Sophie Dahl - Girl Crush - and her bread pudding

I need to blog, so I'm blogging about bread pudding.

Bread pudding is a very ugly thing. Even the name, before I ever tasted the dish, sounded ugly and unappetizing to me as a child. Bread? Pudding? Being offered bread pudding was not unlike the first time I was ever offered an ice cream sandwich, which I turned it down in absolute four-year-old disgust. An ice cream sandwich? Get real mom. I do not want Meadow Gold French Vanilla smashed between two Wonder Bread slices, thanks. (My mom didn't actually buy Wonder Bread - the horror - but you get the idea.) But as I meekly nibbled at the ice cream sandwich, my taste buds were converted and dessert discrimination came to an end. Don't judge desserts by their name, folks. Take for instance, the rhubarb buckle that's on my roster of things to bake. What the heck are they doing naming desserts after belts? Are they trying to keep it all to themselves? What's the deal here exactly in the dessert-naming department? But as a proper adult, it is my duty, nay, privilege, to indiscriminately sample all desserts, regardless of the thoughtlessness of their little dessert-y names.

And so on to bread pudding. Find your stalest bread. One should always have a loaf of stale bread on hand for things such as bread pudding, croutons, or bread crumbs; among other such delicious things. You should have fancy bread, namely panettone, but my luck in finding said fancy loaves is slim. A good sweet-crumbed bread will suffice. Roughly cube your bread and layer in a pretty baking pan. I used my vintage Le Creuset pan that I scored at a flea market for $15, but we aren't all so lucky, so make do as you will. Pour on top a custard of cream, eggs, milk, and vanilla. And other things, I think, but I'm not looking at the recipe. Bake for a long time. You should probably have a nice snack, like hard-boiled eggs and radishes dipped in butter, for waiting. Serve the bread pudding warm with tea.

Pannetone bread-and-butter pudding
From Sophie Dahl's Very Fond of Food

2 1/2 cups/600 ml half-and-half
1 3/4 cups-450 ml milk (I always use whole milk)
3 eggs
1 vanilla bean (or about 1 T. good quality vanilla extract)
1/2 cup/150 g superfine sugar
1 medium-sized panettone (or other sweet-crumbed bread)
Butter, for spreading
1 apple, peeled, cored, and finely diced
A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (I omitted the nutmeg for cinnamon, as nutmeg feels a little too Christmas-y for a summer bread pudding)
1/4 cup/150 g brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 F/190 C

Whisk together the half-and-half, milk, and eggs. Slice the vanilla bean in half and scrape the seeds into the egg and cream mixture. Add the superfine sugar and whisk some more.

Slice the panettone into thick slices and butter each slice. Arrange the buttered panettone slices into an ovenproof dish. Scatter with the apple and sprinkle with the nutmeg (or cinnamon). Pour over the custard and make sure the panettone is evenly soaked. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar.

Bake for 20-30 minutes (I swear, 30 minutes feels so much longer when you're hungry) or until golden and crispy. Serve hot. (With tea!)

spring fever and what i made for easter

April tulips.

My window lights.

Banana coconut cream pie for Easter!

Ginger scones to soothe abandonment upon discovering your parents are really enjoying their retirement

Phone: (rings)

Father: Hello? 

Daughter (me): Hello, Father. I have a question about my taxes. 

Father: Okay. 

Daughter: (Explains daunting tax issue.)

Father: Hm. I dunno about that one. You'll have to call H&R Block.

Daughter: (Sighs) Okay. 

Father: Guess where your mom and I are.

Daughter: I dunno. St. George?

Father: (chuckles to himself) Sitting on the beach in Hawaii.

Distraught Daughter: ...

These are the kind of scones you make during times such as this. You will gratefully use the good, spicy ginger your mother brought you as a 

"Heh, heh, well we-are-retired-now-gift and we knew you guys would want to come, so we didn't tell you" gift. 

You are crushed knowing that your parents now have a life outside of home and family, but you soldier on.

Maybe they're thinking they can return to their lives of youth and leisure that they possessed before they had children. 

It's an awkward thought.

You'll console yourself about never having been anywhere tropical by eating too many of these spicy ginger scones. Your mother will tell you to stop being over-dramatic because you've "traveled all over the world." 

Whatever that means. 

You'll want to top these scones with some rich, salted butter, and maybe some jam. You really don't want to take away from the spicy-tropically-gingeryness of the scone itself. You'll probably need to stay in bed with a pot of tea a bit longer than usual.

(On an unrelated side note, this vintage table cloth has the same pattern as my tea pot!)

Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins

Thank you, Joy the Baker. Thank you for existing. Thank you for creating these blueberry muffins so perfectly crafted with brown butter, the Goddess of all butters.

    I made these muffins at the beginning of my spring break last week. They were just the excuse I needed to not exercise and not leave my house 'cept for stocking up on baking ingredients. I did a lot of baking that week. Sometimes I wonder why I haven't dropped out of university yet to fly to Paris and enroll in pastry school. Heaven knows it's all my heart really wants. But the sensible part of my brain has insisted that I stay and finish my Linguistics degree. The unsensible part of my brain, the portion not wanting to run off to Paris, keeps tacking on new,  exciting minors, ensuring I never graduate and remain a professional student (bordering on spinster aunt/cat lady) forever. Pray this doesn't happen for real. I'm not going to be bashful about admitting that one of my listed hobbies would be "planning my school schedule." I'm sure my advisors are pretty tired of me asking if they know what the class schedule will look like for Fall 2014.

   Regardless of study stresses, whether or not you have them, whether or not you are a grown-up with a grown-up job, (what I wouldn't give for a sunny office as head librarian!) you should make these muffins. I promise they'll help wash down any Type-A control-freak issues you may be having.

I tweaked this recipe just a teeny tiny bit. I found the batter to need a good 1/3 cup more milk and the topping to need double the amount of butter, melted, not cold. I'll post said recipe later. For now, enjoy your Sunday morning!

17 Steps to Having a Great Sunday Afternoon

1. Turn on the Joy the Baker podcast.
2. Be grateful for the unspoken, yet obvious, observations gleaned from listening to Joy the Baker, e.g., That Guys Don't Ask Girls Out Anymore (Joy the Baker podcast #38). Thank you, Joy and Tracy. Someone had to say it.
3. Destroy half of an old loaf of rosemary sourdough bread, e.g., turn it into breadcrumbs.
4. Toast the breadcrumbs in a 350 degree oven.
5. Notice very old bananas in fruit basket.
6. Whip up a batch of chocolate chip banana bread.
6 1/2. Contemplate whether "chocolate chip" should be hyphenated.
7. Become suddenly ravenous at the most inopportune time to become ravenous: 4:00 pm.
8. Notice stalk of brussel sprouts. Legit brussels sprouts, still on the stalk.

9. Annoy cat with said brussel sprout stalk.
10. Break out your new All-Clad pans you got at a screaming Williams-Sonoma sale by frying brussel sprouts in butter. Do not attempt to fry sprouts in olive oil or any low-fat alternatives. They are stupid.

11. Boil shrimps (the correct plural usage of "shrimp"). Take shells and leggys off shrimps. Add to pan.

12. Add leftover whole wheat penne pasta for quick fry-up.
12 1/4. Contemplate whether "whole wheat" should be hyphenated.
12 1/2. This leads to contemplations over all of life's many mysteries.

13. 4:15 pm. Eat.
14. 4:20 pm. Commend yourself for being so spontaneously brilliant in the kitchen.
15. Take a brief moment from your strenuous afternoon of being so brilliant by enjoying a cuppa of black currant tea and a slice (or two) of your banana bread.

16. Attempt to work on homework before the evening's cooking spree involving sourdough breadcrumbs (see steps #3 and #4) begins.
17. Steps to having a Great Sunday Evening to follow.

afternoon

Chopping vegetables in like a salve for your brain. The methodic movements calm nerves and create plenty of safe space in one's head for sorting out the day's emotions. Thus my Sunday afternoon. I made this spiced chicken soup with chickpeas a few months ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Thoughts of this soup haunted my one o'clock literary history class. No more, for I have enough to last for a week's worth of lunches. Pair it with a loaf of crusty rosemary sourdough and you've got yourself warmth and comfort in a bowl.

Need something edgier? Did that afternoon nap you took erase pent-up stress of all the weekends homework you're sure to leave to the last second? Make dark chocolate lava cakes to share with friends while gripping each other in girlish-fashion at the conclusion of Downton Abbey.

Finally, the Valentine my sister made me. She's alright.

Almond-lemon cream scones with crème fraîche for a snowy Sunday morn

      What an idyllic representation of a Sunday morning baking in your pajamas. The pajamas you did not change out of until noon. The bed you climbed back into after stuffing yourself with scones and crème fraîche, and glorious elderflower-marmalade. Which is not as fancy and expensive as you might think. And by " not fancy and expensive" I mean "I bought it in the Ikea foods section." 

      The cat who takes it upon himself to "inspect," and usually devour, all of the food substances you leave unattended on the table. Just last Saturday I walked in to find half of the cream cheese on my bagel on Walter's face. That naughty boy. 

       You could be stricter with him, you say. You could tell him "no" everyone once in a while and quit indulging his kitty-cat fantasies that he is a human. 

       But how can you seriously get mad at him when he pulls faces like this: 

Not fair, Walter. Not fair. 

peyton and byrne: the greatest new thing to grace my doorstep

Straight from the UK, not even off the presses in America until this spring, with the price even printed and pounds and EVERYTHING came this to my doorstep earliest thist afternoonst: 

The most GLORIOUS, BRILLIANT and BEAUTIFUL compilation of British baking I've yet to lay eyes on. I was honestly caressing it's cover and wiping fingerprints off it's lovely, delicately embossed white doily with a damp towelette.

You know you're serious about a cookbook when you bring out the towelettes. Towelettes are for freaks with greasy fingers and even greasier hair who hang out in sports bars who have not been clothes shopping since the 70's, (those sick pedophiles) not petite bakers with a penchant for make-believing her cat speaks with a Russian accent. (Diary by Walter soon to follow--stay tuned.)

Do you know what the British call their cupcakes? Do you? DO YOU?
FAIRY CAKES! Fairy cakes!!! 


The euphoria is alarming.

There is an entire section entitled A Cup of Tea and a Bun. Could anything be so near and dear to my butter-loving heart than that phrase?

These photos are mere snapshots and do not do the photography in this cookbook justice by any means of the word; my iPhone even takes better pictures than my actual camera. I mean, come on, there is a close-up of a broken egg shell in a plain-old brown egg carton that nearly brought me to tears.

It's sitting on my lap with me and Walter is jealous.

You're judging. So stop. 

Walter, the weekend, and Kinfolk Vol. Two arrives.

My dearest pet Walter and his dear sleeping face.

Kinfolk Vol. Two arriving at just the right time--tea time!

My family isn't prone to low-blow insults and threatening with cookie platters...until the cards come out. 

Which they will. Oh, they will.

Christmas thanking me for existing to make cinnamon-cocoa cookies with chocolate chunks.

Sunday morning breakfast with Jess. 

My friends' darling babes::

Baby Kenlie. (Just a wee sap! Only one month old!)

And Baby Aurora. Melting at that smile!

this past week

What I've been doing lately: 

Cramming for finals with cozy gingerbread tea, 

visiting the gorgeous lights on Temple Square, 

baking, (although the storm is yet to commence after finals are through) 

seeing Alta for the lovely ski resort it is. 

I am loving this Christmas season!

What Posses Me: Part V. Sunday Morning Scones

Hello, Earl Grey. 

Spent the morning baking orange + currant cream scones and drinking life-sustaining liquids, e.g., tea. I have been feeling quite depressed lately not being able to be in the kitchen, what with the 90 degree heat and having our floors redone to boot. Forcing baked goods onto friends and neighbors always cheers me. 

My fool proof go-to recipe for cream scones is from The New York Times Cookbook, my absolute favorite cooking manual/bible. I keep it near for a little light breakfast reading. 

...light breakfast reading? 

Oui.