Bourboned-up Eggnog Bread Pudding

'Tis the holiday season.

Although for some people that may mean the joy and fellowship of gift-giving and shared meals, for other people that may mean stress and insanity associated with gift-giving and shared meals. For still others, it is a mixed bag of both joy intertwined with stress, fellowship commingling with insanity.

It's no wonder so many people spike their eggnog during the month of December.

A friend of mine talked about a bourbon-spiked eggnog he made and I read something recently about an eggnog bread pudding based on this White and Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding from Eupicurious, and my ears perked right up. All signs seemed to indicate that I would smash the two together in some sinful way.

As luck would have it, I had just bought a quart of eggnog the other day on impulse, and just yesterday when I was rummaging through the fridge, I came across a bag of the bits and pieces of a few recently purchased, but never finished, baguettes. Leftover bread like that usually gets stuffed into a ziplock bag and stored in the freezer for future use as bread crumbs, but for some reason, these baguettes had escaped to the back of the fridge until Sunday, when I sliced off the crusts and let the baguettes fulfill their life's ambition of being mixed with chopped chocolate, drowned in egg, bourbon and cream, and then baked to golden-brown deliciousness.

I didn't stop there. I made a custardy sauce of eggnog, cream and bourbon as the final touch.

Let me tell you, it makes the stress and insanity of the season just a wee bit more bearable.

Bourboned-up Eggnog Bread Pudding

Serves 2 generously or 4 or even 6 judiciously - don't even attempt to eat the whole thing by yourself 

Ingredients:

For the sauce:

• ½ cup eggnog
• splash of heavy cream - 2 or 3 tablespoons
• generous 2 tablespoons bourbon - it may have been closer to 3 or even 4 tablespoons 
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• splash of vanilla
• touch of nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon cornstarch
• ½ teaspoon water

For the pudding:

• 3½ cups leftover French bread cut into 1 inch cubes, crusts cut off - stale is ok, moldy is not
• 1½ oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped - I used Scharffenberger's 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate
• 1 oz. good quality white chocolate, chopped
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ¼ cup egg nog
• 1/8 cup milk
• 1/8 cup bourbon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:

1. Make the sauce by placing the eggnog, cream, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg and bourbon in a saucepan and heat to a gentle boil.
   
   
2. Make a slurry of the cornstarch and water, whisking it well until it is smooth and then add it to the eggnog-cream mixture. Keep it bubbling gently over medium to low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens, about 3 minutes. Take it off the heat, stir in the nutmeg and cool. Refrigerate until needed.
   
   
3. For the bread pudding, I like to go beyond even day-old bread and use stale French bread. Very simply, I cut off the crusts and then cut the bread into 1 inch cubes. Toss that into a large bowl.
   
   
4. I was feeling lazy, so I chopped the chocolates in the food processor. It made a hell of a racket, but it was great - I had chunks of chocolate as well as "chocolate dust." Add the grated/chopped/pulverized chocolate to the bread cubes.
   
   
5. Beat together the egg, sugar and vanilla until frothy, then add the cream, eggnog, milk, nutmeg and bourbon, whisking well. Pour the liquid over the bread and chocolate and stir well. Let it soak for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure that it all soaks evenly.
   
   
6. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Find a smallish casserole dish. I used an oven-safe 5 x 7 inch stoneware dish for this amount of bread pudding. Give it a good spray with cooking spray and dump in the soaked bread pudding mixture. Sprinkle a bit of brown sugar over the top if you like, and then bake for 30 minutes or until the edges of the bread cubes are brown and the custard is set.
   
   
7. Take out and let cool 10 minutes, then serve warm with the eggnog sauce spooned over it.

A closer look...

Tweet

Crème brûlée

We've been on a custard-kick lately. For my older daughter's birthday a few weeks ago, she requested that I make a layered pound cake with strawberries as her birthday cake. We decided that the cake needed more than just sliced strawberries in between the layers, so I made a thick vanilla pastry cream and set the strawberries in that in between the cake layers. Wow, was it ever good!

May daughter was impressed with homemade stove-top vanilla custard and we've been looking through various recipes lately. She decided that she really wanted me to make us all crèmes brûlées as a treat, and using this as justification to buy a mini blowtorch, I said "Sure thing!"

The torch was a bit of an odyssey in itself. I didn't read the box carefully enough, so I didn't realize that the butane canister was sold separately. Naturally, by the time I had made this discovery, I was already in my flannel lounging-around-home clothes and was in no mood to get dressed again and haul us all back out into the pouring rain. I did eventually, though, and then was faced with figuring out how exactly to fill the torch; long story short: I filled it, it worked, it was delicious, and everyone was happy, The End.

Crème brûlée

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 yolks
• turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw is one brand)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325.
2. Place the cream in a heavy saucepan. Slice the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and the bean into the cream and scald over medium-high heat until it almost boils. Remove from heat and let steep 15 minutes.
3. Beat the 1/4 cup sugar with 3 eggs yolks until light yellow and smooth.
4. Place a fine-meshed strainer over the egg-sugar mixture and carefully strain a bit of the warmed cream mixture to the eggs, whisking constantly. Gradually pour in the rest of the cream mixture, stirring well.
5. Divide the mixture between four 4 oz. ramekins.* Place the ramekins into roasting dishes or even cake pans and pour hot water (near-boiling) into the pans about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

6. Bake in a preheated oven until the custard has set, but still jiggles slightly in the center, about 40 minutes.
7. Remove and immediately cool on wire racks until cool. You can refrigerate them if you like.
8. When you are ready to serve them, check that the tops of the custards are dry. You can blot them with a paper towel to get rid of any condensation. Then coat the tops of the custards with turbinado sugar and, using your handy-dandy mini blowtorch (see right), to melt the sugar until it turns browns and hardens into a lovely caramelized crust.
   
   This video gives a good demonstration of how to do it:
   
   
   
   
9. Then I'd say serve immediately :)

Notes:

• This was my first time with the brûlée aspect; I've made this type of custard cooked in a water bath before, but my first time with a blow torch. After looking at the video (which I only saw today for the first time) I think perhaps I'll scorch the sugar more next time. I was wary of turning the sugar into an inedible, burnt-solid black mass. Don't get me wrong, even lightly-torched, it still was an amazing dessert.
• * Yeah, this recipe made way more than could be filled into four 4 oz. ramekins, but then I did not fill them all the way to the top because I was afraid that they may flow over. I had enough left over for about 2 more 4 oz. ramekins (I filled two 8 oz. ramekins halfway), so I'm not sure exactly what's going on there. I am always very careful about my measurements - "Measure twice, dump once" is my motto - lol So, just be aware that you may need an extra ramekin hanging about just in case.

Tweet