust out the ole bread machine to whip up a french bread loaf to eat with our leftover stew. Unfortunately, prego brain got the best of me. I used 1/2 of the recipe for an Italian herb loaf before I realized that I was looking at the wrong recipe. There is a little more water and sugar to the Italian loaf recipe, in addition to oil (which is not at ALL in the french recipe.) I decided to say, "the hell with it" and see what comes out at the end.

The unfortunate thing is that if this bread turns out to be mind blowing, it's probably not reproducible. Oh well.

On a side note, tomorrow is 39 weeks pregnant. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and if she tells me (again) that I have not made any progress I am going to be quite upset. I have been reading about foods that people swear by to induce labor. Are there any that have been successful for you or someone you know?

Meal Prep for Baby and Other Considerations

Nesting is in full gear now that I am 38 weeks pregnant. At my last appointment, I was 70% effaced, which means I think little man will be pleasantly punctual, if not a little early bird. With that in mind, the 2 lasagnas and the 20 breakfast burritos I made a few weeks back in prep just don't seem like enough to get us through those first few weeks of caring for a newborn, so I decided to shop a little ($100 later at the grocer) and prep a few more meals.

Since Praha (Czech) Stew is such a staple around here, I decided to go ahead and make a huge batch of that. Also, I saw some individual sized tins for pot pies. So, I decided to make both of those today.

Yes, I know those pots are WAAAY too full.
Normally, I would scold myself for this, but today I'm pulling the pregnancy card.

Now if you don't recall, stew has a very critical right and wrong way to be prepped in this household, lest we have a repeat of the "winter of our discontent." So, I could have sworn I had the recipe posted up here for you guys, but I cannot find it! Just understand that it is a beef stew, with potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, and Tony's.

Also, here is the Chicken Pot Pie Recipe. I just made a bigger batch and doled it out into the little tins. Thankfully, there was enough left over to make a small batch for tonight's dinner. That makes this a double win. Here's the low down. Cook the recipe double or triple until you have as much as you need for your prep. I made 6 indiviudal sizes and one family size. Today, I used about 4 chicken breasts, 2 small bags of frozen mixed veggies, one large can of cream of chicken soup, 3/4 of that can of water, spices, and about 1/2 lb of cheddar.

Once all that was cooked together, I used a ladle to fill the tins and allowed them to cool a bit as to not bake the thawed puff pastry that was going on top. Using a small prep bowl that was about the size of the tin, I cut a rough circle of thawed puff pastry for each tin. No Polly Perfects here.

Two puff pastry sheets got me 6 tins and enough to cover tonight's small
Corningware sized container. There was about four small tops per sheet.

Pre and post puff pastry topper. Not perfect but good enough.
Make sure to cut a vent in the top to prevent overflow.

To prevent freezer burn, I covered these little pies with foil THEN their plastic lid. You can write the cooking directions or meal descriptions on the foil. Basically, the pie needs to defrost for about 40 minutes. This is all because of the puff pastry. If you try to cook it frozen, the insides will be fine, but the pastry will be flat and not as delicious.

Digression: Puff Pastry is made up of about 9 million layers of butter and dough. To truly fluff up, those butter layers have to be at room temperature before baking. Also, this is not a dough that likes a lot of manipulation. Do your best to treat it gently and then don't fuss with it. A lot of compression and crimping will compact the butter layers, preventing the puff. Consider yourself warned.

"Thaw 40 minutes and bake 400* for approximately 20 minutes."

An important thing to remember: Remove that foil before baking. It is simply there for freezer burn protection. I don't know if we will be eating these this weekend or in 2 weeks, so I wanted the extra level of freezer burn protection. God knows what will turn out if you bake it with the foil on. Again, you have been warned.

As far as the "other considerations" mentioned in the title... One should really consider how much freezer space is available before prepping and purchasing too many things. Our new house came with a french style freezer that is narrow as hell. Luckily, I was able to cram all these in there after a good rearranging. However, there have been incidences of frozen pizzas that have to be cooked immediately due their diameter being wider than the shelves. I just had a panic attack wondering how I'm going to containers of stew that is still cooking in there. Oh well, live and learn.

~Fin~

Zebra Cake and Other Foolish Promises

Hey cake-in-ators. Trying to reach you at least one more time before my little guy comes busting out of my belly. I am 37 weeks and 2 days. Doing okay, other than the odd contraction here and there.

So my cousin is going to study abroad and is having a little shindig tomorrow. A bon voyage party, if you will. I asked if I needed to bring anything, and mistakenly suggested that I would bring a zebra cake, which by the way, she is super psyched about. What.an.idiot. If you have never seen a zebra cake, here is a preview of what it is supposed to look like:

Super cool, but not the most practical item to make between contractions.

Now, I didn't want to let her down so I am going to walk you through this wreck-in-action and hope you enjoy the ride. I didn't invent this cake, but it is all over Pintrest and the mycakeschool.com blog has its own explanation how to do it. However, I assume you guys love me more than her, so you will stick by to see how mine panned out.

Now, I used a Duncan Hines classic white and devil's food cake. Some of the instructions I read for this cake called for thickening of the batter by adding less water. Unfortunately, Duncan Hines has changed the formula for its cakes since the original pin was posted. So, I had to wing it. I went ahead and made the batters per the box instructions. However, I think I should have added about 1/4 cup of water to each batter separately, as the mix was very thick, and you need a medium-thin consistency.

Anyways, I mixed the batters up in two separate bowls. Next, I greased my 2, 8" round cake pans and proceeded to shovel approximately 1/4 cup of alternating batters into the center.  Use a different spoon for each bowl, you don't want to blend the batters. Just keep piling them on top of each other. Bang the pan on the counter gently to help spread the batter if needed.

Meh, a good faith effort. I think if my batter had been a teensy bit thinner,
I would have had the Polly Perfect concentric circles. Maybe. Oh well, Zebras aren't
perfectly banded, right?

Fill the pans about 2/3rds of the way full and cook according to the box instructions. You will have some batter left over which you can use to make cupcakes with. I am gorging on my spares unmercifully right now. The cake will bake up in the stripe pattern you laid out. So in lieu of fighting with my crappy photo editor (still have not found an adequate replacement for my beloved Picnik.com) I will let your imagination go to to town about the results. Also, here's an important tip to remember...

Do not drop smart phones, IPads, or any other electronics into your batter.
Just a piece of friendly advice.

 Feel free to ice the cake as you wish, just make sure to level the cake first, lest there be a repeat of the
 wall cake incident. The party is tomorrow, so I'll post a slice shot from then. Happy baking.

Nesting, Butcher Blocks, and Babies

So it's been awhile. *Holds head in shame* I hope there are still a few of you out there wanting to experience the wreckiness that is my domestic life. Let me just take a moment to complain about a few things.

First of all, tablets are not made for blogging. Because I only have the use of my Ipad right now, it has made it very difficult to dash of anything other than a quick picture for you guys. My PC is hooked up, but in his infinite wisdom, Jon told me to return our wireless router to AT&T when we cancelled our plan. Now we are back with them, sans the wireless router, because the PC was not hooked up when the installation guy was here. That being said, I have stolen Jon's ancient work laptop for the afternoon, and I am going to blast a post out.

Just in case you were wondering, here is a few photos of my expansion:

Four months pregnant.

Six Months Pregnant

Thirty-three weeks pregnant

Today...

I have zero energy and my memory has gone to shit. I also would like to comment about how Google has gobbled up Picnik.com, my favorite photo editing tool, and has replaced it with some where Google+ app I can't figure out in my present state.  So now I'm having a hard time making cute and hilarious pictures to add here.

Enough with the rant. I am nesting hard core. The house is a mess and it is driving me bat-shit crazy. We are 98% moved in, but Jon is the ultimate procrastinator. If it were up to me, the nursery would be done, and we would be worrying about how many birth announcements to order, but that is not the case.

The nursery is covered with clothes because we were hoping to get a dresser off our registry. No dice. After a catastrophic prego meltdown yesterday, we went to Target to see what options were available to us. The dresser to match our set was $300 and made of what I can only assume is paper mache. In fact, all the furniture we looked at everywhere was cheap crap. After much back and forth you are not going to be believe what we settled on for a dresser/changing table:

Yes, that is a butcher block...

...And NO the baby's room is not bakery or cupcake themed. Here is our rationale:

1. That butcher block is wide enough for our changing pad (the other dresser choices were not.)
2. This piece is rated to carry a 200 lb load. Most of the dressers, like I mentioned earlier, looked like the couldn't carry the weight of canary.
3. There are pull out shelves that can hold baskets of stuff like a dresser.
4. The wheels are optional, we will be installing legs instead.
5. It is MUCH taller than the dressers we looked at, which will save our backs.
6. Finally, when baby years are over, I can hopefully use it as a craft or baking area. (After a thorough bleaching of course.)

Right now, this thing is in 500 pieces on the living room floor. I have separated the pieces into their various steps, so Jon can put it together tonight. After it is together, I can finally get the remaining nursery things put away, and focus on the rest of the house. Like my messy kitchen.

All of the baby books, blogs, and websites say that at this stage of the game, you really should start freezing meals for after delivery. *Sigh* Since Jon hasn't really had a home cooked meal in the last quarter, this one is something I really need to get into gear about. I went to the grocer today and got $100 worth of goods. Hopefully, over the next coming days, you can see my efforts as I put that stuff together.

Wish me luck.

Pregnant, Brain Dead, Old, and Unemployed

So today marks the one month anniversary of my lay off from the hospital. Ho hum. In the days leading to my lay off, I was excited about all the new time I would have to be working on the blog. Readership has naturally plummeted since I haven't been present in say...half a decade. (slight exaggeration.) However, I have been in a bit of a slump.

 

I turned 30 last month without much fanfare. It's hard to have a lot of excitement when your half way through a pregnancy that has only let you stopped vomiting in the last 10 days. I didn't even make a cake, or get a cake...or even want one for that matter. I am so burned out on cake it's not even funny. I blame the Wilton class for it. Once I learned that the bulk of "buttercream" icings were mostly vegetable shortening ("the more trans-fat the better your decorations will hold!") I have been on icing hiatus. I used to leave the cake to eat just that crap. Barf!

 

Since being home, I have cooked all of one meal. I am really ashamed of myself. I've been trying to get used to the idea that I might be a stay at home mom for awhile. No judgement, just not how I thought things were going to work out. I've been reading "Stay at Home Mommy Survival Guides" to get an idea of what to expect, because all I have managed to do in the week that I have been off is get addicted to Game of Thrones.

 

A lot of changes have been happening besides the layoff and the pregnancy. We bought a house, and the documents are in the works. Jon and I moved out of ghettosville at the end of May. I've been trying to clean and unpack as best as my body will let me. I just find that I don't have the stamina I used to. I'm 27 weeks pregnant and only now starting to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. The baby is fine and healthy, I've just turned into a pile of goo.

 

Well NOT TODAY.

 

I got off my bum and decided my dear breadwinner of a hubby needed some sweets to get him through the day. Since there will be no cake, I decided to try my hands at Snickerdoodles. A Christmas favorite, due to their warm holiday spices of nutmeg and cinnamon, this little cookie is usually usurped by it's fancier friends, chocolate chip, macadamia nut, or oatmeal raisin.

 

Snickerdoodles are relatively new in my orb of awareness, though they have been around for generations (so I've read.) I guess I thought they were a "Wal-Mart Cookie Creation" because I had only seen snickerdoodles in the pre-made dough squares offered at mass grocery chains. Every time I see something advertised as a snickerdoodle at a bake sale, they still have that squarish shape from those packaged beginnings. "Why?" I ask. After some Googling, I found they are pretty simple to make, don't require a lot of fancy ingredients, and are very quick to prepare. To me, cookies that are soft and chewy will always beat out a a crunchy cookie. I tested out this recipe and found a winner:

Chewy Snickerdoodles
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)
1/2 cup butter (NOT margarine)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 eggs (room temperature if you have time)
2 2/3 cups flour
2 t of cream of tartar
1 t of baking soda
1/4 t salt

~Topping~

1 T of sugar
1-2 t of cinnamon

Start by getting all your ingrediants together like we've discussed a million times before. Put your butter and eggs out 30 minutes or so before you're ready to start so they will be room temperature, but not melted. If you forget to put the butter out to soften, nuke it until soft but not melted. Sometimes it helps to cut it into pieces so it doesn't stay a brick on the outside and melt in the middle.

• Preheat your oven to 400*
• Mix your shortening, butter, eggs, and sugar.
• In a seperate bowl sift your dry ingrediants together if you have a sifter. If not, it's not the end of the world.
• Mix in the wet ingrediants to the dry.
• In a small bowl, mix the topping sugar and cinnamon together.
• Once everything is well incorporated, roll the dough into ping pong ball sized balls. 
• Roll the balls in the topping covering. Be generous.
• Place the dough balls on a ungreased cookie sheet. about 2" apart. If you grease it they will be overdone on the bottom. 
• Push the balls down a little with your fingers. These babies don't spread out like other cookies.
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

 Enjoy the chewy awesomeness.

"Fashion Knives" & Other Kitchen Non-Essentials

Wow, just wow.