Hello All,
With the arrival of the Fall Equinox and the first official day of Autumn, I guess this is a perfect time to share this recipe. It’s a simple one whipped up from the desire to do something lovely with some great English muffins we received from a local bakery– but mostly to give us an excuse to eat lots of pumpkin butter we received from a nearby farm.
In the spirit of being true to myself, I’d like to set a tone for how I do recipes on this blog and that is: this is a decolonial space! We don’t do empirical measurements! Measurement is violence to the natural world!…. listen, I just really don’t do measurements and I don’t want to have to start doing them just so I can give you an accurate measurement in type form. Recipes used to be written down in this more organic word-of-mouth type way, and I think that’s great. Also maybe I’m lazy. But really it’s important to realize that recipes are guidelines, and it’s important to be able to tweak them to your needs instead of trying to replicate exactly what someone else did. You can only ever get ‘close’. Every recipe, like every human being, is transient and unique.
On to the recipe!
Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Bread Pudding– Serves 2
2 English muffins (or 2 servings of bread such as baguette)
1 egg or flax egg
Ground flax seeds (semi-optional)
Cordial brown liquor (Brandies, Gran Marnier, spiced whiskey etc- optional)
Raisins
Cranberries
Pumpkin seeds
Nuts (to your liking)
Canned Pumpkin Puree
Milk of choice
Pumpkin Spice (Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove etc)
Rolled Oats
Maple Syrup
Butter/Margarine
Ramekins
Sage
Before you do anything else (and if you tolerate alcohol in your food/baking):
1. Preheat oven to 375. Soak a small handful of dried raisins and or cranberries in brandy or an appropriate spiced liquor. I used a decanter of Uncle Nearest whiskey that had been spiced with fruits, cinnamon, cloves and so on some two years prior. I put them in a tiny condiment bowl or ramekin with enough alcohol to cover, about 3-4 tablespoons. Start this now so they have time to take on the aroma and flavors of the liquor.
2. Get two crumpet-style English muffins. Thomas’ won’t work as well- you need them to be thick, eggy/fluffy and sizeable. Alternatively, it is a bread pudding, so you CAN use any bread you have laying around, but the end texture of mine is influenced by the bread I used. Anyway, take each serving of bread and tear it up into tiny pieces, and place in a bowl.
3. Into this bowl scoop 1/3 can of pumpkin puree. PUREE is not the same as pie filling- if you use pie filling for this it will be much sweeter. I tend to make my sweets mild and prefer to avoid this so there’s more control over how sweet or not sweet my baking ends up.
4. Add 1 real or flax egg. If you use a real egg, add a teaspoon of ground flax (if you have it) anyway. Another tendency in my cooking is to make it as nutrient rich as possible. This helps. If you use a flax egg, add around 2 tablespoons (a hefty splash) of oil such as coconut or avocado or whatever you have– if you have plant based butter, that works excellently to substitute the fat of the egg yolk.
5. Add a couple spoonfuls of oats, a dash of salt and about a tsp of baking powder, then add in a splash of milk- I used hemp- enough to help all the ingredients combine. If you are not sure about this step add a tiny bit at a time as if the recipe becomes too liquidy it’s kind of impossible to fix. The goal here is to add a touch of moisture since pumpkin puree is moist, but also very, very full of fiber, and we don’t want the pudding too dense.
5. At this point, let the mixture sit and absorb. The english muffins we had had rounded tops rather than flat ones so I cut them off separately and brushed them with the egg/pumpkin mixture, but this is just for looks. Butter the insides of the ramekins generously. Strain the fruits and keep the alcohol. Add in the fruits. Add in a small handful of nuts/seeds such as pumpkin, and broken walnut and pecan. Mix gently to combine.
6. Spoon the mixture evenly into the two ramekins. Top with a sprinkle of fresh or dried sage. At around 15 minutes sprinkle the top of the pudding with a bit of liquor and continue baking. Bake for around 25 minutes or until the smell is rich and the edges of the pudding are crisp and brown. In the meantime, mix the leftover whiskey with 3 tbsp of maple syrup and a heaping tbsp of pumpkin butter to make the boosy syrup.
7. Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Drizzle with the pumpkin butter syrup and serve.
Enjoy! Peace,
Lunē.
Looks so good, will have to try!