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Bread and Butter Pudding

May 26, 2009 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

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In the immortal words of Snoopy, it was a dark and stormy night.

I’d made loaves of ricotta bread earlier in the day, and bread and butter pudding seemed like an ideal way to use the leftovers.  The soft curd loaves have a fine, rich texture, slightly reminiscent of panettone.  Having bought 30  free range eggs from the markets that afternoon, it was the perfect dessert for a dark and stormy night.

Google turned up an interesting Bill Granger recipe, which I, of course, had to mess around with.  I reduced the quantity of eggs and cream, added apple brandy, eyeballed the other ingredients, and still ended up with the most delicious dessert we’ve had in ages.  Here is my rough recipe – feel free to play around with it as your ingredients on hand necessitate.

  • Golden syrup
  • Ricotta bread (I used about ¾ of a loaf)
  • Unsalted butter
  • Dark raisins
  • 5 large eggs
  • 400ml milk (approx.)
  • 250ml cream (approx.)
  • 2 tsps vanilla extract
  • generous dash of Calvados brandy
  • 115g (½ cup) caster sugar
  • Vanilla sugar
  • Whipped cream to serve

1.  Carefully cut the crust away from the outside of the loaf, and then cut it into thick slices.  Butter one side of each slice and cut it in half on the diagonal.

2. Grease a pie dish and drizzle a generous amount of golden syrup all over the base.  I actually had enough to fill a 26cm pie dish and a small rectangular dish (which I subsequently took to the neighbours).   Arrange a layer of bread over the bottom of the dishes, butter side up.  Scatter with raisins, then place another layer of butter-side-up bread over the top. You could keep going with layers, but I’d cut thick slices, so just two layers of bread was enough to fill my dishes.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, milk, vanilla , Calvados and sugar.  Ladle the mixture over the top of the bread until the dishes are quite full and the bread is soaked.  Leave for 30 minutes, pushing the bread down every 10 minutes or so to help it soak up the liquid.  Preheat oven to 175C (160C with fan).

4. Sprinkle vanilla sugar over the bread, then bake in the oven for 45 – 55 minutes, or until golden brown.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 – 15 minutes before serving with whipped cream.

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Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

A Bowl of Sunshine

May 24, 2009 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

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Our charming flour distributor, who cheerfully rings my doorbell and greets me with his very French “Allo!“, is also an experienced pastry chef.  How insane is it that I even have a flour supplier?  Who gets 25kg sacks of flour – note the plural – delivered to their home?  Having said that, Alain is a really nice guy, and on his last visit, he taught me something interesting about eggs.  He said the industry standard for baking was the 55g egg – they allow 5g for the shell, so you’re looking at an egg mass of 50g for each “large egg” specified in a recipe.

(Edit 2011: Unfortunately Alain isn’t delivering flour anymore!  We’re now buying Manildra flour from Harkola).

I put that to the test this morning with a batch of microwave lime curd. Sydney has had some pretty miserable weather recently and I was hoping that a little jar of sunshine might boost my serotonin levels. The  problem was that I only had a mixed batch of duck and chicken eggs, whereas the recipe specified three standard eggs and one yolk.  I figured that to be 175g of egg mass, which I was able to match in weight with one chicken and two duck eggs.  The recipe was, as always, a breeze, taking less than 10 minutes from start to finish.  The lime makes it quite tart and the duck eggs give it a wonderful richness. I used 150ml juice and the rind of three limes, in case anyone wants to give it a go.  I’m feeling cheerier already…

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Posted in Recipes | Tagged , | 10 Comments »

Best Gluten-Free Bread Ever

May 22, 2009 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

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Dan the Man has created the best gluten-free bread recipe ever.

I’ve been on a quest to find Pete A a decent gluten-free loaf for years.  Every attempt has  been an abysmal failure.  Most have a cake-like texture, and only just pass muster if toasted.  The closest I ever managed was a gluten-free soda bread, but even that was solid and heavy in a pumpernickel kind of way.

What Dan Lepard has now given us is a chewy, elastic, tangy bread which keeps well for several days.  His secret ingredient – psyllium husk – mimics the gluten in wheat, and almost unbelievably, this recipe actually “proves” like real bread. (Note that I used psyllium husk and not psyllium husk powder – the former was readily available at our local health food store.)  The finished loaf is chewy with a crunchy crust and a non-stodgy middle, unlike the tapioca based breads which were hitherto the gluten-free standard.  Another nice thing about this recipe is that it uses readily available ingredients – just make sure you buy gluten-free cornflour, as many are wheaten.  Here are some photos, so you know what to expect.

The dough works together easily in the mixing bowl, after a good minute or so of stirring.  A mixer or breadmaker really isn’t needed here.  It will seem quite wet at first, but the moisture will be absorbed during the first hour of resting.

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Shape the rested dough into a baton (basically flatten it out into a disc and then roll it up), and place it into an oiled loaf tin.  Allow to rise another hour and a half, during which time it will just about double in size.

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Tah-dah!  The finished loaf…

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Pete A was so wonderful – he arrived at 10.30pm  to pick up his loaf (the man works way too hard), ate a slice on the spot, and said, “How have you done this?  It tastes just like bread!”

I received  these  messages from him over the following days:

Day 1 : ”Just had a lovely Enzo lunch; bread oil balsamic.  Bread getting a little tough in an Italian way so all perfect.  No toasting needed yet.”

Day 2 : “Just had lovely French toast.  Bread no tougher.  Still ‘Italian’ ”

I can’t remember a time when baking was more rewarding than this. Dan Lepard’s recipe is here – follow it to the letter, and it will treat your gluten-free friends and family to a taste that they’ve probably been missing for a long time.

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Edit 23/5/09:  Here’s a photo of tonight’s Kalamata olive and rosemary loaf :

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. . . . .

More gluten-free recipes here…

Update: 10 Nov 09: Gluten Free Christmas Cakes

Posted in Gluten Free, Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments »

Aussie Pizza

May 21, 2009 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

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Dan(ielle) mentioned to me yesterday that their current favourite pizza is the “Aussie”.  It’s regular fare for her, Patrick and Chris, our friends who moved from Sydney to San Francisco last year to find fame and fortune in Silicon Valley.  They make pizzas from scratch every Friday night and have become so proficient at it that they can complete the entire process in an hour and a half.  Their Aussie pizza involves cracking an egg into the middle of the prepared base, breaking the yolk just slightly, then baking in a blazing hot oven.

I was inspired to try an egg over  last night’s pizza of fennel, onion, pancetta, oven-roasted passata and mozzarella.  Fennel on pizza is our latest discovery and it cooks to a mellow sweetness – the combination with the egg was delicious.  And I don’t know why, but there really is something very Australian about a pizza with an egg on it!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

Lembas

May 20, 2009 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

‘So it is,’ they answered. ‘But we call it lembas or waybread …. One will keep a traveller on his feet for a day of long labour, even if he be one of the tall Men of Minas Tirith.’

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

My breads don’t often fail, but this time I’d been impatient – I hadn’t let my starter reactivate properly prior to mixing up the dough.  Regardless of how brilliant the flour is, an inactive sourdough leaven can’t produce  great bread.  The mixed grain rolls I’d intended for school lunches came out like heavy lumps of clay.  Pete, unwilling to waste food, patiently chewed his way through half a roll and announced that whilst it was dense, it was also extremely filling and satisfying – akin to Elvish bread.   He and Maude declared that I’d created lembas and that half a roll would have been sufficient to sustain an Elven warrior through a day of battle.  It’s just a shame I don’t have any Elven warriors to feed it to – not sure what I’m going to do with the other eight hockey pucks…

. . . . .

Averse to failure, I had to make more grain bread straight away.  I was much happier with this batch, which was made with a ripe starter and given lots of time to prove overnight.  Lesson learnt – patience leads to better bread!

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Posted in Food & Friends | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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