I like food porn. I admit it. I love pictures of food, recipes for comfort food and exotic recipes that I'll never make but can imagine eating. I seek out peoples experience eating all sorts of meals and hope to come across some new ingredient.
The other night Joe was out and Sylvia was spending the night at a friends, so it was just Jasper and I. He fell asleep early and I found myself spending the next 3 hours surfing the internet for food blogs. Upon reflection, it was pretty sad, I could have been watching Cartoon Network or finishing my socks.
While I was cruising sites I came across a lot of posts dedicated to bread puddings, which I love. It's custard and bread, two of the best things in the world, all in one place. Of course I bookmarked my favorites so I could make them. Or at least I thought I did.
Who needs a recipe anyway? You do? Okay here is what I did for this delicious Apple Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce.....a total conglomeration of what I can remember reading on how to make it. Be warned.....this recipe is unnecessarily fattening, but totally worth it.
4 apples peeled and diced
4 cups ciabatta bread cubed
1 1/2 pint heavy whipping cream
1 cup or so milk
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
4 eggs beaten
added with no particular measuring involved(use common sense):
cinnamon
almond extract( a tasty but non necessary addition)
vanilla extract
ginger powder
salt
chopped pecans
molasses
1/4 cup currants soaked in whiskey then drained....the soaking part is probably optional but it then it won't taste like whiskey!
To start, the bread was combined with the pecans,currants and apples in a greased 9x11 or so pan. Then I beat the eggs , sugars, spices and extracts together in a bowl.
I melted the butter over medium low heat in a saucepan than added the cream,milk and molasses while stirring constantly until the molasses melted. I then removed the pan from the heat and slowly added the egg mixture, again making sure to still stir constantly.
The egg mixture was poured over the bread and baked in a preheated oven at 350 for about 45 minutes.
I used this caramel sauce recipe except I substituted brown sugar for white. It all was very rich and delicious!
My mom Grandma Kow loved bread pudding and or custard. She made custard every day. I did not care for it. We lived on a farm during world War 2. Food was rationed. We had all the eggs and milk we could use. Mom made custard for breakfast on our coal burning stove and ice cream almost every night(according to her). Our fresh water spring, on our property, was used for the ice house in Attica,Marion county Iowa. In the winter when the water was "hard" ice was cut and placed in the Attica Ice house. All summer folks had ice to buy. My dad went to town every day and brought my mom a block of ice. She never put it in the icebox, she made ice cream. I can still see dad in his old Model A with the block of ice on the bumper, coming home from town. He never let us kids go with him even to Attica. Go figure.
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