2. The Ingredients
(This “set” presumes a mincemeat mandarin
sauce.)
While you are gathering your ingredients,
get the oven on for 375-degrees.
3. Ingredients
• 12 semi-decrusted slices of
French Bread
• 5 whole eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 cup of sugar or sugar
substitute
• 1/8 tsp of salt
• 4 cups (1 quart) milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tsp good vanilla extract
• Confectioners’ sugar
• Red and Green Holiday
sugar granules
4. Trim the crust from the bread,
and butter each slice.
• You will see that I did
not do a terrific job
here, neither with
getting the crust off,
nor getting them
slices to be the same
size.
• The good news is, it
doesn’t matter *at *all!
5. Beat the eggs, yolks, sugar, and
salt together until blended.
6. Put the milk and cream into a
saucepan, stir and then scald.
• Oops! I’m adding the
vanilla here, too. My
bad!
• I had “Chopped” on in
the background…
7. Blend the heated liquids very
gradually into the yolk mixture.
• Stir in the Vanilla
• You’ll notice I added
mine already.
Seemed to not
matter...
8. Stir in the Vanilla Extract
• Yeah! Did that
already.
DID YOU KNOW - The Aztecs
developed the fermentation process
of sweating and drying the beans to
develop the vanillin. They used
vanilla to flavor their cocoa drinks
"xocolatl". Vanilla is still used today
to flavor chocolate.
Vanilla was once so rare and
expensive that only royalty had
access to it.
Vanilla was once considered an
aphrodisiac.
The vanilla bean's flavor, like coffee
beans and chocolate pods, is highly
9. Arrange the slices of bread,
buttered side up,
in a 2-quart baking dish
• The last couple of times
I made this pudding,
I’ve used challuh bread,
and a larger pyrex. The
challuh slices fit closer
together and provide
more of a “mattress” for
the custard.
10. Strain the custard mixture over the
top, and fill to the brim.
• Don’t worry if most of
the slices rush to the
top, just push them
down until they have
absorbed enough
mixture to sit neatly in
the dish.
• If you have extra
custard, just pour it
into a separate Pyrex.
It makes a lovely
extra treat for any
custard aficionado in
your home!
11. You’ll now need to create a bain
marie
• A roasting pan with
water in it… or a
larger Pyrex dish, so
that the custard can
be surrounded by
about 1” of water…
but not floating.
• Oven @ 375° F
12. Bake for 45 minutes, or until knife
comes out of the center clean.
• Be careful of the
boiling water in the
roasting pan; it slops
around and onto your
ankles if you’re not
careful!
• Looks good, no?
Ahh, it’s all gravy from
here.
14. Now you have
some options -
•A Christmas Tree (or
Holiday Shape) Sugar
crust that will create a
crème brulee type of
dessert
•Adding a sauce
- Mandarin Mincemeat
Sauce
- Raspberry Puree
- Rum Sabayon