Wednesday 8 April 2015

Turning Petrified Mini-Doughnuts Into Perfect Dessert!

Hubby's favourite dessert is bread pudding.

In our almost 8 years together, I've made it for him exactly zero times.  Whenever we've eaten French Toast and had leftovers, Hubby has diligently saved them in so many Ziploc bags in the freezer, waiting for the day he would be rewarded for his thoughtfulness. And every 6 months or so, I go through the freezers and toss out those frozen relics of brunches past, sighing at the waste of perfectly good bread and egg, cinnamon and vanilla extract.

Sure, I've talked about making it innumerable times over the years, but since I've never made it before in my life, I found the task somewhat daunting.

Until today.

I was teaching Secunda and her friend how to use our Epicure Mini-Doughnut Mold to make yummy little treats (which will be served at my weekly social get-together tomorrow), giving them measuring, mixing, order of cooking operations and oven skills. For instance, they learned today to ensure that ALL the ingredients are ready before you start mixing stuff together all willy-nilly. I rescued the batter, and made three dozen of the little bites of heaven. But I managed to bugger up one batch of them. I had a bowl full of two dozen soft, chewy cake doughnuts, and a dozen hockey pucks. they smelled lovely - all sugar and vanilla and cinnamon. And totally inedible in their current state. It seemed such a shame.  That got me to thinking, and that thinking got me to an idea. Why not break them up and turn them into an improvised bread pudding?
These were the doughnuts that get to stay doughnuts


So, off I went to Allrecipes.ca, my go-to resource for all of the things I don't know how to cook.  And when I typed in the keywords, this recipe is what came out with both the highest rating, and the most reviews. Clearly, this was the place to start.

I used their conversion feature to alter it to feed two people (I don't know about you, but I can certainly eat 6 mini-doughnuts in one sitting!) and headed into the kitchen. In about five minutes, I was ready to put the baking dish into the oven.
Using our boiling pasta pot to melt the butter

Mixing the egg/milk/cinnamon mixture with the broken-up doughnuts

Ready for the oven

This was SOOO easy! Now I just have to wait for Hubby to get home from choir practice so we can enjoy it with a nice, hot cuppa!
All baked and waiting for the vanilla sauce!

Delectable caramelized vanilla sauce - delish!


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