Raspberry White-Chocolate Bread Pudding . . . and a Gift Certificate Giveaway from Blog2Print!

I have two good things to share today. One is a raspberry white-chocolate bread pudding, and the second is a very special giveaway. Imagine my delighted surprise last week when I opened an email from Blog-2-Print, inquiring if I'd have any interest in sponsoring the giveaway of a $35 gift certificate! It will come as no surprise to you that I responded in the affirmative. Yes! Yes!

Are you familiar with Blog-2-Print? If you have a blog yourself (or perhaps you have a friend who does?), you owe it to yourself to get familiar. Blog-2-Print is a service that allows you to make a bound book from a range of your blog's posts, in paperback or hardcover, via their incredibly easy-to-use website. The entire assembly process, from the blogger's standpoint, takes just a few minutes and it literally could not be more user-friendly. Anyone can give the blog-to-book assembly process a free trial run by visiting B2P's website. It's extremely fun to see what your blog would look like as a book, and to flip through it virtually, page by page, with no commitment at all.

Okay, so let's say you decide to actually make a book and place your order. Then what? Well, before you know it your shiny new volume is delivered to you, safe and sound. Expect your heart to skip a beat as you slide it out of the package, inhale that classic new-book aroma, and reverently page through your very own creation. I can tell you this with first-hand certainty because a couple of years ago I gave Blog2Print a whirl myself, using their service to compile a sleek volume covering three months' worth of my own blog's entries. I was especially pleased with the bright color and clarity of the photos, the quality of the paper, and the strong, tight binding. According to Julie, my friendly contact person at Blog2Print, a $35 gift certificate will allow for the production of a paperback book of about 77 pages or a 48 page hardcover. (I'm looking forward to making a new book, too, since Blog2Print generously offered to provide me, as well as our winner, with a $35 gift certificate--woo hoo! Thank you so very much, B2P!)

To enter this giveaway . . .

All you have to do to enter this giveaway is leave a comment on this post telling me why you'd like to make your blog into an actual book. And, please leave a name of some sort in your comment, okay? (Don't just call yourself "anonymous," because I know you're not really anonymous anyway--you're most definitely someone worth knowing.) Entrants can be from any country--there are no geographic restrictions, so I've been told by Blog2Print. I will announce the winner on Friday, May 4th, and ask that person to contact me via email. I will then provide that lucky individual with instructions so they can retrieve their $35 gift certificate from B2P. So simple . . . yes? Okay, then, we're good to go.

About this recipe . . .

This is an original, non-adapted recipe. I made it using day old Italian bread from a little local bakery, but if you prefer to use a homemade loaf, here's the link to my own favorite Italian bread recipe from a past post; if you use it to make your own bread for the bread pudding, just be sure to leave out the herbs and garlic, and consider substituting melted butter for the olive oil.

I suggest you indulge in a warm serving of this bread pudding topped with a soft dollop of whipped cream. As my dad always used to say, after eating something especially satisfying that my mom had served him, this humble dessert "really hits the spot."

Raspberry White-Chocolate Bread Pudding

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 350, and generously butter a small casserole dish (mine was about 9" x 9" and 2" deep; I recommend using a clear glass dish so you can easily tell if the bottom of the pudding is fully baked before removing it from the oven).

12 oz. frozen raspberries, or about two cups fresh
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 water

In a sauce pan, stir together the raspberries, sugar, and water. Cook over a medium flame until the mixture just comes to a gentle boil; lower the heat, stirring periodically, and let it simmer until it thickens and has reduced by about one third. It should look like raspberry jam that's not terribly thick when it's ready. Remove the pan from the heat and set it aside while you prepare the other ingredients.

6 to 7 large slices of day-old Italian bread, cut into large bite-size chunks (I left the crust on. If you prefer not to use the crust, you'll need a couple of more slices and you may want to consider reducing the amount of milk in the recipe a bit.)
1 cup half & half
2/3 cup milk

3 large eggs
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 pinch kosher salt

3/4 of grated/shredded white chocolate, or 1/2 cup of mini-white chocolate chips

In a large bowl, whisk together the half & half, milk, vanilla, eggs, sugar, and salt.

Spread half of the bread chunks in your buttered dish. Drizzle half of the milk mixture evenly over the bread, and then pour half of the raspberry sauce evenly over that. Sprinkle with half of the shredded white chocolate. Using the rest of the bread chunks, spread another layer on top. Drizzle with the remaining liquid, and pour the rest of the raspberry sauce over that. Sprinkle with the rest of the shredded white chocolate.

Cover the dish with plastic wrap and let it sit for about twenty minutes before baking; this will allow the bread to absorb some of the liquid. (If you want to delay baking your pudding, you can refrigerate it at this point and bake it within a few hours.)

Bake on the middle rack of your oven for about 35 to 40 minutes, until the top and bottom  look lightly golden and no longer obviously wet. Check it at about 25 minutes; if the pudding seems to be browning on the top too quickly, cover it loosely with foil.

While the baked pudding is cooling on a rack, whip some cream to serve along with it. The pudding is best served warm, not steaming hot. Be sure to refrigerate any leftovers.

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Bakin' After Midnight . . . Cinnamon Biscotti with White Chocolate Chips . . .

Last night I found myself in a rare situation. No one around here at home but me--all night long. It's nice to have such a night now and again. You can do just about whatever you want, within reason of course, without cramping anyone's style. You can watch movies that hold no appeal whatsoever for your family members. Sometime past midnight I started watching "Elegy," with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, a sensuous love story (yeah, no kids in the room when this baby's on and don't forget to take the DVD out of the player when the film's over) that moves at the luscious pace of lukewarm caramel, and rewards the viewer with a slightly ambiguous ending. I liked it a lot, but then I enjoy caramel at any temperature.

Also, if you want to, you can eat nothing but microwave popcorn for dinner and wash it down with a self-destructive amount of diet pop (did that too . . . I'm no saint in the diet pop department lately. . . I really need to kick the habit). You can always surf baking blogs until you're blue in the face and start to get a headache. Did that. You can bang things around in the kitchen while you bake into the wee hours of the night. Did that too . . . no surprise there.

What was the fruit of my midnight labor? Cinnamon biscotti. Specifically, cinnamon biscotti with white chocolate chips, though you might not be able to tell from the photos. The chips sort of turned the color of butterscotch when the biscotti were on their final stint in the oven. The white chocolate chips still taste good . . . I guess one might say they just changed their complexion.

I like biscotti because it's one of few foods that hold up fairly well when dipped in a cup of coffee. Coffee and biscotti were made for each other. In terms of toothsomeness (that is a real word, you know) and texture, it's kind of the human equivalent of a milk-bone dog biscuit. Have you ever seen a puppy gnawing happily on one of those? They turn their head this way and that. They concentrate and give it all they've got. It's a real project for the pooch. That's how I feel about biscotti. Just give me a piece of biscotti now and then, along with a hot cup of coffee, and I'll follow you anywhere.

I got this recipe from an obscure website a while ago and jotted it down without copying the name of the site (dumb of me! . . . the words "always cite your source" might as well be tattooed on my arm from all the years I spent working for a publisher). Anyway, I think it's a decent recipe that would be easy to alter and customize in the future. The only changes I made to it last night were to use the seeds of half a vanilla bean instead of any vanilla extract, and to add in about half a cup of Ghirardelli white chocolate chips. Also, if I'd baked the biscotti as long as the original recipe indicated, it would have been burned to a crisp. Mine came out medium-well as it was so, accordingly, I've adjusted the baking times downward in the version below.


Cinnamon Biscotti

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

2 cups of All Purpose flour, bleached
2 tsp. of ground cinnamon (I used Penzey's Vietnamese Cassia--yeah, I know, I always say that)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup granulated sugar
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
Seeds of half of one vanilla bean
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 cup white chocolate chips, if you like (or could use chopped nuts instead if you prefer)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In bowl of mixer, with paddle attachment, beat the sugar and butter until light colored and thoroughly combined.

Add the 2 eggs, and the 1 egg yolk; beat well.

Add in the vanilla seeds. Mix well, until you see the vanilla dispersed throughout the dough.

Gradually, with the mixer on medium low, spoon in the dry ingredients. Mix until well combined. Add in the white chocolate chips, if you're using them.

The dough will be very thick and sticky. Divide it in half, placing one half onto the middle of each cookie sheet. Place a small bowl of cold water nearby; you'll need to keep your hands wet in order to handle the dough. Shape each portion of dough into a shallow loaf shape, approximately t 9" by 3". The dough will expand considerably in the oven. Using a pastry brush, brush the beaten egg white onto each loaf; this will ensure a nice shiny top crust.

Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, just until golden and firm to the touch. Leave the oven on, still at 325. Cool the loaves on their baking sheets for 10 minutes.

Using a very sharp, thin knife, slice the loaves widthwise, about 1/2" to 3/4" for each slice.

Place the slices on their sides (one cut side down) on the parchment covered baking sheets, and put them back into the oven. Bake until darker golden, about 10 minutes. When they're done, take them out and let them cool completely on their cookie sheets for at least an hour. Store them covered.

But before you store them, go get a cuppa joe, or a glass of milk, and start dipping!


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White Chocolate Mousse and Ladyfingers: Dream vs. Reality

About three decades ago, on a trip to Sweden, I met a man who told me that he felt the two most valuable qualities a person could cultivate are flexibility and a sense of humor. At sixteen years old, I suppose I'd never heard that before and his words, apparently, lodged in my psyche. As useful qualities for life in general, I know now that that's pretty good advice. As critical qualities for a baker, though, it couldn't be more true.

Why bring this up? Well, my culinary efforts ran aground this morning. One might say I hit a bit of an iceberg. (A white chocolate iceberg, to be specific, while sailing in a sea of whipped egg whites.) But because uncertainty is all part of the thrill of baking, that's to be expected now and then . . . right? I mean, one just never knows what's really going to happen. Sometimes victory can be snatched from the jaws of impending defeat. Then again, sometimes it's all you can do to snatch back your tattered dignity . . . never mind victory. In any case, you have to maintain a flexible outlook and, like it or not, just laugh it off and hopefully learn from it.

You see, I had high hopes of making a beautiful batch of traditional ladyfingers. Never mind that I'd never made them before. Never mind that I don't think I've ever met anyone who has reported having successfully made them. In my dreamlike state I thought that they would provide a charming accompaniment to luscious trifle dishes filled with silky white-chocolate mousse, which I--of course--would also concoct with great success on the same day (oh, the hubris . . . for shame!). I used a ladyfinger/madeleine recipe from the Baking with Julia cookbook--a wonderful book by all accounts. And, for the mousse, I turned to the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook. Another truly classic dessert book, yes? (Affirmative.) Was I just a tiny bit apprehensive? Sure. But I recalled Eleanor Roosevelt's famous quotation about doing the thing you think you can't do. In other words, force yourself to do what scares you silly. It's one of my favorite inspirational quotes. (That Eleanor, she really wrote the book on getting out of your comfort zone, didn't she?)

I did everything right. . . um . . . well . . . as far as I could tell. I read and reread the recipes. I was very organized (you might say I mise-en-placed all over the place). I made sure I would have no interruptions. But ultimately my ladyfingers fell flat, and the white chocolate in my mousse must have cooled off in the final folding stage and that left zillions of little dibs and dabs of firm white chocolate suspended within the mousse.

Where did it all go wrong, you ask? Perhaps I have a naturally adversarial relationship with all recipes containing whipped egg whites as a central ingredient? No. I've made some fabulous cakes without destroying fluffy egg whites in the process. Do I handle beaten egg whites like a stevedore tossing empty crates aside, you wonder? No. I respect the fluffy egg whites. I treat them tenderly. I swear. Some of my best friends are frothy egg whites.

Oh, woe is me.

But enough whining. Enough!

Good bakers suck it up and soldier on.

So, how did I salvage the flat ladyfingers and the lumpy mousse? Well, once I'd confirmed that both items were truly palatable and even actually tasted good, despite being--ahem--unconventionally structured, I ceased the self flagellation and used a sieve to sprinkle confectioners' sugar over the pancake-like ladyfingers. Then I hunted in my cookie cutter collection for a cute flower-shaped cutter. The flower-fingers, if you will, turned out to look rather nice, I thought, and they were actually quite tasty. Delicately sweet, kind of soft, but firm enough not to fall over like a little floppy pancake.

As for the mousse, despite the little bits of firmed-up chocolate throughout, it too still tasted pretty darn good. It was completely obvious this stuff was still well in the mousse ballpark. The worst aspect was the mildly lumpy texture. (Hey, what's so bad about having to chew your mousse? Cows chew cud, don't they?) So what do we do when we want to disguise little lumps in mousse? Garnish the top of it, of course. With what? With raspberries, or blackberries, or a nice strawberry, or maybe with grated or curled chocolate, or with grated chocolate and raspberries, or even with something adorable like sugared violets. (Sugared violets . . . yeah. Easy for me to suggest. I've never made those before either! Hah!)

Well, you get the idea. Even something that veers dramatically from its original intention can still be worth saving . . . and, if you're lucky, even be worth serving. But I'm no fool. Next post, I think I'm baking something less stressful. And in the meantime, I'm gonna postmortem my process; a recipe autopsy is definitely called for!


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