ession: We ALWAYS have apples in our house. They are about the only natural food Colin willingly eats and even still he isn’t thrilled to see them on his plate every day. (newsflash colin: variety is a good thing). Besides, what is an easier better snack than an apple? Long after I am ready to move onto other fruits, those apples (thank you, colin) are always there and at the ready. Because I don’t buy the varieties I don’t like to eat raw (granny smith and red delicious, if you must know), I eat them even when I think I am sick of them. I eat them when I know they are out of season. I eat them sometimes for no other reason than the fact that they require NO preparation. If an apple a day really kept the doctor away, I would cancel my insurance (kidding…definitely kidding).
So, you’d think I would have been all over APPLE-APPLE bread pudding. But, despite my almost heroic consumption of apples, I still associate them with fall baking. I eat them out of the basket, sure, but it’s about four months before I can even consider apple turnovers, apple cake or apple bread pudding. Come see me in September when I have just returned from Arbour Day Farms in NE with a bushel of apples, apple cider, apple butter, apple wine, apple donuts….
So, I immediately glommed onto the playing around section. And, experimenters take note, there is a reason the recipe is written the way it is written. If xyz variation was as good as the original it probably would have made top billing, don’t ya think? I chose to make a blackberry/raspberry combo with “fruits of the forest” jam. First, I started with egg dinner rolls because the leftover brioche dough in the freezer was a complete fail. The rolls were too thick, I think, even after I cut them up. I made a 1/3 of the recipe and tried to guess at the number of berries equivalent to one caramelized apple. Whatever I threw in wasn’t enough. And I think I was too light on the jam. In short, it wasn’t quite was I was expecting and was nowhere near the transcendence of the chocolate bread pudding. (speaking of, can we get some chocolate back on the schedule? please. with sugar on top?)
Bottom line: it was good but, while I was eating it, I kept thinking how much better the original version would have been. Spring and your berries be damned.
Variations: berries and all that jazz. 2% milk instead of whole milk. 1/3 recipe in who knows what size oval dish from World Market.
For the recipe visit Liz at Cake or Death. Her posts are hilarious. Next week: Banana Coconut Pie. Oh, yeah, I am going with the chocolate ice cream.
