Even now in heaven there were angels carrying savage weapons
Tonight's recipe sponsored by frustration, depression, and ready access to a lot of carbohydrates. It turned out pretty well.
Everything About Today Was Awful So I Baked a Bread Pudding in My Toaster Oven Bread Pudding
Preparation:
Stare miserably at the 95% remaining of the loaf of Hi-Rise Bread Company's Boston brown bread with blueberries you bought so trustingly on Friday, not realizing that any foodstuffs of a density greater than pasta were about to become your natural enemy. Wonder about soaking it in soup. Determine bread pudding is a much better idea for something that tastes that strongly of molasses and blueberries.
Accidentally confirm via conversation with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phi on Saturday night that baking in a toaster oven is totally a thing.
Read at least a dozen recipes for bread pudding on the internet before deciding the only complicated part is the custard. Have small breakdown on realization that measuring cups and spoons either never moved from old apartment or are still packed up in some counterintuitive box. Determine to go ahead anyway and handle everything with sole discernible measuring cup (liquid) and ordinary spoons. Synthesize recipe and appropriate amount of custard based on quantities of bread available and other ingredients in the house. Make sure to eat dinner first.
Thickly butter a 9-by-9 glass baking dish. Preheat the toaster oven to 350°F, although admittedly this takes five minutes.
(For those not suffering the ravages of orthodonture, steps 1–3 may be omitted.)
Pudding:
5 cups Boston brown bread, chopped into more or less 1-inch cubes
2 cups cream
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of salt
Cube the bread and fill the baking dish with it. Fortunately, the entire 95% loaf just fits.
Whisk together all remaining ingredients in a large bowl, or a 7-cup round Pyrex storage dish if that's what's handy. If the butter comes out of the refrigerator, melt it in the microwave, but allow it to cool before adding to the eggs and milk. Vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg are all to taste; amounts here vary from estimate to suggestion. Pour proto-custard over bread in baking dish, pressing and stirring slightly to ensure that all bread is covered. Let sit for at least 45 minutes, periodically turning, in order to allow bread to soak up liquid thoroughly. By the end of this process, bread should be squishy and mostly submerged.
Baking:
In a toaster oven at 350°F, 50 minutes seems to do it. I had expected less—all the recipes I'd consulted were dealing with larger volumes of bread pudding than I'd put up—but it's possible an actual oven would be more efficient. I started with 25 minutes, rotated the dish and then advanced by 10- and 5-minute intervals. The custard should puff out slightly and set, which can be checked by prying up one of the top pieces of bread to examine the solidity underneath. The sides of the dish may bubble ferociously. It isn't possible with brown bread to test for doneness by color, but so long as it neither brittles nor burns and the custard doesn't darken too much (flan-colored is fine, caramel-colored is overdoing it), you haven't overcooked it. When custard is done and bread is not ashes, remove from toaster oven and place on the folded dishcloth that stands in for a trivet in this house, since the pudding at this stage is punitively hot. When it has cooled the minimum necessary to avoid scalding, scoop into bowls. Put away ice cream that was previously removed from freezer on the immediate understanding that this custard is Dickensianly rich and adding further milkfat would be overkill, not to mention hazardous. The bread is soft and cream-curded, the blueberries have plumped up and partly dissolved. It all tastes very dark brown and not too heavily spiced. If other people in your household can consume this substance and you don't at least offer them some, you are probably being a terrible person. Wrap up substantial leftovers for later.
Put your braces back in and feel vindictively accomplished about the whole thing.
Everything About Today Was Awful So I Baked a Bread Pudding in My Toaster Oven Bread Pudding
Preparation:
Stare miserably at the 95% remaining of the loaf of Hi-Rise Bread Company's Boston brown bread with blueberries you bought so trustingly on Friday, not realizing that any foodstuffs of a density greater than pasta were about to become your natural enemy. Wonder about soaking it in soup. Determine bread pudding is a much better idea for something that tastes that strongly of molasses and blueberries.
Accidentally confirm via conversation with
phi on Saturday night that baking in a toaster oven is totally a thing.Read at least a dozen recipes for bread pudding on the internet before deciding the only complicated part is the custard. Have small breakdown on realization that measuring cups and spoons either never moved from old apartment or are still packed up in some counterintuitive box. Determine to go ahead anyway and handle everything with sole discernible measuring cup (liquid) and ordinary spoons. Synthesize recipe and appropriate amount of custard based on quantities of bread available and other ingredients in the house. Make sure to eat dinner first.
Thickly butter a 9-by-9 glass baking dish. Preheat the toaster oven to 350°F, although admittedly this takes five minutes.
(For those not suffering the ravages of orthodonture, steps 1–3 may be omitted.)
Pudding:
5 cups Boston brown bread, chopped into more or less 1-inch cubes
2 cups cream
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of salt
Cube the bread and fill the baking dish with it. Fortunately, the entire 95% loaf just fits.
Whisk together all remaining ingredients in a large bowl, or a 7-cup round Pyrex storage dish if that's what's handy. If the butter comes out of the refrigerator, melt it in the microwave, but allow it to cool before adding to the eggs and milk. Vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg are all to taste; amounts here vary from estimate to suggestion. Pour proto-custard over bread in baking dish, pressing and stirring slightly to ensure that all bread is covered. Let sit for at least 45 minutes, periodically turning, in order to allow bread to soak up liquid thoroughly. By the end of this process, bread should be squishy and mostly submerged.
Baking:
In a toaster oven at 350°F, 50 minutes seems to do it. I had expected less—all the recipes I'd consulted were dealing with larger volumes of bread pudding than I'd put up—but it's possible an actual oven would be more efficient. I started with 25 minutes, rotated the dish and then advanced by 10- and 5-minute intervals. The custard should puff out slightly and set, which can be checked by prying up one of the top pieces of bread to examine the solidity underneath. The sides of the dish may bubble ferociously. It isn't possible with brown bread to test for doneness by color, but so long as it neither brittles nor burns and the custard doesn't darken too much (flan-colored is fine, caramel-colored is overdoing it), you haven't overcooked it. When custard is done and bread is not ashes, remove from toaster oven and place on the folded dishcloth that stands in for a trivet in this house, since the pudding at this stage is punitively hot. When it has cooled the minimum necessary to avoid scalding, scoop into bowls. Put away ice cream that was previously removed from freezer on the immediate understanding that this custard is Dickensianly rich and adding further milkfat would be overkill, not to mention hazardous. The bread is soft and cream-curded, the blueberries have plumped up and partly dissolved. It all tastes very dark brown and not too heavily spiced. If other people in your household can consume this substance and you don't at least offer them some, you are probably being a terrible person. Wrap up substantial leftovers for later.
Put your braces back in and feel vindictively accomplished about the whole thing.
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*hugs* if they are useful and you want them.
I'm glad the toaster oven baking worked out for you, at least.
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I'm really glad to know it can be done! Thank you for telling me.
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Thank you. Judging by the quantity of leftovers, I should get to enjoy my victory for another couple of days.
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Three cheers for vindictive culinary accomplishment!
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Report back if you do! This was an experimental recipe; there are all sorts of adjustments and alterations that could be made.
Three cheers for vindictive culinary accomplishment!
I am actually very pleased.
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(I come offering more new N/H fic, too, in hopes it may help you feel better.)
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Highly recommended, just in small doses.
(I come offering more new N/H fic, too, in hopes it may help you feel better.)
Yay! Will go read as soon as I'm done with work and out of the doctor's office.
I like that icon.
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(Yay! And good luck with the doctor *hugs*)
ETA: Source of icon, as promised!
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I frequently order it with
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IT WAS PRETTY HILARIOUS WHILE IT LASTED.
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Nine
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Well, only if the gods are from antique New England. But I'm pretty happy with it.
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Weird spice rubs are still cooking! (What kind of weird spice rub?)
This is some serious chemistry.
Hah. Thank you. I have not been cooking nearly enough recently, and definitely not baking due to the non-state of our oven, and I realized while making the apricot biscuit cake on Saturday that I just missed it. I'd like to do more. Besides, food is going to be even more complicated than usual for the next I don't even know how long; I might as well enjoy it.
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Your lack of measuring utensils reminds me of a recipe I hope to try one of these days, Ten Cup Ranger Cookies (http://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/other/recipes.html#32). The theory is that Rangers only carry one cup, so it's all "one cup of this and one cup of that...and an egg".
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Thank you! It did help.
Ten Cup Ranger Cookies. The theory is that Rangers only carry one cup, so it's all "one cup of this and one cup of that...and an egg".
That's great. I wonder what other recipes you could apply that to.
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I was just mentioning this to
(I don't know why those ingredients; I thought of them first. I'm pretty sure they'd work, though.)
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I think thats the way a lot of things start... grin.
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I've got nothing against being inspired when I'm happy!
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My prejudices against fifties-style food notwithstanding, potatoes au gratin turns out to be perfectly cromulent food. Though I will never like working with potatoes, because you do a lot of work and then you only have peeled potatoes, and then you do a great deal more work and you only have thinly sliced potatoes, and then they need to cook for like an hour. Oh, well, there are leftovers.
Your bread pudding sounds as though it would solve the problem I usually have with Boston Brown Bread, which is that it is too dry.
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Cool. I've made several iterations of butternut squash gratin over the years and one dessert gratin that I should make again (the one with the dried stone fruits and Calvados and mascarpone), but I cannot remember if I have ever made potatoes au gratin, although it seems unreasonable that I never should have. What else went in your recipe?
Though I will never like working with potatoes, because you do a lot of work and then you only have peeled potatoes, and then you do a great deal more work and you only have thinly sliced potatoes, and then they need to cook for like an hour.
I have a weird relationship with potatoes. I'm not interested in them most of the time; I have been known to eat around them in dishes in which they are a minor component and volunteer them to my dining companions when they come on the side. Potato skins are incredibly delicious. Baked stuffed potatoes are a childhood food. (My mother used to make them twice-baked for dinner with sharp cheddar. As I got older and more able to participate in the cooking, the quantities of cheddar involved mysteriously skyrocketed. Even then, I really liked the skins.) Every now and then I really enjoy French fries. I don't know. I think I'm friendliest to potato in Indian dishes, but it's like I'm missing a gene.
Your bread pudding sounds as though it would solve the problem I usually have with Boston Brown Bread, which is that it is too dry.
This will very definitely solve the dryness problem. I reheated some tonight in the microwave and it still wasn't crunchy, having soaked up even more of the custard overnight. Eventually I might have to start putting extra custard on it, or something, but it may also get eaten before that point.
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It reheats well, too!
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Hah. No, we haven't had a working stove since we moved into this apartment. The burners light by hand, but the oven and the broiler are kaput; our landlord is reportedly working on replacing it, but we've been waiting since November. Normally I bake tons in the winter. Not this year. Bread pudding in a toaster oven was an immensely reassuring achievement; I am contemplating what to toaster-bake next. Noodles and cheese, I think. With paprika. And breadcrumbs on top. And maybe someday some fish.
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Our landlord is way better than my previous landlord. I'm not happy about the wait for the stove, but at least they aren't trying to gaslight me and
If it gets to be six months and we've never had a working stove, there will be trouble.
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Thank you. The bread pudding wasn't. The day just leading up to it really was.
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I made bread pudding a fortnight back, because we had half a bag of dried cubed bread left over from stuffing a duck at Christmas and it needed something done with it. It ended up soaking for a day before being baked, and I probably should have made more custard since the bread was drier than the merely day-old bread the recipe called for, but it worked. Then again, whiskey sauce covereth a multitude of sins.
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I plan to see what else I can bake in that thing. I'm sure eventually I'll hit a limit (I don't think I can roast a chicken, for example; there is probably not enough room), but if I can make some meat dishes happen, my life will improve immensely.
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I've never made much meatloaf; it's one of the recipes where I'm always having to winnow out the mysterious ingredients like cups of crunchy chopped onion that no one actually wants to find halfway through their bite of pork or beef. I should start experimenting.
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THAT'S IT I NEED A PHEASANT STAT.
(Seriously, that's awesome.)
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Well, Savenor's has them, if you're able to brave the snow!
Seriously, I hope the oven situation does not linger, but I am glad my hard-won knowledge of how to cook in a minimal kitchen is useful again.
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Very. Thank you. If nothing else, it will keep me from getting bored.
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smiling, because, in fact, that's a feeling I've actually had, and consequently recognize. This recipe sounds awesome--but I must commit apricot cake first.
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Enjoy them both!