Friday, January 14, 2011

Transforming 'Bread Pudding': Blueberry Pancake Pudding, Borůvkové palačinky pudink


During this week of festive celebrations for Mr. Mark's 60th Birthday (Capricorns seem to dominate around here), we're trying new things.  On Sunday morning, we had a blueberry pancake feast which resulted in a few leftovers, albeit the 'eyes larger than the stomach' syndrome had kicked in! Of course, being Scotch (Neil) and knowing that leftovers have an ability to be foundational thoughts for new things, we saved the remaining pancakes...and, then, voila!
Harkening back to our 11 Culinary New Year's Resolutions (see earlier posting)--that of experimenting, the next morning we suddenly had this new idea when eating the toasted pancakes....let's transform the traditional 'bread pudding' made after the end of Christmas (vánočka v pudinku) with the remaining blueberry pancakes instead! We were amazed that we had never thought of such a thing before....always having toasted them the next morning instead. So, off to the kitchen to transform these delicious, albeit leftover and cold, pancakes!

Blueberry Pancake Pudding,
Borůvkové palačinky pudink
One of Neil's chef colleagues had mentioned one way the Czechs often make bread pudding is to layer the bread with fruit, cover with the egg mixture and then, after baking, put a meringue on top. This sounded like a great idea, but since we already had the fruit inside of the cakes, we opted out on the layering option (but maybe we'll have to try this later, eh?).

So, we started by laying out
6 cold, blueberry pancakes (irregularity of size and shape makes it fun!)
in a greased baking dish and covering with the custard mix of:
3 egg yolks (save the whites for later)
1 1/2 cups whole milk (or cream, if you prefer)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or 1 packet of Dr. Oetker's Vanilokovy cukr)
1 cup sugar
zest of 2/3 tangerine

Bake this, uncovered, in a hot oven (150C, ~350F) for ~10 minutes until bubbly.  Remove from oven.

Mix up the meringue to go on the top:
3 eggwhites (from above)
Beat these until stiff and foamy.

Then add:
remaining zest (1/3) of the tangerine (eat the tangerine while this is rebaking!)
~2 tablespoons sugar
Place on top of the baked blueberry pancake custard.  Add a bit more tangerine zest on top, if you like!
Place in oven and carefully brown the meringue under the broiler. Remove the second it starts to evenly brown.  And, behold:
 Plate it up and drizzle just a bit of Steeve's Maple Syrup (Canadian!--Neil still has to get his native Vermont farmers to sell their Vermont Maple Syrup to Tesco and other European vendors!) over the top:

Happy Birthday, Mark!


Disclaimer: This blog is not an official University of Minnesota or Fulbright Program blog. The views expressed are my own and not those of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State or any of its partner organizations, or the University of Minnesota.

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