I made it to Friday! I hope you did, too! Happy Fiesta, Folks!
This week was very trying. Overall, not that much different from other weeks, except in the sleep department. As in, a lack of good quality sleep. Due mainly to the weather.
It’s really a lot warmer here in Seattle, and I seem to get up once it starts getting light out, which is about 5 AM! Marge, the cat, at least, is eating again. She scared us last week with her little fast. We were beginning to think it was the beginning of the end for her. She didn’t want to eat for about three days. It was probably just the heat.
Speaking of heat, a fellow Seattlelite, on her wordpress blog, wrote: “Despite the fact that it is summer and the heat has a way of killing our enthusiasm to turn on the stove, I did it anyway. I made corn soup.”
And that was almost the same sentiment I had, except that my result was a bread pudding. Same deal, though. One goes through this debate about whether it’s worth it to heat up the house from the oven, just to make something that one can post on their food blog. I started this blog last fall, so baking in the summer heat is a new experience for me. Never have I baked so much in such hot weather.
In order to get around the excessive heating of our apartment, I decided that I was going to prep this at night, and bake it off in the morning. Before I go to work.
The only problem was that the “Before I go to work” time frame wasn’t much time.
The bread pudding ended up taking a lot longer to bake, and so I ended up having less time than I normally would have liked to decide how I wanted to showcase this, take photos, and decide on which photos to show.
Instead I took it right out of the oven, set it on top of the stove, took about 5 photos, (instead of the usual 50!) and then had to call it a day, as far as this was concerned.
Anyhow, here’s the result. Bread pudding can look beautiful, I think, but it’s one of those comfort foods where looks takes a back seat to taste.
Oh, and I made the same caramel sauce from here, only I stirred in about 3 Tablespoons of whiskey, to give it some oomph!
Summer Fruit Bread Pudding (adapted slightly from this NYT article from 1992)
ingredients
4 nectarines
3 apricots
1 cup blueberries
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for greasing container
14 English muffins
6 eggs
3 cups of whole milk
dash nutmeg
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 Tablespoons cinnamon
method
Butter a 13 x 9 x 2 pan with some unsalted butter and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Set aside.
Cut up the nectarines and apricots into bite sized pieces, such as 1/2 inch cubes. Or larger, if desired. Discard the seeds. Set aside.
Get three Tablespoons of sugar out of the 2/3 cup of sugar, place in a small bowl, and add the 1 Tablespoon cinnamon to the three Tablespoons sugar. Stir to mix, then set aside.
Split English muffins and lay on a baking sheet and toast in the oven on 350 degrees for several minutes until slightly toasted on sides, and significantly drier than when fresh.
When just out of the oven, using about 4 of the 6 Tablespoons of butter, slather butter on all slices, then sprinkle all but one Tablespoon of cinnamon sugar mixture on all the bread slices. Cut slices into 1/4″ pieces, or larger, if you prefer larger pieces.
Place about half of all the English muffin cubes into the bottom of the pan, followed by arranging the fruit over the English muffins, then topping with the remaining English muffin cubes.
Mix the eggs, milk, and nutmeg, vanilla, and remaining sugar together, and pour over bread cubes and fruit mixture, pressing down to ensure all the bread can absorb all the liquid.
At this point, you can either bake it 20 minutes after letting it sit for the eggs and milk to soak into the bread, or else you can cover this and leave in the refrigerator overnight, up to 24 hours before baking.
To bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. sprinkle remaining cinnamon sugar over the bread/fruit mixture. With the remaining 2 Tablespoons of butter, cut up butter into small cubes and place on surface of bread pudding. When oven is ready, place on a baking sheet, and place in center of oven for roughly an hour (although mine took almost an hour and a half!), until top is slightly brown and crusty. You’ll have to be the judge of when yours will be done, because it may depend on how large your fruits are, the ripeness, and how much juice comes out of the fruit. This affects the moisture level, and after an hour, the bread was kind of soggy for mine, and so I needed extra time for the juice from the fruit to thicken.
Serve with your favorite caramel sauce, or the one from the link above, and/or whipped cream, and/or vanilla ice cream!
Thanks for stopping by!
DAVE BAKES
22 responses to “summer fruit bread pudding”
Nice! Without hesitating I would heat up the kitchen for this. I like how you used English muffins here. How delicious this would be with vanilla ice cream! I’m keeping this recipe handy and making it soon. Love your idea of whiskey in your caramel sauce!
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Hi Dave! I am one of the co-hosts for Fiesta Friday this week. Congratulations on getting featured this week! I love how you have summered up bread pudding by using stone fruits and a whisky caramel sauce – swoon! Worth heating up the kitchen for. And you can never get started early enough when you are baking in the morning before work!. Thank you for bringing these to the party – have a great Fiesta Friday!
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Thank you Selma! I love the look of your food, and thanks for following. Have a great weekend!
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Thanks for following – I look forward to going through your posts when things have calmed down at FF! 🙂
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Bread pudding with fruits looks yummy
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I’m so happy to have discover your blog through FF last week… look at this recipe is amazing! Being Italian makes me far from the “pudding culture” I love it, but I’m not so used to make it! Thanks for sharing Dave!
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Hi! Lol on “pudding culture”. But wait, aren’t there Italian budino recipes? I saw recipe in a magazine for Italian recipes and there was a pudding recipe in it called budino.
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In the “budino” there are just milk or cream and eggs. In the North of Italy the make a kind of budino with bread… but the official one is not supposed to be made with bread… so thanks a lot!
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Oh no, thanks for the clarification. I’m no expert. By the way, I love your logo!
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[…] Dave […]
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Wow gorgeous pudding. ……
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Thanks!!
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Man, am I a sucker for the FF desserts. Thanks for sharing.
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This looks delicious! I feel you pain with baking in the heat… The end result is always worth it, but, getting that motivation to do it is what’s daunting.
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Yep. I think of the header I chose for my blog: “Bake on through to the other side” and just grin and bear it. Haha!
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Very nice and delectable pudding, Dave. It is the best of the fruits season… nectarine, apricot and blueberry… Wow!
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Thanks, Fae. Have a great weekend!
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This sounds so good Dave! Glad your cat seems to be doing better….she is a cutie!
Even though it is hot today I too have the oven going…sometimes you just got to….or in my case….want to. 🙂
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I love the idea of using fresh fruit in a bread pudding – especially at this time of year when we have the local kind. Thanks for bringing this lovely dessert to FF, especially when it was difficult to turn on your oven in the heat.
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This looks delicious, Dave! Loved reading your post 🙂
Happy Fiesta Friday!
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Thanks, Sarah!
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Oh wow you did a fabulous job Dave! I agree with you – who cares about the looks when it’s one delicious bread pudding – the ultimate in comfort food as far as I am concerned! I love this recipe with the nectarines,blueberries and apricots! Simply awesome! And the caramel sauce with whiskey sounds too good! 🙂 And I totally can relate to you not having enough time to take pictures with your busy schedule! That sounds like me most of the time! But I focus on the recipe more than the photography and I think you did awesome! Thanks so much for bringing this to Fiesta Friday! 🙂
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