Bread and Butter

Another awesome thing to make with brioche buns - bread and butter pudding, with layers of fresh fruits and lots of custard.

For this pudding, I simply sliced up my last four buns, buttered them (liberally) on both sides, added some frozen cherries and slices of a fresh nectarine, and layered everything into a loaf pan. I then beat up three eggs with about a cup of milk (I used rice milk because it was all I had that night), poured it all over the bread and fruit mixture, sprinkled more butter and some brown sugar on top of it all, and let it bake for 40 minutes. 

The resulting pudding is moist and slightly custardy, and is great on its own, but if you want to be really indulgent, a dollop of ice cream would make it even better. 

Mrs Beeton's Brioches

I felt like I needed something to keep my baking spirit aloft my after producing those rather 'interesting' looking macar-nots last week. Thankfully, help was at hand, in the form of Mrs. Beeton herself. I'd chanced upon a slim volume called Breakfast with Mrs Beeton - Hearty Fare the week before, when popping in to a local op-shop. The title was slightly misleading, as only a few of the recipes it in were hers, with the other recipes being more modern versions of what might have been found on Victorian breakfast table. But, it was only 50p, and you can never have too many books, right? So it came home with me.

This recipe came from one of the 'modern' recipes in that book. How do I know it's not one of Mrs Beeton's own? Because I'm fairly sure they didn't have polythene bags back in 1850. You're supposed to let the dough rise in a lightly oiled poly-bag, but lacking one, I simply stuck it into a lightly oiled glass bowl and popped a moist towel over it. 

The brioche turned out much better than my the chocolate macs, although slightly too dry for my liking. My bad, I should have taken it out of the oven sooner. 

They also make great bases for French toast, as I discovered a day later. Soak them in some eggs and milk, mix in some ground cinnamon and nutmeg, and fry them in lots of butter. Then, dollops of golden syrup over them, and brunch is served!