This isn't a traditional local recipe but I felt it was a nice creative use of local ingredients. One of our local bakeries makes 'aperitif sticks', which are baton shaped breads impregnated with either dried fruit, or chorizo. Every now and then I end up with leftovers. The chorizo ones can be cut up and frozen, ready to be used as croutons in soup. And it turns out the dried fruit ones make excellent bread and butter pudding.
Buttered bread in a lasagne dish.
Ingredients
500 g mirabelles (small yellow plums), stoned, halved
125 g sugar (plus a generous tablespoon extra for the plums)
2 dried fruit aperitif sticks, sliced
Soften butter
Vanilla extract
200 ml cream
500 ml milk
5 eggs
Method
- Heat the oven to 200C.
- Spread the plums out in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake the plums for 20 minutes then turn the oven off, remove the plums and set aside to cool.
- Butter a lasagne dish.
- Thinly spread butter on both cut sides of the bread stick pieces.
- Spread the bread out on the base of the lasagne dish.
- Top the bread with the plums, including any juice.
- Whisk together the eggs and sugar together, then whisk in the cream, milk and vanilla.
- Pour the custard mixture carefully over the bread and fruit.
- Heat the oven to 160C.
- While the oven heats set the pudding aside to let the bread soak up some custard and soften.
- Bake for 40 minutes.
- Serves 6, warm or cold.
Plums added to bread.
This works equally well with chunks of stale panettone. Any nice tart plum works well, as do nectarines.
Soaking before baking.
The plums for this particular version came from my friend Jean, who writes Baking in Franglais and who had a glut in the summer of 2019 and kindly gave me some for the freezer.
Eggs and dairy, as usual, came from my local dairy farm who deliver.
The bakery that the aperitif sticks come from is owned and run by Sophie and Aurélien Merle. In English they would be Mr and Mrs Blackbird.
The bakery that the aperitif sticks come from is owned and run by Sophie and Aurélien Merle. In English they would be Mr and Mrs Blackbird.
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7 comments:
Those plums were gorgeous and sadly the trees have been bare this year. The pudding looks delicious and I will in future, when I make something similar, refer to it as blackbird pudding!
"impregnated"!
Doesn't the butter you spread on cut sides of the bread prevent the bread from soaking fully? Or do you want the bread to stay crunchy? In any case, this is an interesting recipe. I love bread pudding!
British English vs American English?
It's a nice simple dessert, and all the better if you've grown the fruit yourself. Thanks for the plums!
Do you only use 'impregnated' in the sense of 'fertilize' or 'inseminate'? Does it not have the alternative nuance of 'permeated', 'suffused', 'imbued', 'pervaded', 'filled', 'loaded', 'charged' for you? Just pretend I wrote 'studded', you'll be fine.
I don't think the butter prevents the bread from softening up sufficiently. I usually butter on both sides for any bread pudding.
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