Tarted Up Bread and Butter Pudding

Can you picture your your first dessert memory? The anticipation of that tiny frame of time after being made to eat "just three more mouthfuls" of grey-hued beans, but before being sent off to bed to let the grown ups talk? For me, that short amount of time was all about bread and butter pudding. Even now, the salivary glands kick into gear, the eyes glaze over and I can feel the firm squidginess that was essentially stale bread in custard. Twenty something years on and it's a regular in my own home, for my own family.

Mum's old recipe was designed to be filling, economical and somewhat healthy. The bread was always (at best) 'day old' from the local bakery which was given away to whoever wanted it. Whatever was leftover from the weeks school and work lunches would be used for pudding. The eggs came from our own free ranging, happy girls (who also ate the day old bread and kitchen scraps). The custard was always made with milk, imitation vanilla essence, and the most exotic ingredient by far was the nutmeg sprinkled over the top. But it was wonderful, and boy, did we eat it by the oversized family-of-sixteen-children-style pyrex casserole dish.

But times have changed, it's cheap to use heavy cream, real vanilla, rich brioche or spicy fruit toast to tart up this old fashioned classic. God knows it's well worth the extra dollar or so. If you go to the extent of using a whole vanilla bean, after using it in this recipe, put it in a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar. Replace the sugar (not the bean) as you use it. I'm sure even mother would approve of using a $5 bean to get that kind of longevity out of it! Use the sugar for meringues, hot drinks, biscuits etc.

So, if you're in the need for a comforting, warming, groan worthy (and who isn't?) dessert - give it a go!

Tarted Up Bread & Butter Pudding
Serves 4

4 cups torn up bread/brioche/fruit toast
60g butter, melted
1 cup milk
4 eggs (free range please!)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla bean
1 3/4 cups cream

Toast bread in a moderate oven until crisp but not coloured. Pour melted butter over the bread and mix up to coat evenly, and transfer to a casserole dish. Whisk up remaining ingredients and pour over the bread. Chill for an hour. Bake at 180c until *just* set - about 50 minutes.

I usually have mine hot from the oven, drowned in cold milk (old family tradition), but cream or icecream are great choices.

Tart it up further: infuse the milk with citrus zest or the whole vanilla pod, dip the bread into marmalade or apricot jam, add chocolate chips, sprinkle the top with nutmeg or mixed spice, use donuts in place of the bread... you get the idea.

Easy Peasy Big Breakfast and Hangover Cure

photo by Romulo Yanes

Is there anything more warm-fuzzy-feeling inducing than a proper, hot breakfast that invariably incorporates the obligatory eggs and crispy bacon? And a big breakfast is the perfect cure after a big night, no? But unless you're happy to roll out of bed with the birds sporting your Sunday best headache, here is a recipe to get your hangover on the mend before you even hit the turps. When you wake from your medicinal purposes only alcohol induced coma, stumble out of bed, throw it in the oven and, well, you (and any other random people scattered over your lounge room) can thank me when you're able.

The Obligatory Egg: Cheese & Spinach Strata
(Nabbed then tweaked from Gourmet 2003)
Serves 6

250g frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed, and chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (or 1/4 tsp freshly grated)
8 cups torn up bread
2 cups Gruyère, grated (you could get away with a sharp cheddar)
1 cup parmesan, finely grated
2 3/4 cups milk
9 large eggs
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

Sweat off the onion and butter until soft, season with salt and pepper and the nutmeg. Stir in the spinach and set aside.

In a baking dish, layer one third of the bread, then a third of the spinach mixture, and one third of the cheese. Repeat this twice.

Whisk eggs, milk, mustard together and pour over the bread layers. Cover and chill over night or about 8 hours.

The next morning, stand at room temperature for 30 minutes, (you can take this time for some hair of the dog) and preheat oven to 180c. Bake uncovered until golden and cooked through, around 50 minutes (great time for a shower and to wait for the ceiling to stop spinning). Stand for 5 minutes before serving.

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If you're feeling particularly generous towards the people who will probably drain your drinks fridge tonight, you could try some of these tips for the other components of a big breaky too.

Crispy bacon - bake in the oven with the strata, on a wire rack over a baking sheet (use rasher bacon so it is crispy and not dry).

Muffins - either savoury or sweet, muffins freeze well and can be thawed the night before and warmed slightly before serving.

Fruit Salad - use seasonal fruits and combine the night before.

Scones - cut out the dough and freeze on the baking trays, ready to go. They cook perfectly straight from the freezer.

French Toast and other eggy bakes - these are always better made the night before, they'll have a better texture.

Waste Nothing: Making Stock

It's rather chilly on the mountain today and rain clouds are looming. Perfect excuse to crack out the woolly socks, the snuggly jumpers and the stock pot. There is nothing like walking into a house that has a soup or stock simmering away on the stove. Walking in from outside, being hit with that homey smell will warm the soul from the nostrils out. But, a stock of course has a myriad of uses aside from making the eyes roll back upon inhalation.

Any professional kitchen will start the day making various stocks, many left to cook all day or overnight. In French kitchens, stocks are referred to as fonds de cuisine or "the foundations of cooking." Stocks are indispensable when making sauces, soups, risottos etc. By using offcuts of meat and vegetables, bones, seafood and aromatics, a liquid bursting with flavour, aroma, colour and nutritive value is born.

Stocks are incredibly cheap to prepare and use up kitchen scraps that would normally be thrown out. In this kitchen, I save up all of the carrot tops, onion tops and bottoms, parsley stalks, mushroom stalks, celery leaves, bones from roast dinners, supplement with bones bought from the butcher and pop them all into a bag and freeze it, ready for a day like today. Then its just a matter of throwing it all in a big pot, covering with cold water and simmering gently for as long as possible. The water should be just moving, not bubbling.

A proper commercial stock would then be checked for clarity, strained, filtered, defatted and probably reduced to a glaze or jelly. In this place it gets no such treatment and it's lucky to survive past the first night of checking to make sure it tastes ok (read gorging on huge chunks of bread dipped in stock). What's left is made into risotto or soup, and even sometimes a small portion makes a run for it to the freezer to be used for gravies and sauces.

A risotto made from great stock needs little other than a generous amount of butter and good Parmesan grated over the top. A handful of fresh herbs, some fresh sweet corn and a slush of dry white wine will catapult it to a new level again. You just got yourself a top notch meal that costs around $4, and feeds up to 8 people (if those serving sizes on the arborio packet were realistic), or 4 people and a little bit left over in this household.

Toasting the grains - essential for a good risotto...

The little bit left over...

Three Quarters of a Mile High Cake

I doubt there is any other cake that is subject to such broad-scoped sacrilege as the humble chocolate cake. Every second cook book has a "Best Ever" or "World's Greatest" recipe, claiming to end the eternal search for a truly great chocolate cake. Have you ever experienced butterflies and an irregular heartbeat thinking you have found the holy grail of the patisserie world, dutifully stocked up on all things buttery, creamy and chocolaty, sat patiently by the oven for the whole 62 minutes it took to work the magic, then waited for the godly offering to cool enough to cut, taken a bite, and had your heart sink through the floor? Or was that just me?

I wont tell you this is the "World's Best" or make any outrageous claims. But friends, this cake is good. It's very good. It is not a mud cake, it is a proper, cocoa-loaded, moist, sweet, chocolaty morsel of goodness. If you can leave out the 3 layers of cream, the thick lashings of butter and cream laden ganache, and forget about the two cups of sugar... it's not that bad for you. But then again, noone should have to justify eating chocolate cake.

If you're wondering why this is only 3/4 of a Mile High Cake - I had a minor altercation with the mixer, which resulted in a substantial portion of cake mix being flung from head to toe... literally. Don't despair, the recipe is for the full 4/4, 4 layer cake.

Mile High Chocolate Cake

1 cup boiling water
1 heaping cup cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
180g butter, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease and line 4 round cake tins, 2 x 12 hole muffin trays, or one large round 12" cake tin.

Combine water and cocoa and whisk until smooth. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy, add butter and beat until smooth. Add cocoa mixture, buttermilk, vanilla and sifted dry ingredients. Beat until thickened, about 2 minutes. Cook 50 minutes for large cake, 35 minutes for layer cakes, and 20 minutes for muffins or until cakes spring back when touched.

If you made the 4 separate cakes, just stack them up with some whipped cream and pour over some ganache. This is one cake that is infinitely better the next day. You won't be disappointed, and it's seriously low effort for the final outcome.