Forgotten Pudding

I had some left over egg whites in the freezer from last week. And I thought I had double cream and passionfruit at home, whipping up a pavlova would be great, not just any pavlovas but mini nest pavies which I could just put a teaspoon of whipped double cream and passion fruit and pop them straight into my mouth!The sweet crisp mashmallowy texture with cream and tangy passion fruit.My imagination made me salivate.......until I opened my tub of double cream to find pink crystals on the cream.Eeew!Not even past the due date, mind you,it smelt real bad. I had to throw it away obviously but I had passion fruits that were wrinkled so bad. I had no choice but to still make them.Lucky mum wanted to go grocery shopping that night! While shopping, mum came up to me excitedly ," Let me show you something,they are beautiful! Do you want some? If yes, make sure you eat them by tomorrow." What were they? Beautiful red raspberries! I told her I could use them in my pavies. She frowned at me and placed them in the cart! We came home and usual I came up to my room to check facebook.Sucha addict. This time it brought some good to me. Nigella updated her news feed with this fool proof simple dessert- Forgotten Pudding!! I have no idea why it's called a pudding but this is her description:

There is a wonderful poetry to the name of this pudding which, thankfully, once eaten could never be forgotten. It's an old,old recipe popularly exhumed- I believe_ by the late, great Richard Sax. Think of it as a kind of mashmallow-based pavlova. That's to say, you whip the egg whites as if making meringue, spread on a swiss roll tin ( or that's how I make it) put it in an oven which you immediately switch off,leaving the pudding to cook overnight,hence 'forgotten'.

Interesting enough.Anyway here's the recipe I got from her website, adapted version as she used 6 egg whites and I only had 4.

4 egg whites

a big pinch of salt

200g caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

300ml double cream

4 passion fruits

1 packet of raspberries

1. Preheat oven to 220 C/ Gas 7
2. In a large clean bowl, whisk egg whites and salt until peaks begin to form.
3. Gradually add the 2oog of sugar, then the cream of tartar and vanilla, whisking all at maximum speed,until the whites are stiff and glossy.
4. Spread meringue mixture evenly on baking parchment paper or buttered swiss roll tin.
5. Put in the oven,close the door, then immediately switch off the oven and leave overnight, without opening the door or even thinking of peeking. shooo go sleep!=P
6. When you want to serve it, remove to a large plate.
7. Whisk the double cream in a well chilled bowl using well chilled balloon whisk until thick but soft and spread over the mashmallow meringue.
8. Scoop out the seeds and pulp of the passion fruit and dot them over the cream. Tumble the raspberries over the top.
9. Cut into slices and serve.

Viola~

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Looking through my old camera pictures, I realised I had quite a few good recipes I tried and it was successful and there were also experiment went bad recipes-my boyfriend's cake. I am sorry.Well I was playing around with recipes and tried to make a chocolate recipe I made the year before that which his mum said was very nice, and wanted the recipe.I take that as a compliment. Not knowing the actual recipe to be honest, I tried to remake the cake so that I could give her the recipe but that was an Epic fail!=( I am not sure if I over baked the cake or what but the top became rather hard.The surface was hard to cut and I wanted to layer the cake with some pure cream,big ambitious hopes on my boyfriend's birthday cake.=P We will try and keep the ambitious experiments for testing recipes and not on occasions.

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding -Nigella Lawson-Kitchen

Buying Nigella's Kitchen came unplanned for a cookbook collection addict like me,I'd be honest. I could just read rave reviews on a book and look for it all over and once bought,I'd try a few recipes from the book and it would be forgotten. And Nigella having her own shows I thought I could just get the recipes off youtube or something,and I completely forgot about it. But while shopping at Kinokuniya, KLCC with my boyfriend, I stumbled upon this amazing book. I went over to Kinokuniya to get my much loved Parisian dessert book by Dorie Greenspan-Paris Sweets. It's like a story book of the great patisserie in Paris making you drool over the descriptions of desserts and atmosphere.

When making my desserts,I never compromise on the good things like double cream, FULL Cream milk & vanilla extract used in recipes,I am sorry if I am rude but if you are going to use low fat milk you might as well use water but it makes no difference. Something my dad taught me! haha.If you are in Malaysia, it's sad to say that the full cream milk we get from supermarkets are like low fat milks in Australia unless you get milk from small companies supplying milk that's a different story. I get my milk from a local milk man and the milk is really good and you can see the cream float on the top of the milk which my dad says it's similar to the ones in the UK. And as for the vanilla extract, the ones we usual get like Star Brand etc are actually chemically manufactured vanilla 'stuff' and not the real thing so unless you want to get the best of flavours try not using vanilla essence.

250g baguette loaf, torn into big chunk size pieces

100g chocolate chips, I used Lindt Milk Chocolate

3 large eggs

40g brown sugar

50ml dark rum, you can omit this with vanilla extract if you want.

150 double cream

500ml full cream milk

4tsp demerara sugar, I used brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 3. Grease a round ovenproof dish lightly with butter, Tip in baguette pieces.
2. Toss in the chocolate pieces to spread evenly among the baguette pieces.
3. Whisk together the eggs,brown sugar,rum,double cream and milk. Pour this mixture over the loaf pieces and press the pieces down to coat them in the liquid.
4. Leave all this to soak for 20 minutes, then sprinkle with 4tsp brown sugar and put straight into the over for 40-50 minutes. If your oven browns unevenly, turn the dish around halfway through cooking time.
5. Let the dish stand for a while before serving-if you can. The smell as it bakes is almost overwhelming and it can be hard to wait once it is out of the oven.
6. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Nigella's Caramel Croissant Pudding

I always like my desserts rich in flavour and I never like to substitutes. I like croissants with jam,with ham & cheese all sorts and when I came across a recipe for croissant pudding I knew I wanted to try it out.Well obviously it was a recipe from the Domestic Goddess herself, Nigella Lawson I knew I could trust her recipe.This recipe was from her book called Nigella Express but I double-triple the amount,Who could resist?

Adapted from Nigella Lawson

Ingredients

450g croissant

250g caster sugar

60ml tbsp water

250ml double cream

300ml full cream milk

5 extra large eggs (min 900g),beaten

1 tsp brandy essence

Method (Copied from Nigella's website,I was lazy)

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

2. Tear the croissants into pieces and put in a small gratin dish.

3. Put the caster sugar and water into a saucepan, and swirl around to help dissolve the sugar before putting the saucepan on the hob over a medium to high heat.

4. Caramelize the sugar and water mixture by letting it bubble away, without stirring, until it all turns a deep amber colour; this will take 3-5 minutes. Keep looking but don't be too timid.

(Yes. I freaked out and threw the first batch of caramel out it was hard, I never experimented with sugar so I freaked out, yes I did read about sugar and caramelizing but when I saw the outcome at the spite of moment I thought I was wrong but I wasn't and I was afraid if I kept the cream and milk long in heat it will curdled etc, I am still learning anyway. It was an experience. They say desserts are an art and a science too. =) If it's hard don't throw away the mixture, just continue to stir the mixture over low heat until the toffee melts.)

5. Turn heat down to low and add the cream - ignoring all spluttering - and, whisking away, the milk and bourbon. Any solid toffee that forms in the pan will dissolve easily if you keep whisking over low heat. Take off the heat and, still whisking, add the beaten eggs.

6. Pour the caramel bourbon custard over the croissants and leave to steep for 10 minutes if the croissants are very stale.

7. Place in the oven for 35-40 minutes and prepare to swoon.

8. I drizzled some melted chocolate over the pudding after baking cause I had some leftover chocolate from Max Brenner's.