I bake most Sunday evenings at the station, and will try to remember and share what I churn out for the guys 'n' gals on duty.
Previous hits have included banana creme pie cupcakes, caramel-drizzled shortcake cookies, pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese icing, pineapple upside down cupcakes, chocolate cream pie, fresh fried doughnuts, fudge brownies, peach cobbler, etc.
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| lemon meringue pie |
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| Pb, caramel, and chocolate pretzel bark. Yeah, they really hated that one. 4 times. |
This time, I'd grabbed a big bag of apples on my way to duty, as the Bf and I went apple picking recently and I was inspired to make something tasty; but not with our hard-earned fruit. A cobbler? Caramel apples? Baked apples over vanilla ice cream? Peanut butter/apple something or another?
When I arrived at the station, my mind was made up for me when I spotted a mound of bread someone had dropped off, and about 2 dozen croissants among the haul.
*Side Note - People love giving food to firefighters:
and let me tell you, we love them back!
If you have have some sort of event with a bunch of leftovers:
please take them to your local fire station.
We will gladly accept them and give you a heartfelt thank you.
Bring your cute kid, he'll probably be able to worm out
a little station tour and sit in the fire engine if he asks nicely.
Anyway, with all those sweet sweet carbs sitting there; it was time for bread pudding. I love bread pudding because its easy, quick, and can be made from just about any variety of bread. Last Thanksgiving I made it with day old Krispy Kremes.....that went over REALLY WELL. But I digress again.
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| Bam: make yourself some happy friends. |
My baking is generally not precise, and often influenced by what's available rather than going to the store with an exacting list. Just like my home improvements....I sense a theme. (Lindsay = fly by the seat of her pants)
Bread pudding is basically some milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and vanilla. Ie. all the important food groups.
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| A mythical food pyramid |
My basic ratio is 1c milk: 1 egg: 1/3c sugar: 1/4 stick melted butter: a dash of vanilla: a pinch of salt. I also use a little cinnamon for good measure.
I scale up depending on the amount of ingredients and number of kitchen-stalkers.
With the inclusion of apples and the crowd of customers, I rounded up all the probies on duty and had them help me peel, core, and cube approximately one $%!+ load of apples. Thats 'boat' if you're reading this, Grandmother.
As common baking sense would dictate: I poured the mixture of wet/apple-y ingredients over the torn up bread (in a banking pan, not the counter, duh). I tossed it all around to make sure everything got coated with pudding goodness, then patted down the bread a little bit to make sure the custard liquid just covered the tops of the bread.
It baked in the oven at 350 for 45+ mins, while I fielded many polite and patient inquiries as to when desert would be ready. None of them even came over the intercom this time....how debonnaire.
Usually I make fresh caramel sauce to go with bread pudding, but I figured with the croissants and extra butter (a lot of recipes don't call for it) there was already enough artery-clogging goodness to take down an ox; so I'd keep it 'healthy' and go without. A light dusting of powdered sugar made it fancy enough for first impressions, but really; neither caramel nor powdered sugar mattered because the catering-sized pan full of it was gone in a flash anyway.
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| The bread pudding disappeared before I thought to take a picture. But here is someone else's lovely Apple Croissant Bread Pudding for illustration purposes. |
-Lindsay
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