Thursday, April 10, 2008

simply amazing.

A few days ago while exploring the blogosphere I came across a few posts (closet cooking, genesis of a cook) regarding the peanut butter, banana, honey combo. This is one of my favorite comfort foods. And the simplicity of the ingredients lends itself as a convenient, everyday indulgence. Just great. My goal was to take the flavor combinitaion in a different, more pre-conceived direction. Enter: bread pudding. It's rich, homely, and an extremely flexible base for flavor exploration/exploitation.



PEANUT BUTTER - BANANA - HONEY BREAD PUDDING
::2 c milk
::1/2-2/3 c crunchy peanut butter (the more the better!)
::1/8 c butter
::1/4 c sugar
::salt
::2 eggs
::day old bread (like this one)
::honey
::hot water
::butter
::2 ripe, large bananas
-Bring milk, peanut butter, butter, sugar, and salt to a boil, stirring often, and reduce heat until thickened.
-Remove from heat and let cool until lukewarm.
-Beat in eggs and add 3/4 of the bread in large chunks.
-Mix some honey with hot water and a table spoon of butter.
-Cut 1/4 of bread into small chunks and cover/saturate with honey mix.
-Cut bananas into large chunks and caramelize with butter in sauté pan.
-In a buttered pan place bananas and honey-soaked bread then cover with custard-bread.
-Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

I have been really eager for this since conceiving it a few days ago. I even baked a bread solely for use in this recipe (prior post). Once I started preparing its components I became even more excited; smililng to myself as I bounced around the korridor. I knew this was going to be really outstanding. With custards/bread pudding it is easy to produce satisfying, but homogeneous flavors. One of my goals was to preserve the individual flavors. I did this successfully by using large pieces of banana and by pre-saturating a portion of the bread with honey. The results were just as I had hoped: rich, distinct bites of honey and banana amidst a sea of peanut-buttery goodness. And using chunky peanut butter gives a needed crunch to the otherwise custardy custard.

Next time I use plain base, reserving the peanut butter for either a marbled saltiness or as a luxurious whipped topping. Enjoy!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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test it comm said...

This sounds amazing! A custardy bread pudding using peanut butter, bananas and honey just takes the combo to a whole new level! Bookmarked

Emily said...

Hooray for bread pudding! I love this combo too.

Simple and Divine said...

WOWOWOWOWWW this will definitely make that someone fall in love with you! Honey, PB, Banana... With some hot water or hot tea and a sunset... OK, I think I'll be done now haha.