Week 20: Brownie Bread Pudding

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! We decided to cook in for the holiday and made a wonderful ham with a yummy cranberry glaze, homemade mustard (for another Blog), scalloped turnips (from the Pioneer Women’s web site), and broccoli. A pretty good meal!! We were about 2 hours behind schedule somehow and didn’t eat until 9pm, but hey, we had fun anyway.

We were trying to decide what to do for dessert, of course we were planning something chocolate, and it got decided for us. A few days before Valentine’s Day, one of Scott’s co-workers had brought in some brownies for their Valentine’s party and they were like bricks! They were made from one of those brownie pans that is shaped like a zig-zag so that every piece of brownie has edges. Well, I guess they got over baked or maybe the zig-zag pan is just not what it’s cracked up to be?! Who knows? Anyway, Scott said why not just make a bread pudding out of the dry brownies & the next thing I knew we had a bag of brownies at home to make bread pudding. So the challenge began!

Well, first let me say, bread pudding is about my most favorite dessert in the world. There is something about bread pudding, with just simple ingredients, you can make so many varieties of sweet and savory bread puddings. Valentine’s Day 2004, Scott researched about 50 bread pudding recipes on the web and put them all together in a bread pudding cookbook! Ah, how romantic! It was a wonderful gift and I have been making all sorts of bread pudding for years now. So now I needed to adapt a recipe to use brownies instead of bread. I decided on a chocolate bread pudding recipe and just omitted adding chocolate, replaced it with brownies and reduced the amount of white bread. I was amazed how wonderful this bread pudding turned out. (okay, they're brownies, how bad could it be?!) We were going to add cherries in the recipe and forgot to put them in. So we decided to soak the dried cherries in some liqueur and then just pour it over the top, and let me tell you, an excellent choice!! Our little cherries were so drunk on Grand Marnier, they were amazing!

Well, have fun with it. Bread pudding is pretty forgiving and you can pretty much add whatever you want and it will pretty much turn out great! This was definitely a hillbilly recipe and thanks Emeril for getting me going!

Yummy Brownie Bread Pudding

• 3 cups dry brownies


• 1 cup day-old white bread


• 2 cups Half & Half


• 4 large eggs


• 1 cup light brown sugar (firmly packed)


• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon


• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1/2 cup Grand Marnier (separated in half)


• ½ cup dried cherries

Special ingredients: Grand Marnier or any type of brandy or specialty liqueur you would like would give a nice little flavor to your topping

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8 pan with cooking spray.

Step 2: Pre-soak the dried cherries in 1/4 cup Grand Marnier (super yum!)

Step 3: Wisk together eggs, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and 1/4 cup of Grand Marnier

Step 4: Add Half & Half to the egg mixture. Mix well.

Step 5: Cut brownies and bread into 1-inch size pieces

Step 6: Place white bread in the milk/egg mixture and let soak for 15 minutes.

Step 7: Place brownies in the bottom of the greased pan.

Step 8: Pour white bread, egg, and cream mixture over the brownies.

Step 9: Bake in the oven for about 45-55 minutes. Bake until the pudding is set. Let cool for about 5 minutes before serving.

Serve the brownie bread pudding with vanilla bean ice cream (my favorite type) and pour the soaked cherries over your ice cream. You could even heat up the drunken soaked cherries a little and then pour them over the ice cream, that would be pretty good too!

Enjoy just one of my favorite bread pudding recipes. It is any easy dessert & pretty impressive. And it might be a little hillbilly!

Recipe credit to: Adapted from Emeril’s Creole Christmas

Week 18: Cranberry Vodka

Okay, you might think I am a big drinker, but no, not really. I just like making things from scratch and experimenting with food. My boyfriend got crazy over the holidays and bought a million bags of fresh cranberries before they were out of the grocery store. Fresh cranberries can only be found in the fall and around Christmas time since they are harvested only once a year. If you have always wondered how cranberries are grown, just Wikipedia cranberries! I have seen the commercials with the two guys in the cranberry bog, but how do they grow, in the water? We had no clue, so we looked it up and in short, they do grow on bushes and as an easy way to harvest them, they flood the area and the cranberries then float and are easy to collect. Check it out, amazing!

Anyway, we have been getting creative with our cranberries and decided to make a liqueur. Wow, did this really turn out wonderful. A nice tart liqueur and can be made into all sorts of drinks. Martini’s are a great use for this fresh and really dark red drink.

So, if you have a bag of cranberries in the freezer and don’t know what to do with it, try this easy recipe and enjoy!!

Cranberry Vodka

• 1 bag of fresh cranberries


• 3 cups vodka


• 1 cup water


• 2 cups sugar

Step 1: Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan; cook over medium heat 5 minutes or until sugar dissolves, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and cool completely.

Step 2: Place cranberries in a food processor; process 2 minutes or until finely chopped.

Step 3: Combine sugar mixture and cranberries in a large bowl; stir in vodka.

Step 4: Pour the vodka mixture into clean jars; secure with lids. Let stand 3 weeks in a cool, dark place, shaking every other day. We put our mixture in a big glass bowl that we stirred every other day. Depends on what you have available.

Step 5: Strain the cranberry mixture through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a bowl, and discard solids. Carefully pour liqueur into clean bottles or jars. Note: Liqueur can be stored refrigerated or at room temperature for up to a year.

193 calories for 1/4 cup.

Recipe credit to: Cooking Light, December 2003
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=554718

Week 10: Limoncello

I came across this recipe in Cooking Light this year and thought it would make great Christmas gifts for friends. My boyfriend had tried limoncello with some Italian friends of his and we thought this would be a fun gift. Limoncello is an Italian liqueur that is good over ice, a lemon drop martini, mixed with sparkling wine, or could be splashed over fresh fruit. (I always add a little alcohol to my fruit salad, usually an orange flavored liqueur). This recipe could not be easier, getting the lemon rind off was the most work. I looked up some other recipes on the web and there were variations of how much time to let the limoncello sit, but 2 weeks worked for me. Also if you can use a peeler and just take off the yellow part of the lemon, it might give the liqueur less of a bite. I was amazed on the color the vodka took on. The lemon rinds were pale and almost white when they got done doing their magic. I found some nice bottles at the Container Store with a lid that holds pretty well. I also peeled a long lemon rind into the bottle for effect! I am putting together a gift basket for a friend with limoncello, two martini glasses, and a few martini recipes to use the limoncello. Nothing is better than a homemade gift for the holidays and nothing is more hillbilly than bootlegged limoncello! Enjoy!

Limoncello:

• 4 cups vodka


• ½ cup lemon rind strips (about 7 lemons)


• 3 cups water


• 1 ½ cups sugar

Special items needed: none, just time

Step 1: Combine vodka and rind in a glass bowl with a lid. Let stand at room temperature for 2 weeks.

Step 2: Strain through a sieve into a bowl; discard solids.

Step 3: Combine 3 cups water and 1 ½ cups sugar in a large saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and cool to room temperature. Add to vodka mixture.

Step 4: Divide limoncello evenly among 3 sterilized (750-milliliter) bottles, and seal.

Yield: 7 cups (serving size: about 1/4 cup) Store in the refrigerator up to 1 year.

Calories: 125 per serving.

Recipe credit to: Cooking Light, November 2008