Bread Pudding, the way it's Meant to Be

When I was a little girl, my mother's Parsee friends used to make me bread pudding. Their recipe was simple and the end result, delicious.

Back then, white bread wasn't evil, eggs weren't akin cigarettes (bs, imo), sugar was sweet and people would eat, all of the above, albeit in moderation.

I must admit I tried, many a time to make recipes healthier. Swapping butter for yogurt, applesauce, good will, and so forth... and I've actually succeeded many times. So I do have a perfectly nice recipe for bread pudding which uses whole grain bread and natural sweeteners, but you know what, it just doesn't satisfy.

Truth be told, I love white bread. I love eggs. I love sugar. In moderation, I believe they can do no harm. Besides, our diet is otherwise rich in whole grains, vegetables, and legumes for me to not feel guilty about this indulgence.
Most importantly though, this bread pudding, like other favourites from my childhood, shall not be messed with.

You will need:
Sliced white bread (or Indian Pav Bread) sliced into small pieces - 5 cups  
Large Eggs - 6
Milk (whole or 2%) - 2 cups
Condensed milk - 1 can (14 oz, or approx 400ml)
Sultanas/ Golden Raisins - 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 2 teaspoons
Green Cardamom, shelled and powdered - 6 pods
Nutmeg, freshly grated - a pinch

Just be sure to:
1. Use unsweetened white bread like the kind they use to make sandwiches. Do not use sweet bread, this recipe is sweet enough as it is.
2. If you aren't familiar with or fond of the flavor cardamom imparts, then I would strongly suggest using fewer pods. As for me, I grew up in a house that on Thursdays and weekends was a cardamom scented haven, so I love the stuff.
3. You have to grate the nutmeg fresh. Pre-powdered nutmeg is just wrong. Just as wrong as pre-powdered cardamom.

A Note on the Sweetness:
This dessert is sweet. Quelle surprise!!
Well, what I mean is, if you've tried other recipes on this blog you will have realized that they are sweet enough to be called sweet, but not cloying sweet. Not sickeningly sweet. Not Italian sweet.
It is sweet though, so if you hold me in high regard and cherish me for my ability to make desserts sweet, but not too sweet, be warned that this is one of the sweeter ones. It's delicious though, so I would urge you not to make any subtractions or worse, substitutions.

If you absolutely, have to tone down the sweetness because a Tufted Capuchun is holding your favorite sweater hostage or something like that, you can do one of the following:
1. Use 1/4 cup of sultanas or (I can't believe I'm saying this) leave them out altogether.  This is what I would consider a great tragedy, but you must do what you must do for your favorite sweater.
2.  Use half a can of condensed milk and replace it with plain milk.


The How:
Begin by boiling the milk and condensed milk in a sauce pan. I usually bring this to a boil and then let it cool, but you can get by with just bring it to a point where the two are well combined and steaming. Let it sit around till it is barely warm to touch.

Grease your baking dish. Slice the bread. Toss together with sultanas and add them to the baking dish. Cover the lot with some aluminum foil (you will need this while baking and also to keep the bread from drying out in the interim).

Get your blender and add the six eggs, vanilla essence, shelled and powdered cardamom, and grate nutmeg right into the jar. Blend till well combined.

Add as much of the cooled milk as the blender jar permits. Most blender jars don't have the capacity for all the milk + eggs, so be sure to add the blended mix back into the rest of the milk and give it all a good stir.

Pour the milk/egg mixture over the bread and let it sit for about half an hour.



Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Set a pan (larger than your baking dish) in the oven, place the pudding dish in it and add water to the pan.
Cook for 50 minutes.


Remove the aluminum foil and cook for an additional 30 minutes. Oven temperatures vary, so it might take 10 minutes more or less.
Look for a firm pudding that doesn't jiggle on the pan being shaken slightly. Be careful not to spill any of the hot water on yourself.

By the way, if any of you did find your way to that article in Time, chances are what caused those people to contract heart disease might be that sliver of bacon coupled alongside them harmless, healthy, balls of sunshine.

Classic Bundt Cake

Cleaning out the house had me gone completely mental so I was thrilled at the prospect of a night out with the girls... giggling, overeating, talking about things that mattered and other things that really didn't.

In fact, I was so delighted that I decided to bake a cake for us to have for dessert.

We would all go to Big Star and eat, after which I would invite them home for some bundt cake with sliced strawberries and chocolate sauce. I had imagined much gushing and praise. Not over the cake so much, but more over the herculean task of cleaning out six years of ... well... crap.
A woman would get it. A woman would appreciate me and the sheer perseverance it took... over weeks....
Okay, so I really wanted to be appreciated... but I made the cake out of love... and excitement.... and anticipation.


You can see something coming, can't you?
Well, I didn't!

I pull the cake out of the oven at around 2pm and log into my email to announce dessert - when I realize our girl's night out now includes the most undesirable element of all - BOYS! THREE WHOLE BOYS!
So dismayed!

I slice the cake into smaller bits, because now we have more mouths to feed.
That too boy mouths! The hungriest kind.

My woebegoneness aside, this cake really is delicious. It is almost exactly the same as featured in The Family Baking Book, except I've decreased the amount of sugar and butter.

Date Cake

I like being by myself.

It could be a habit I developed early, with being an only child to working parents. 
I always came home to animals. Cats mostly.

Truth be told, I feel most closest to being my self, when I'm at home with no one but my cat for company. That doesn't mean I'm averse to company. Quite the contrary really, both me and the cat love guests. We love the laughter that comes with them, and the smells. We love breaking bread with them and listening to their tales. Oh, we love guests! But we also love just being by ourselves.

When the husband goes away on work, which happens ever week, the cat and I have a routine.
It usually starts with picking up after the excitement of the weekend. The clutter of all the activities we undertook and abandoned.
Afterward, the cat naps and I watch an episode of Murder, She Wrote.

This past month however, the husband was around a lot. The cat got used to having him around. I got used to having him around.

So when Susheel left for the week on Monday morning, Simba and I looked at each other... unsettled.
We had our territory back to us. We could reclaim our silence.
We tried to get back into routine and we failed.
Simba slept on the ironing board while I sat on the couch with freshly washed, unfolded laundry piled in a basket next to me.

Simba's ears twitched. I was decidedly out-of-sorts. So I did the one thing I've learned to do in an emotional crisis... bake.

The clanging of pots woke Simba and he came to investigate.  For someone who doesn't care for cake, he loves to be around when I bake.

I shifted bottles in the kitchen cupboards and found nine dates in their little #6 plastic box.

"Date Cake"... It was decided.

I considered what would pair well with dates and decided on walnuts. Also, cardamom! 

Dry Ingredients: 1 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda, the powdered contents of 6 cardamom pods. Sift, mix and set aside.

Wet ingredients: 1 egg, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of apple sauce (because it had been sitting on the pantry shelf since before the dates), 1/2 cup of oil.

Blend till well combined: 

Add flour in installments and mix well. Once well combined, add a cup full of chopped dates and walnuts.

Spoon into prepared muffin pan... or new mini bundt cake pan you were dying to debut!
I didn't ration them out right, but you can be more prudent.

Bake in a 350 degree Fahrenheit over for approximately 25 mins.

The house is filled with lovely smells and warmth... Simba's decided to sleep on the couch again and I'm going to make me some tea to go with these cakes. Then, my napping cat and I can help J B Fletcher solve her next case.

We've saved some for you Susheel.
We're happy, but we still miss you.