Saturday, June 09, 2007

Fruity Bread Pudding

True to tradition, Parade Day dawned rainy and gloomy. We're not parade goers anyway, but while I lay in bed thinking of all the damp souls waiting for the fun to begin, I also started thinking about breakfast. A cool, early summer breakfast is a grand opportunity as far as I'm concerned. I can't think of how many recipes I've seen which look delicious but involve baking summer fruit. Baking. Summer. Fruit. You get the problem, right? Who wants to bake anything when it's hot?

One thing I love is a good bread pudding. We make them all the time, often using leftover challah. Mostly they are dense, eggy things, either a savory variety made with cheese or a rich chocolate variety. Today I wanted something lighter where the flavor of recently purchased blueberries and cherries would shine.

I started with this recipe, the first to pop up after I googled "blueberry bread pudding". It was a good starting point, but looked too sweet and too bland so I fiddled around a bit and made enough changes that I think I can fairly call this recipe my own. I cut back on the sugar, added cherries along with the blueberries, used more bread, replaced water with orange juice,and upped the lemon juice and butter accordingly.I even had the opportunity to put my grandmother's pastry tips to use for pitting the cherries after picking up the tip while browsing through a Martha Stewart magazine. Once I found the right size, it worked perfectly.

Served with a little half and half, this was delicious. If I were a bacon-eating person, I think that might be the perfect breakfast companion to this sweet bread pudding. I might try and remember to whip up some veggie sausage next time I serve this in the morning. But it would also be a delightful dessert along with freshly whipped cream. Do give it a try.

2 comments:

Jacqueline said...

Doesn't the bread look pretty once it is stained by the berries!

Magpie Ima said...

It does indeed! The whole thing becomes a lovely soggy pink mess :-)