Apple Bread Pudding

I love apple-based desserts. So often their cinnamon-flecked flavour is reminiscent of apple pie, but they often double as breakfast fare -- and they're a lot less difficult to make than pie. Any recipe that captures that apple pie flavour but doesn't require the same effort is worth a try, in my books. And if I can justify eating a sweet for breakfast? All the better.


Enter Anna Olson's Green Apple Bread Pudding. Or rather, my version of it, plain-old Apple Bread Pudding. You can use any type of baking apple (McIntosh, Empire, etc.) in this dish, or even the original Granny Smith Anna suggests.


Using lighter cream than the recipe's original heavy cream, you can justify serving it for breakfast. Be sure to serve it with a generous splash of maple syrup on top.


Keep reading for the recipe.


Green Apple Bread Pudding
Yield: 6
5 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 large baguette, cubed
1 cup apple, peeled and diced
2 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups table or half-and-half cream
1 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
sugar
maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Brush the bottom and sides of a 9-inch square baking dish with half the melted butter. Toss bread cubes and apples remaining melted butter and spoon into baking dish.
2. Whisk together egg yolks, whole eggs, and sugar. Whisk in cream, milk, and vanilla. Pour over bread cubes and press down gently on bread to help soak in. Let stand for about 15 minutes.
3. Place baking dish in a water bath (boiling hot water in a pan large enough to contain the bread pudding's pan--I used a 9"x13" pan) and sprinkle top of pudding with sugar. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until the center of the pudding springs back when pressed.
4. Remove baking dish from water bath. Serve warm, with maple syrup available to pour on top.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

For this week's Tuesdays With Dorie event, Amanda from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake selected Dorie's Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler. Although the cherry tree in my landlords' backyard has reached the end of its yield for the year, I was excited to use some of the rhubarb in my freezer, especially in a combination I've never tried before. Cherry and rhubarb sounded like an enticing mixture. It seems lucky that I had some rhubarb frozen, since a lot of TWD-ers couldn't find any in their local grocery stores. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen some in a grocery store for awhile, either. Lucky me for having an ever-so-rare dash of foresight.


The homey cobbler topping was wonderful, and all of the ground ginger in the topping and the filling added an unexpected zing that I loved. But the rhubarb made the filling way too tart, in my opinion. I may even double the amount of sugar next time. The rhubarb and cherry flavour combination, though, sugar issues aside, totally made up for it. Yum. Not exactly a home run for my sweet tooth, but I'm looking forward to making this one again.


These aren't my finest photos; unfortunately most of them turned out atrociously blurry but looked perfectly sharp on my camera's viewfinder.

That's it for me. Head over to Tuesdays With Dorie to check out the full list of TWD bloggers!

Tuesdays With Dorie: Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie

Alright, this post is seriously photo-heavy--sorry. But I couldn't help it; I'm excited. It's my first week as a Tuesdays With Dorie baker and I couldn't be happier about my decision to join the group, or this week's recipe: Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie. Kudos to Amy of South in Your Mouth, who chose the recipe.


To be honest, most of my photos were taken of the one lonely single-crusted blueberry pie I made with leftover crust -- I just couldn't get over how gorgeous the filling looked spilling out of the ramekin. But despite my usual aversion to pie crust (it's weird, I know), I went for the full double-crust, and I'm so glad I did.

Dorie Greenspan made me a crust convert. Not just me, but the boyfriend, too. We're both die-hard crust haters and yet this one had us drooling. Go figure. Boyfriend (side note: one of these days I'll come up with a more clever nickname or go for the classier first initial) swears it's the sugar, but I have my doubts. I'm pretty sure Dorie Greenspan is just a magician.

And I felt like a magician too when I turned this:


Into this:


Using only these two handy dandy tools:


I didn't know if I could make the crust successfully without a food processor, but it wasn't even that hard with a basic pastry cutter, and I felt way more accomplished than if I had just pressed a few buttons. With that said, I still wouldn't have minded to have been able to use a food processor. Convenience is a beautiful thing.

More food porn below!






Visit Tuesdays With Dorie to find the full list of food bloggers participating in this week's event. Have fun!

Mmm...Canada: Strawberry-Rhubarb French Toast

This post is part of the Mmm...Canada event, hosted by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess and Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict.

When I thought of what food screams "Canada!" to me, I aimed for something recent vs. my all-time favourite. The reason? There are just too many Canadian foods that I love to mention.

In Canada, we are so lucky to be able to produce so many delicious things. On my recent trip to the Niagara Wine Country, I got to sample the many delicious wines being produced just a short drive away from me.

When I still lived in London, I loved to go to the St. Jacob's farmer's market to buy maple syrup produced by local mennonites.

And when I visit my hometown now, I'm even more appreciative of the roadside stands where I love to buy my fruits and vegetables...like rhubarb. So that's why, for this event, I decided to make something with Essex County rhubarb.

Essex County is the best place I know to buy fresh, local produce. And it's inextricably tied to "Canada," for me, since I spent the first 18 years of my life there. Growing up in a Canadian small town, to me, meant growing up in Essex County, with its roadside fruit stands and huge farming community. I took rhubarb from Essex County and some strawberries I picked in London and made Strawberry-Rhubarb French Toast.








The recipe itself is pretty basic. I used about 1 cup of chopped rhubarb and only 1/4 cup of chopped strawberries (I really wanted the rhubarb to be the dominant flavour, but you could increase the amount of strawberries, too). I stewed the fruit in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat with a couple tablespoons of water, a few tablespoons of granulated sugar, and a splash of vanilla. I let it cook until the rhubarb released its juices and the fruit was nice and tender. You could add more sugar, but since I was planning on dousing my french toast in maple syrup, too, I cut back on the sugar in the sauce. This made enough for about 2 servings (with about a 1/2 cup of sauce per person). You can adjust it accordingly, if you'd like.

I made standard french toast -- bread dipped in a milk, egg and cinnamon mixture, then fried like grilled cheese (I'm sure you know the drill) -- cut it into halves, and dusted it with icing sugar before spooning the strawberry rhubarb sauce over top. A heap of maple syrup completed the dish.

So, there you have it. A basic recipe with lots of room to make adjustments. With its abundance of local produce, I can't think of any other recent dish I've made that epitomizes Canadian food for me.

Beans aren't the only magical fruit

Okay, so maybe that's not the best joke I've ever come up with. But "magic" fruit really do exist, and they have nothing to do with eating too much chili.

These little red berries are actually called "miracle fruit." Perhaps you've heard of them: ever since a recent New York Times article discussed how these little red berries are inspiring flavour-tripping parties in New York City, many miracle fruit farmers have been overwhelmed with orders.

So, what's so miraculous abut this fruit? It sounds pretty amazing, actually: swirl the fruit around in your mouth and for the next 30 minutes-2 hours, everything will taste sweet. Lemons will taste like lemonade. Goat cheese will taste like cheesecake. Sounds like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, doesn't it?




For those of you -- like myself -- who want to sample miracle fruit, you don't necessarily have to shell out the $90 price tag that a lot of suppliers are charging. If you don't mind forgoing the actual fresh fruit for a lower price tag, you have a different option. Wikipedia mentions that freeze-dried miracle fruit tablets are available and produce the same effect. Tablets can be found online, and I've managed to find some at a comparatively low price.

Click here to go to Ebay and purchase your own miracle fruit tablets for approx. $16USD (in Canada).

Photo source: Plantogram

Please note: I am by no means a medical professional, so I can't vouch for the safety of this auction listing. Personally, I don't mind taking the plunge.

Fresh spring rhubarb

As I write this, I'm anxiously jerking my head towards the screen every few seconds. It's possibly the final game of this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the game's gone into a very intense round of overtime. Please excuse any typos--my heart's a-flutter!

I'm very lucky to have grown up in a part of Ontario where farmers abound. Not that I appreciated the abundance of fresh produce when I was a kid, of course. But I do appreciate it now when I go home to visit my family, as I did this weekend.

My hometown is located in Essex County, which means I live near Leamington, the self-proclaimed "Tomato Capital of Canada" and also, not-so-coincidentally, the location of an enormous Heinz factory. My dad grew up on a farm; my boyfriend grew up on a farm (his grandparents') and it seems that most everyone in Essex County has ties to farming.

It's no surprise, then, that I consider my home county the best place I know to find fresh, affordable produce. The farmer's markets of the cities I've lived in since -- London (Ontario)'s Covent Garden Market; Main Street Markham's Farmer's Market -- just seem like pale, overpriced imitations of what I'm used to. They'll do, but they just can't match the prices of back home.



My roadside fruit stand purchase from this weekend was fresh rhubarb, and lots of it. I got two mountainous piles of two-feet long rhubarb stalks for $4:















It was definitely a great buy. Now, I'm looking for a way to use it up. Last year I only bought enough to make strawberry-rhubarb applesauce and rhubarb sorbet. This year I'd like to be more ambitious. A bunch of the rhubarb will be going in the freezer so I can try different rhubarb recipes past the end of the season. Here are some recipes I've got my eye on:

• Anna Olson's Rhubarb Meringue Cupcakes
• Ricardo's Rhubarb Lemonade
• Christine Cushing's Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait
• Pineapple Rhubarb Jam

The jam and cupcakes sound particularly wonderful, although I'm partial to meringues and jam. Do you have any other suggestions? Please leave them in the comments or send me an email at kaitsplateATgmailDOTcom.

Strawberry Season

It's late June, which means strawberry crops are at their peak. Canning has recently become a hobby of mine, so this year I decided to take advantage of the local berry farms and pick my own strawberries.

The last time I picked strawberries, I was 11 years old and it wasn't for my own enjoyment--it was for money. The problem was, that summer was a terrible season for berries; the yield was low and what berries were there were half-green. I ended up being very slow at the task because of this, and only spent one afternoon as a berry picker.

Thankfully, it was a much more fun job this time around. The plants were full of berries, and the fruit was so red and juicy--a deeper colour than I've seen in any grocery store. In half an hour, we picked enough to make an 8-jar batch of strawberry jam and fill a giant freezer bag (frozen margaritas, anyone?).

Since this was only my second attempt at canning, I chose to make a basic strawberry jam, courtesy of Bernardin. They're the canning experts, right? Seemed pretty foolproof.

And it was; the jam turned out perfectly--although it claimed to yield 7 jars, it actually gave me enough for 8. Even better! So now I have extra jars to share with my family.

Bernardin Strawberry Jam
3 3/4 cups crushed strawberries, crushed one layer at a time with a potato masher
1/4 c bottled lemon juice
7 cups granulated sugar
1 pouch liquid Bernardin pectin

1. Sterilize cans and lids.
2. Bring strawberries, sugar and lemon juice to a full, rolling boil (one that can't be stirred down). Once this boil is reached, stir constantly for one minute, then remove from heat.
3. Stir in pectin.
4. Immediately ladle into sterilized jars, cover with SNAP lids, and close with rings until fingertip tight.
5. Process jars (boil in hot-water canner) for 10 minutes, depending on altitude.
6. After processing, remove jars from canner and let rest, undisturbed, for 24 hours. Sealed jars have lids which curve downwards; lids that move when you touch them did not process properly--you can keep these in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.