Thursday, April 12, 2007

Chocolate Croissant Pudding Recipe


In an earlier time, when food in Europe was scarcer, cooks invented a variety of creative ways to use stale items. Bread was a common item likely to go stale, which spurred the Italians to invent panzanella (“leftover salad” consisting of bread cubes, tomatoes and vegetables tossed in olive oil), the French to invent pain perdu (“lost bread”, essentially French toast) and the British to invent bread and butter pudding (a dessert of bread baked with eggs and milk).

This recipe is a bread and butter pudding that uses croissants as a base, sandwiched between layers of chocolate. It makes a lovely dessert or a decadent brunch alternative.

Ingredients

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon allspice or cinnamon
3 stale croissants, sliced in half and cubed
3 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cups whole, skim or soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
confectioner’s sugar for dusting

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, melt chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons butter. Add allspice or cinnamon and stir.
2. Place one third of croissant cubes in the bottom of a 3-quart baking dish.
3. Pour half the chocolate sauce over the bread.
4. Lay another third of croissant cubes on top. Drizzle with the remaining chocolate sauce, followed by the final croissant cubes.
5. In a medium-sized bowl, beat 2 tablespoons melted butter, eggs, sugar, milk and vanilla.
6. Pour milk mixture into the baking dish and let it soak into the bread for 20 minutes.
7. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes.
8. Cool for 5 minutes and dust with confectioner’s sugar.
9. Serve alone or with whipped cream or ice cream.

3 comments:

cheese with a spoon said...

According to some theories, soup (in Europe) was invented just as a medium for soaking stale bread so that it would be edible again because in the Middle Ages they would bake huge quantities of bread and keep that rather than let the flour sit around and get eaten by rats.

Enough about rats in a food blog -- this pudding looks amazing! But I can't make it for two people (or rather, if two people ate the whole thing they would be very ill :-)) so I shall have to wait till we have company before trying it out.....

Anuhea said...

Very scrumptious looking! I have a similar recipe that calls for those pre made chocolate filled pastry croissants that you can get at bakeries.

Anonymous said...

Hi A,
Happy Birthday! I hope you had a great day. We've been really enjoying your recipe blog--not least for the indirect news about your life for the past 3 years. Sounds like things are going well out there. And I can't believe how professional your blog is. I'm hankering after some croissant chocolate pudding and hope to make it soon.
xoxoxo,
Miriam