Pudding

Like barbecue, bread pudding is a dessert with humble beginnings. The dish began as a way to recycle stale leftover bread into a simple filling and dessert through the addition of water and sugar. Today, bread pudding is served at the finest white-tablecloth restaurants, and it is often made with specialty breads and fresh fruit. Instead of water, chefs substitute milk, cream, eggs, vanilla, and spices to create a creamy custard. To make this dessert more decadent, a ladle of rich and creamy sauce flavored with whiskey, rum, or vanilla is poured over the bread pudding.

This creamy (yet vegan) dessert can follow a meal from just about any cuisine: Caribbean, Indian, Mediterranean, West African, Asian, North American.…

A protein-rich, almost instant, smooth, deep chocolate dessert. Nice garnished with red raspberries or strawberries.

Growing up, the one thing I wanted when I went to the movies was a box of Whoppers, those malted milk balls. When I was looking around for a flavor to add to a chocolate rice pudding, I remembered that taste.

I’ve always considered corn a borderline fruit, so why not incorporate it into the pastry menu? Here I pair it with buttery Madeleine Sponge Cake, my adaptation of the classic seashell cake, with a shatteringly crisp sugar crust. And I pile on the garnishes: kettle corn and freeze-dried corn bring their own special crunch to the dessert, and they’re easy because you can find them readymade in good grocery stores. I use plastic tubes that I’ve had cut to my specifications when I make this panna cotta at the restaurant. You can, too, if you have access to a plastic supply shop; the tubes I use have a 1-inch diameter, and they’re 18 inches long. But you can also make the panna cotta in cannoli forms or muffin tins (see Make It Simpler).

When I go to the farmers’ markets in summer and see all the bounty, I start asking myself, “What can work with what?” and “What would balance that fruit?” Apricots and peppermint are both refreshing flavors. In this dessert, the mint livens the apricot, providing an herbal contrast to the natural sweetness of the fruit.

This dessert showcases the versatility of rhubarb, its acidity balanced by a silky, creamy cheese panna cotta. The recipe scales up quite easily if you want to make more for a crowd.

The addition of orange and rum are what makes this a very different rice pudding than you’re probably used to. Of course, rum isn’t a typical flavoring in Italian cooking, but once again I’ve taken the liberty of infusing a little New World twist into an Old World classic.

Essentially a berry bread pudding, the ricotta and eggs in this dessert make it substantial and rich enough to serve for brunch. Serve with a side of maple syrup for breakfast, or a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream for dessert.

Comfort food meets the espresso bar in these cute little cups of sweetness. Not quite a pudding, the mixture is frothy and thick, like the crema that tops a good cup of cappuccino.

This is the chocolate lover’s answer to panna cotta. It’s quite similar to a mousse but the gelatin makes it a bit firmer.

Grace your dinner table with this show-stopping dessert. It’s the perfect end to a southern meal.

Pat: There was a time after college when my brother Gaelin lived with Momma Daisy, and I think he moved in just so he could enjoy this dessert on a regular basis. I can’t blame him: Momma Daisy’s Banana Pudding is a Neely family favorite. In her recipe, homemade vanilla pudding is layered with sliced bananas and vanilla-wafer cookies (the store-bought kind) and finished with whipped cream, to create a creamy, comforting Southern classic. Once you prepare the pudding, it can be layered with the other ingredients and chilled for up to 4 hours in advance. Then all you need to do is garnish it with the whipped cream and crumbled wafers just before serving. We like to use fresh whipped cream, but Momma Daisy used a store bought “French vanilla” whipped topping (you can also use Cool Whip).

Traditional rice pudding contains cream, eggs, and sugar. You’ll find none of that here. You will find healthful whole-grain brown rice, raisins, creamy Greek yogurt, and lovely flavor from real vanilla bean and cinnamon. Eat any leftovers for breakfast.

Pudding is one of Aki’s favorite desserts. Classic American puddings are made with either flour or cornstarch. We substitute tapioca flour in our stirred custards because it gels at a lower temperature and still provides the right texture in the finished dessert. This pudding was inspired by classic butterscotch pudding, which gets its flavor from brown sugar and a hint of vanilla. Burnt sugar is a slight misnomer because although the dark caramel we make here does have a slightly bitter edge, it is not the unpleasantly acrid taste of fully burnt sugar. We recommend that, if possible, you let the pudding rest for several hours or overnight before eating it. This gives the intense caramel flavor time to soften and mellow.

This is the classic pudding of our childhood. Chocolate pudding is the ultimate comfort food, and this version is decadent without being overpowering. Use your favorite good-quality chocolate here because it will make your pudding that much better. A dollop of unsweetened whipped cream or lightly sweetened heavy cream poured over the top takes this to yet another level, although Aki has been known to eat it straight out of the container with a spoon. Jell-O pudding has nothing on us.

This classic charlotte or schaleth aux cerises is adapted from Françoise Tenenbaum, a deputy mayor in Dijon who is responsible, among other things, for bringing meals on wheels to the elderly poor. At a luncheon in the garden of a fifteenth-century building where the film Cyrano de Bergerac, with Gérard Depardieu, was filmed, Françoise described this Alsatian version of an apple, pear, or cherry bread pudding that she makes for her family. Starting with stale bread soaked in brandy, rum, kirsch, or the Alsatian mirabelle liqueur, it is baked in an earthen schaleth mold or, as Escoffier calls it, a “greased iron saucepan, or a large mold for pommes Anna.” Earlier recipes were baked in the oven, for 4 to 5 hours. Françoise bakes hers in a heavy cast-iron skillet or pot for less than an hour, at Passover substitutes matzo for the bread, and, except during cherry season, makes hers with apples.

Bosc pears and Italian blue plums (dried for use in the winter) are fruits that were most often put into kugel. This very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel uses leftover bread that is soaked in water, squeezed to remove any excess moisture, and then mixed with the dried or fresh fruit and left to stew in the oven overnight. Some, like this version, include onions, which add a savory dimension to the sweetness of the fruit and the dough. I love this dish, which I serve in my home for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath as a side dish with brisket.