My obsession and interest in combining prunes and armagnac together persists in this bread pudding. It's sweetened with honey which compliments the richness of the prunes. The prunes were soaked in armagnac for about a month before adding them to the pudding. And additional armagnac was added to the custard base before baking.
The bread is a pugliese loaf from Sullivan Street Bakery.
While at the Greenmarket yesterday I picked up what looked to be one of the last baskets of prune plums for the season. I added them to a breakfast bread pudding using ingredients from some of my favorite sources - eggs from Flying Pig Farm, milk and cream from Ronnybrook and bread from Sullivan St Bakery. Bread pudding is perfect for breakfast - think 'deconstructed French toast' with crunch from oats and nuts and layered with fruit.
Plums have most definitely arrived at the Greenmarket, and I picked up some Santa Rosas to make these tarts. The tart dough was made with a high ratio of butter and no eggs, which means that its buttery, rich, and quite delicate. You need a spatula to pick up the tarts.
The crumbly topping is the same topping I used to make the blueberry buckle. And it's fairly quick to put together: First, in a medium bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup demerarra sugar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon sea salt. Then cube 6 tablespoons cool, unsalted butter and cut the cubes with a pastry blender or fork into the dough (you could also use your fingers). Once the butter is blended into the dry ingredients, use your finger tips to smoosh the mixture together to create large clumps.
The plums were a bit tart and I used a little more sugar than I normally would for the filling and a touch of flour for thickening. I baked them for thirty minutes until the filling was bubbly and the shells were golden.
