Thursday, June 11, 2009

Breakfast Ideas

My friend, Char, has started a blog to highlight healthier breakfasts. Check it out for hot breakfast ideas.

Here's something I used to do quite often. It's not very frequent any more, since I operate a mostly gluten free kitchen, with twelve eaters in the household. I don't do much baking, and of those things I do bake there's never much left over.

Bread Pudding. It can be made ahead and eaten cold or re-heated easily if you have people breakfasting at various times.

Just cube up all your dried ends of bread or baked goods (coffee cake, muffins, etc), or things that didn’t turn out quite right, or even the good stuff works, too, and put them in a baking dish. Mix up eggs and milk, sweetener of your choice (does not need much), add cinnamon or other spices and a bit of vanilla and pour it over the bread cubes. Bake.

The best way to eat it is to serve warm with fresh cream. Or for more protein make a custard sauce to pour over. Some people like butter melted on top. Or dot the top with butter before baking. Try soaking overnight before baking. Add raisins or grated apples or nuts. For a moister pudding, keep a dish of water in the oven. Lots of variations.

My basic recipe calls for 4 eggs, 2 c milk, 1/3 c sugar and 3 c bread cubes, bake until set, 35-40 min. I use that as a starting point and just go from there depending on what I have.

The amounts of everything is very lose. You want enough liquid to cover the bread most of the way. If you have more, it will be less bready and more egg/milky, the consistency of a quiche or egg bake. The more milk you use compared to egg, the longer you must cook it. Or it may not set well all, more like a bread cube porridge.

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