Baking - pictures.

[curiouswombat]

I have a couple of pictures to go with yesterday's recipes. But first - bread pudding vs bread and butter pudding.

In the parlance of most of Britain, these are not the same thing. And it seems as if North Americans call what we know as Bread and Butter Pudding, Bread Pudding. It's another of those food conundrums like biscuits...

The dish made with sliced bread, buttered and layered, usually with some type of fruit addition, then covered with egg custard mixture and baked until the bread crisps and the custard sets, is known to most of us over here as Bread and Butter Pudding. Here is a basic recipe with picture.

Bread pudding is made by taking stale bread, breaking it into chunks, and soaking it in milk, or even water, for a while. Then squeezing out the excess fluid, adding spices, sugar, an egg, and dried fruit, pressing it into a baking tin and baking it. Here is a recipe and picture of Bread Pudding. Bread pudding is eaten in a hunk like cake rather than with a spoon!

As for Wet Nelly - this was made like bread pudding - except left over cake was used and so it needed less soaking, more just damping down. Then, at least at our local bakery when I was a child, this mixture was baked between two layers of shortcrust pastry, and sprinkled with sugar. So - it was recycling old cake into new!

Anyway - pictures of fruitloaf and gingerbread

The problem is that two different brown cakes looks rather boring...




Even when you get closer to them...



But they do taste good!

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

I think it looks quite good.

[chaotic-binky.livejournal.com]

I put a huge dollop of marmalade in my bread pudding. Also, I add just enough milk to wet the bread so I do not have to squeeze it out - shudders! There are some things I just do not like to touch.

My bread pudding comes out much darker than the picture in the recipe - not sure why as I use the same amount of mixed spice.

Your cakes look yummy!

[shirebound]

Yum yum. :)

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Belatedly realising it is you who is to blame for me buying gingerbread yesterday when I really didn't need it. But today I stewed rhubarb to go with it. So it is now Officially Healthy.

I'm fairly sure your cakes don't taste boring, even if they aren't the most photogenic.

[clodia-metelli.livejournal.com]

mmmmmmmmm /drools a bit

[manoah.livejournal.com]

Gosh I love gingerbread!

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

Let us not forget that special quality of bread pudding that makes it sit in your stomach like a brick. I am trying to imagine anyone going jogging after eating bread pudding - and failing.

[mrowe.livejournal.com]

Note to self: acquire stale bread...

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

They look totally yummy! I'm kind of hungry so they're most definitely making my mouth water.

Bread pudding is very popular here. It's not one of my favourite sweets though.

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

The teapot is charming!

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

The gingerbread looks lovely, dark and moist.
It's too bad Manolo refuses to eat anything with sultanas or fruit that's not citrus or pineapple cooked in it. Silly man.

[myrhiann.livejournal.com]

whilst the recipe for Bread and Butter pudding made it to the antipodes, I had not heard of the other two. When I was learning cooking at High School the recipe book had a boiled fruit cake called Eggless Brownie, baked in a roasting tin. It used butter and dried fruit boiled up with water and sugar. When cool you mixed plain flour and baking soda into it, then baked it. It was very tasty and ket well. Improved with keeping actually. I used to make one every week, which I would slice and butter for elevenses. I had 5 young children and it made a healthier alternative to biscuits and other sweet stuff. Actually, I think I might reduce the ingredients and make a smaller one for myself, when the weather gets cold.

I also have a recipe for Banana bread, which I have tweaked over the years, reducing the quantity of sugar as I don't like sweet stuff, and adding chopped dates and walnuts to it. That is very nice too. Looking at your pics makes me feel hungry. Your gingerbread and fruit loaf both look very yummy!

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar enough with bread pudding to know which I've had or how they were made. (all I know is it's usually tasty - but often quite different) Must ask my oldest son if he knows. It's his favorite dessert and he tries the bread pudding everywhere he eats if they have it on the menu. Perhaps the differences we see or taste are because sometimes he's getting bread and butter pudding and sometimes bread pudding. :)

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Actually, what most people in the U.S. call bread pudding is a combination of your two recipes, although closer to your bread-and-butter pudding. In its simplest form, American bread pudding is made with stale bread, cubed or broken into small pieces, NOT buttered, soaked in mixture of eggs, milk, sugar, and flavoring -- usually vanilla and/or cinammon -- and then baked. Raisins are an optional addition. Then there are all kinds of variations -- my sister-in-law makes a fantastic pumpkin bread pudding with caramel sauce at Thanksgiving, and I sometimes make one in which French bread cubes are toasted with butter in the oven, then combined with homemade applesauce and a custard mixture and baked. Good thing I'm stuffed from our Superbowl party or I'd want to go make that one right now.

I've seen recipes for bread-and-butter pudding very much like the one you linked to in American cookbooks -- there's one in my '70s Fannie Farmer, which is based on an old New England cookbook -- but I've never tried it myself or even seen it on a restaurant menu. And I don't think I'd ever even heard of bread pudding made without eggs until you posted about it! So many baked goods, so little time...

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

They all look wonderful!