To celebrate Gil’s 38th birthday tomorrow, I thought I’d treat him to dinner this evening at a nearby restaurant with the excellent and unusual reputation of fine French dining in a casual strip mall atmosphere. Sadly, today’s snow closed the restaurant prematurely and we had to reschedule for next weekend, so I broke out the latest issue of Food & Wine to make him a birthday dessert that would take some of the sting out of his missed dinner.

“That must be some dessert!” you say. “Whatever could it be?” Oh, just a little something called Warm Chocolate Croissant-Bread Pudding.

As you know, I’m no stranger to the charms of bread pudding and I’ve often substituted croissants for bread when I’ve thrown caution (and calories) to the wind, but this is easily 10 steps beyond anything I’ve made. And it was so simple! Just a few ordinary ingredients, about an hour of my time, and Gil and I were stumbling around in a lovely chocolate- and carbohydrate-driven serotonin haze.

I probably should’ve made the full recipe instead of half, but with the snow, it was unlikely that an ambulance could reach us before we fell into diabetic comas. I’m already dreaming up variations and think that sautéed bananas and bittersweet chocolate would be excellent together here, but I’ll keep you updated.

recipe after the jump

Warm Milk-Chocolate Croissant-Bread Pudding from Food and Wine

3 cups whole milk
1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 pound milk chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (I used semi-sweet instead.)
6 large eggs
6 large croissants (about 1 pound), cut into 1-inch pieces

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a medium saucepan, combine the whole milk with the vanilla bean and seeds and the salt and bring to a simmer. Cover and let the milk stand off the heat for 15 minutes. Discard the vanilla bean. Add half of the chopped milk chocolate to the warm milk and whisk until smooth. Let the milk and chocolate mixture cool for 15 minutes. Whisk in the eggs.

In a 9-by-13-inch baking dish, toss the croissant pieces with the remaining chopped milk chocolate. Pour the chocolate custard over the croissant pieces; press lightly to submerge them in the custard. Bake for 30 minutes, until the bread pudding is risen and set. Let the chocolate bread pudding cool slightly, then cut it into squares and serve warm, with ice cream.

Apples are a particular favorite of mine this time of year. Varieties range from sweet to tart, they can be used for snacking out of hand, baking, mashing, or even braising, and they pair equally well with sweet or savory ingredients.

They’re extra-delicious in caramelized apple bread pudding, too. What’s not to love?

For the 2007 Advent Calendar, click here.

recipe after the jump

Caramelized Apple Bread Pudding

I prefer bread pudding that isn’t very sweet, and this recipe reflects that. If you want something a little more dessert-like, feel free to add more sugar to the apples and/or to the bread. For a richer dish, substitute heavy cream for some of the whole milk. Or go completely nuts and swirl in a little dulce de leche, if you have some languishing in your refrigerator. Basically, just consider this a template and play around with it.

5 spicy-sweet, crisp apples (Crispin, Jonagold, Honeycrisp), peeled, cored, and cut into 8 wedges apiece
3 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons brown sugar, depending on the sweetness of the apples
cinnamon to taste
sprinkle of ground mace
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
1 day-old loaf of challah bread or equal amount of croissants, broken into 2-inch pieces
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons pure cane syrup (I use Steen’s)
splash of bourbon or Tennessee whiskey
1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a medium-sized baking dish.

Heat butter in nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add apple slices and sprinkle with 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar, cooking and stirring occasionally for a few minutes until apples just begin to turn tender. Sprinkle with remaining brown sugar, a few dashes of cinnamon, mace, cardamom and lemon zest. Cook for a few minutes longer, until apples are soft but not falling apart and edges are golden brown. Spoon apples into the buttered baking dish in an even layer and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together, eggs, milk, vanilla and almond extracts, cane syrup, and bourbon. Add bread, pressing down so it absorbs the egg mixture evenly. Once all of the liquid has been absorbed, break apart a piece of bread to make sure it’s uniformly moist inside, not dry at all. If it is dry, add a little milk and let it sit until absorbed.

Spoon bread mixture over the apples in the baking dish. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour, or until top is lightly browned and toothpick inserted into the center of the dish comes out clean. (It could take longer than an hour, depending on how moist the bread mixture was to begin. This is a dish you have to play by ear a bit everytime you make it.)

Those of you who are sick to death of bread pudding, feel free to skip this post. Maybe it’s uninspired, but when a dish is this open to interpretation, it’s a slam dunk when I’m not feeling terribly creative. So when my friend NJ showed up at work today with a bag of Zadie’s whole wheat challah rolls for me, I knew at least a couple of them would make an appearance in a bread pudding this very evening. Not that I had any plans at all for dinner, but there were a few things in the fridge in danger of turning soon and, frankly, assembling this is second nature to me at this point.

But this is a savory one, more in line with something you’d eat for dinner instead of brunch. To get things started, I cubed three of the challah rolls and set them aside in a medium bowl. I sliced one clove of garlic and cooked it in a little almond oil over medium heat until it was lightly browned, then added about two cups of thinly sliced kale to the pan. Once the kale started to wilt, I added a little water to the pan and some of the leftover caramelized onions from Sunday’s lunch and let it cook down until the water had evaporated, then tossed it with the bread crumbs.

For the liquid element, I beat three eggs with a splash of lowfat milk, some dry mustard, sweet pimenton, and fresh thyme and sage. I poured that over the bread cubes and kale and mixed it until the bread was fully saturated. At that point, I threw in a little grated gruyere, then filled four small ramekins with the mixture.

They baked at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, at which point I topped them with a little more gruyere and some finely grated romano, then threw them back into the oven for about 10 minutes until the whole mess had browned and cooked through.

Thank you, NJ! It was such a good, simple meal — you should try it next time you go to Zadie’s. Oh, and pick up some of those wonderful sponge cookies for me, willya?

I know, I know, broken record — but it’s that time of year again, isn’t it? The farmers’ market had loads of beautiful organic apples, so I consulted with the seller and bought a few opalescents. Isn’t that a great name, by the way? It seemed impossible to go wrong making brunch with them, like the whole affair would be graced by their jewelled name.

So I started with my basic bread pudding recipe and changed the blueberry filling (everything from blueberries down in the ingredient list), adding caramelized apples instead. I peeled, cored, and sliced three small opalescents, sautéed them in a couple tablespoons of butter, then added about a tablespoon of brown sugar (they were the tiniest bit tart), a few heavy sprinkles of cinnamon, and a whisper of mace. Once the apples started to brown and caramelize in the pan, I added them to the bread mixture, then set it to bake. About 45 minutes later, I opened the oven to find an airily puffed and browned bread pudding that seemed more like a virtuous apple pie than anything else.

This’ll be my go-to recipe for the fall into winter, I think. Gil and I agreed that the blueberries I favor in summer can sometimes be a little overwhelming, but the apples were a perfect marriage with the rest of the pudding. I won’t be kicking the bananas foster version to the curb anytime soon, but this one was more brunch, less dessert — perfect for a girl lacking a sweet tooth.

Those of you who check out this site from time to time may know of my obsession with bread pudding. It’s all I can do NOT to make one every weekend with whatever variants of bread and fruit we have lying around, but I’ve been health-conscious of late. I don’t think we’ve indulged since before Passover, which is far too long for someone like me.

So when I read about Broadway Panhandler’s Bread Pudding Recipe Exchange Week Taste Off this morning at the always-informative Megnut, I could barely contain my excitement. Meet me there Wednesday? It’ll be amazing. I always imagined myself as more of a BBQ judge, but only because I didn’t know bread pudding competitions existed.

Check out the recipes link in the right column for a few of my favorite bread pudding recipes.

Update: Attend the Taste Off at your own risk. (via The Agitator)