Apple Bread Pudding

This recipe calls for all the usual suspects that are found in bread pudding, namely sugar, milk, fresh or dried fruits and some dry bread cubes. I made my apple raisin bread pudding using stale bread that has been sitting on the kitchen counter. The dryness of stale bread is actually an asset in preparing bread pudding, because the dry bread will soak up a good deal of flavor. If you buy a lot of bread and sometimes don't use all of it, this recipe might be helpful for you. It was amazing how fast these little mini loaves of bread pudding disappeared!

Bread pudding to me is a perfect breakfast food, similar to pain perdu, or French toast. I also often enjoy it for le goûter de 4 heures, which in English translates to "4 p.m. snack". As a child, this was my favorite time of the day! My childhood memory of a typical "4 heures" would be a piece of warm baguette with a piece of chocolate, an apple and chocolate milk. If you ask any French kid, that's pretty normal but it doesn't seem to be this way in America. The juice box and supermarket candy bar that most American kids eat (including my little sisters-in-law), definitely don't compare.

Fresh Jujube Tart with Walnut Cream (Chinese Date Tart)

Lulu planted jujube trees 3 years ago and they didn't produce much fruit until this year. A jujube (also called Chinese date) is a little date-sized fruit that has a sweet smell and a flavor reminiscent of apples. In Asia, legend says that the scent of jujubes makes people fall in love. They are also a sign of fertility.

The fruits are so much more flavorful and sweet than the ones from our local market. In Vietnam, jujubes are eaten fresh as a snack. The girls have been going back and forth to the garden to pick the fruits from the trees. The crop is so huge this year; each branch holds at least 2 dozen jujubes. We've been asking friends and family to take some home, but we still had more, so I decided to try and make a dessert with some jujubes.

The texture of the fresh fruit is very similar to apples, so I adapted my tarte amandine and made it with walnuts and jujube instead. For a nice glossy look, I drizzled date syrup over the jujube tarts. It was the first  time I tested the recipe and it worked wonderfully.