EASTER HAS ENDED, and the food coma is starting to wear off, finally. After copious portions of lamb and lemony roasted potatoes, after way too many eggs and koulouria and slices of tsoureki, the Greek Easter bread . . . You notice that there’s still quite a bit of everything left over. What to do with it all? Lamb and potatoes will get your family through another dinnertime; one less meal to plan. You already have my suggestion for leftover Easter eggs. The koulouria keep for a week or more, no problem. But what about those slices of tsoureki that have already begun to lose their moisture? Let them go bone dry, I tell you. You won’t regret it.

In our house, we do one of three things with dried bread: my son will take it to the park and feed the birds; my husband occasionally gets inspired to make “pain perdu,” the French french toast (which I have never warmed to; this is one of the few subjects over which I fall into complete, blind patriotism: American is better); and me? I make bread pudding.

I have been trying to remember the first time I ate a bread pudding, or the first time I made one. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment. Bread puddings were not something that ever turned up on the dining tables of my youth. I am not sure, but don’t think, that either of my parents has ever made one—at least not that I tasted. It was probably not the first, but I do remember having bread pudding at Commander’s Palace in pre-Katrina New Orleans. And I’m pretty sure that the first time I made one was thanks to a recipe by Lee Bailey, one of those old-fashioned Southern gentlemen of the kitchen. No doubt that bread pudding is common in the South, and I am now sufficiently curious about its culinary history to do some research. Later.

For now, I’ll just tell you that bread pudding, especially warm, is one of the great comforts of my days. And it is so versatile, so forgiving. Mix in any ingredients you like; try chocolate, figs, nuts, stone fruits in season. Use different types of bread, such as baguette, brioche, challah, whole wheat, rye, pound cake (chocolate or cornmeal are lovely). Make sweet or savory puddings. There are versions suitable for breakfast (no more sinful than “real” French toast), lunch, dinner, or dessert. It’s not the lightest form of food (understatement), but a good bread pudding is worth its weight in calories, if you ask me.

It’s also the perfect vehicle for leftover, dried-out slices of Easter bread.

The following recipe for bread pudding takes as its base my own tsoureki, which has been featured on Food News Journal’s “Best of the Blogs,” and which you can find here. If you don’t want to try my recipe, I won’t hold it against you: make another tsoureki or use a store-bought loaf, though neither is likely to be studded with golden raisins and candied orange peel. If you can’t find or don’t want to use tsoureki at all (but why not?!) then challah or brioche are the next best substitutes, since all these breads are eggy and somewhat sweet. The pity will be that you lose the subtle flavor of mastiha, a unique spice from the Greek island of Chios, which is what makes tsoureki what it is: a special, festive bread. Of course, I have a solution for that, too, as I’ve created a mastiha crème anglaise to go with the bread pudding (optional, but decadent).

Without further preamble, here’s the recipe. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope making it will help keep the springtime spirit of Easter and its accompanying feelings of renewal close to you for a bit longer.

Tsoureki Bread Pudding with Mastiha Crème Anglaise

This recipe provides an ideal way to use up whatever leftover tsoureki you may have from your Easter holiday, though I guarantee you won’t want to limit yourself to one time of the year for this comforting treat. I have used some of the stand-out ingredients in the tsoureki itself to enhance the bread pudding, notably candied orange peel and mastiha, which revs up an otherwise traditional (possibly boring) crème anglaise. These ingredients (along with the white chocolate) are optional, but certainly add a bit of extra flair and festivity. Although I have not done this yet, you would probably have as much success baking this as a single, large dish rather than in individual servings. However you serve it, you’re sure to hear requests for seconds, so plan accordingly. (Speaking of planning, while the active prep and bake time is minimal, you do need to start with tsoureki that is very dry. If need be, allow an extra day to dry out the tsoureki slices on a rack or a baking sheet.)

Yield: 4-6 Individual Servings (depends on ramekin size; I used 7-ounce ramekins and had enough for five overflowing portions)

Ingredients:

For the bread pudding:

8-10 slices Tsoureki, completely dried out and cut into 1-inch cubes (you want around 6 cups bread cubes)

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cinnamon (or use 1/2 teaspoon if you prefer less)

1 generous pinch ground cloves

1/4 cup diced candied orange peel (optional; there is some already in the tsoureki, if you’ve made my loaf)

1/2 cup white chocolate chunks (optional)

For the mastiha crème anglaise:

1/2 cup heavy cream

2-3 drops mastiha oil, or 1/2 teaspoon mastiha powder (see note for source)

2 large egg yolks

2 Tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sugar (I used superfine, caster sugar, but regular is all right, too)

Method:

Prepare the bread pudding. Make sure the tsoureki is completely dry, cubed, and measured. In a small saucepan, melt the butter then let it cool. Crack two eggs into a large bowl, add the sugar and whisk until the yolks become thick and pale. Whisk in the cooled butter. Add milk, cream, vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves, and continue to whisk, blending all ingredients together to form a custard. Add the bread cubes and mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula. You want to make sure all the cubes get coated on all sides with the custard, so don’t be shy pushing the bread around. Fold in the candied orange peel and white chocolate, if using. Let the mixture sit for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease whatever sized ramekins you will be using.

When the oven is ready and the bread pudding has soaked, spoon an equal amount of bread into each of the ramekins and ladle any extra custard over the top. At this point, you may either put the individual puddings into the refrigerator to set for later that day or the next (this can be a great do-ahead preparation), or else bake them right away.

Set the ramekins on a baking tray, slide into the oven, and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate the pan and bake for another 20-25 minutes. The puddings should be golden brown on top, and a knife inserted into the center of a pudding should come out clean. The puddings should be nicely risen, may have some liquid bubbling slightly in the centers, and may also seem a little jiggly (but shouldn’t be much). When done, remove from the oven and transfer the ramekins to a wire rack to cool.

While the bread pudding is cooling, make the mastiha crème anglaise. Place the cream and mastiha together in a small saucepan and stir. Heat on low until the cream is just about simmering. Meanwhile, in a medium-size bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until light and thickened. When the cream is ready, pour a small amount into the eggs to temper them, whisking all the while. Gradually add more cream, still whisking, until all the cream is incorporated. Return the egg-cream mixture to the saucepan and return to low heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the cream thickens and thickly coats the back of the spoon, 3-5 minutes. Strain the mixture into a bowl positioned in an ice bath to halt the cooking.

The bread pudding and cream can be served warm, room temperature, or cold. Pass the cream on the side to let guests spoon it on to their liking.

A Note on Mastiha:

Mastiha adds a mysterious, herbal aroma to baked goods, and it is traditionally used in Greek holiday baking at Easter and at Christmastime. It can be purchased in many forms: oil, powder, or “tears.” You can purchase mastiha, as well as prepared foods featuring this ingredient, from: MastihaShop at http://www.mastihashopny.com/

WHO COULDN’T USE a little pick-me-up? I know I could. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, which partly explains my recent lack of timely posting on this blog. I won’t get into that now, though, because you want the scoop on the dessert in the photograph. You, no doubt, are already anticipating a rise in spirit, because you’re aware that “pick me up” (at least in Italian) means one thing only in food world: that luscious, creamy cloud of caffeine-soaked bliss known as a tiramisu. Mmmm, feeling better already.

And beware, because this is also a Daring Bakers post, and that’s got to mean something extra good. This month’s challenge? Tiramisu entirely from scratch. Yes, you read that right. From scratch, completely. As in homemade ladyfingers and homemade mascarpone, to which you add zabaglione and two different creams to obtain the final filling for the dessert . . . which you then assemble with care and stare at in awe. (No, you don’t; you grab a spoon and tuck in.) Sounds like a lot of work for a home cook? It is. So much so that I have a confession to make upfront: I bailed on one of the creams. I did it because I was short on time. But really, when your dessert is already loaded with enough heavy cream to make investing in a dairy cow seem like a good idea, plus more eggs than your current cholesterol count can afford, well . . . I think everyone will forgive my slovenliness. Believe me, this dessert does not suffer for the lack one bit. You could even get a whole lot lazier and still come up with something stellar, so don’t let me (or my numeration of cream and eggs) scare you off.

Now, I love tiramisu. Love it. It’s a dessert I long ago decided was a perfect food. Perfectly ethereal and worth every whopping calorie. It’s also one I stopped ordering out in restaurants or purchasing from pastry counters, because back in the early 1990s, I found a recipe that’s both easy and very, very good. It’s from the cookbook Italy, a Culinary Journey: Classic Recipes from the Regions of Italy, which is included in my blog’s page of recommended reading, here. When you can make something easily at home that is far superior to what you end up with commercially, well—you look no farther. This tiramisu actually became the dessert that, for years, people most requested me to bring to parties or make for their special occasions. Once, I must have quadrupled the recipe at least, to make a giant tiramisu in the form of a sheet cake with a powdered-cocoa “30″ stenciled on it for a friend’s birthday. There are never any leftovers, believe me.

All this is to say, I feel loyal to this recipe, which is the real deal, and I would never consider betraying it with some traditional, coffee-flavored facsimile. Enter the green tea version of the Daring Bakers challenge recipe, which was a tiramisu from Baltimore pastry chef Carminantonio Iannaccone, as featured in the Washington Post (a link appears in the credits at the end of my recipe). Chef Iannaccone’s recipe stands out for a couple of reasons, say the challenge hosts: first for its use of zabaglione (Italian cooked egg custard traditionally flavored with Marsala), which incorporates pretty much the same ingredients as what’s in my beloved Italian cookbook yet removes the raw-egg factor; next for its addition of pastry cream and whipped cream in addition to the mascarpone. This, as I’ve already indicated, seems like overkill, but although I ditched the pastry cream, I did end up thankful for the whipped, which added back volume that I somehow lost in preparing my mascarpone and zabaglione. (Did I cook them each longer than required? The taste was amazing, and the consistency seemed right, so why did I end up short a few ounces?)

Veering from coffee to tea was no stretch, and once I hit on green tea, then ginger was not far behind. Lemon (juice or zest) was already a part of some recipe elements, so I really had very little tweaking to do in order to create a refreshing dessert version of one of my favorite potions—one that’s high in antioxidants, too. (You could almost convince yourself that this tiramisu is healthy.) A knob of ginger, a sprinkling of sweet matcha powder . . . and the TEA-ramisu is born.

You can read more about the Sweet Matcha Ladyfingers, a large part of this challenge, in my previous post.

As an enticement, here’s a better look at them:

A few words about the mascarpone, and then my final recipe. I found the idea of making mascarpone intriguing. I would never have thought to do it, though I generally take pride in being a from-scratch kind of gal. Somehow, mascarpone just seemed like an ingredient in its own right to me, more like a raw food than something you’d create. That’s idiotic, but nevertheless how I looked at it. Then I realized that I’d never even read the label on a tub of store-bought mascarpone; if I had, I guess I would have known that it’s nothing more than cream and citric acid. It’s worth mentioning, too, that although some folks would have you believe that a certain type of cream is better than another, my experience of this recipe is that it really doesn’t make enough difference to worry over. Use heavy cream, it’s fine; use ultra-pasteurized, that works, too. It’s all damn good.

Making the mascarpone (the recipe is included as a method step below) is not particularly difficult, but it does help to have the right equipment. Some notes: First, although the recipe I was following calls for putting a heat-resistent bowl into a shallow skillet of boiling water (yes, the bowl touches the water) in order to heat the cream, I advise you to go ahead and use a regular double-boiler or its equivalent. Do yourself a favor and make sure the bowl in which you heat the cream is stainless-steel (no Pyrex). Otherwise, like me, you may spend way more time than needed to bring the cream to the right temperature, and who really has an extra half hour? (Speaking of temperature, you’ll have more confidence with the help of a kitchen thermometer; the original recipe provides some guidance about getting by without one, but I am not including that here, since really there’s no good reason why you don’t have a thermometer, is there? Go get one; it’s a great investment.)

One final tip: if the mascarpone seems too loose for the cheesecloth and sieve (or if the opposite is true and its the cheesecloth that seems loose), do what I did and slip a paper coffee filter between the sieve and the cheesecloth. It worked like a charm.

Now that I have gone through the process, I know what to expect. I will say that—especially with the ginger I added—store-bought mascarpone can’t hold a candle to homemade. I’m very likely to make my own from now own, plus I’ll be doubling the recipe. Can’t have too much of a good thing. Which goes for the Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione I created, and the whipped cream as well (all three pictured below). In fact, once I return to my coffee-flavored standby tiramisu, I may even try to incorporate some of what I’ve learned here. A compliment I never thought I’d give, but there you go. Thank you, Daring Bakers.

Fresh Ginger Green Tea-ramisu

The sweetened heat of ginger, the refreshing zing of lemon. These flavors come together in an ethereal cloud of bliss held together with homemade matcha ladyfingers that are steeped in brewed green tea—nothing could be better. This recipe requires some advance planning, but it’s well worth it. Two to three days should do it, though most of that time is not “active” but rather chill time for the individual components and for the assembled dessert. Once put together, this Tea-ramisu will keep in the refrigerator for a couple days, and you can also pop it in the freezer, making it the ideal choice if you need a unique make-ahead dessert to free you up on the day of a party. Prepared cake-style, or served with a dash of whimsy in individual teacups, this is a recipe certain to impress guests (if you can bring yourself to share).

Yield: Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

1 recipe Sweet Matcha Ladyfingers (can be made up to 2 weeks ahead)

1 cup Ginger Mascarpone (recipe included in method below), made with:

• 2 cups organic whipping cream (heavy cream is OK, and if you can find it easily, try pasteurized rather than ultra-pasteurized, though either is fine)
• 2-inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and thickly sliced
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione (recipe included in method below), made with:

• 2 egg yolks
• 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup good-quality dry white wine
• 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 cup heavy cream, for whipping

1/2 cup plus 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

2 cups brewed green tea, cooled to room temperature

Sweet matcha powder for garnish

Method:

Two to three days in advance of serving, make the Ginger Mascarpone. Bring water to a simmer in the base of a double-boiler. In the top of the boiler, pour the cream and add the slices of fresh ginger. Heat the cream, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until it reaches 190 F. This is supposed to take around 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice and heat, gently stirring, until the cream thickly coats the back of your spoon. You may see some curdled whey streaks when you stir. Turn off the heat. Remove the top of the boiler containing the cream and let cool for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of damp cheesecloth and set this over a bowl. If your cheesecloth is a loose weave, you may want to first line the sieve with a paper coffee filter. Strain the cream into the sieve, discarding the ginger. Do not squeeze the mascarpone or press on its surface. When completely cool, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (still in the sieve over the bowl) overnight or up to 24 hours. The mascarpone should be used within 3-4 days. [A note from Vera, the original recipe-writer: "The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, yet will remain lusciously creamy."]

One to one-and-a-half days in advance of serving, make the Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione. In the top of a double-boiler, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, wine, ginger, and lemon zest. Place over low heat, stirring constantly until you obtain a thick custard, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Once cooled, transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

One half hour before assembling the Tea-ramisu (the day before serving), place a bowl and beaters into the freezer to chill. If you want to create a Tea-ramisu that you can unmold for presentation on a serving dish, then butter the bottom and the edges of a small spring-form pan and line with parchment paper. Set aside. Remove bowl and beaters after they’ve chilled for about 15-20 minutes, and pour 1 cup cream into the bowl. Add in 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar. Beat on high speed until fully whipped.

Make the Tea-ramisu filling. In a large bowl, lightly beat the mascarpone to soften and smooth it just a bit. Do not overbeat, or you risk making butter! Then, using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, blend together the mascarpone, zabaglione, and whipped cream until incorporated.

Assemble the Tea-ramisu. Place the brewed green tea, mixed together with remaining 1/2 cup sugar, in a shallow pan or pie plate. One at a time, dip the matcha ladyfingers quickly into the tea, no more than a second, and use to line your serving dish, spring-form pan, or individual ramekins or teacups. Remember if you’re going to unmold the Tea-ramisu from a spring-form pan, that the bottom of the pan will become the top of the dessert; plan for the final look you want to achieve. Once you have a layer of ladyfingers in place, use about half the filling, then add more ladyfingers. Alternate layers of dipped ladyfingers and filling until dish is full. This may just be two layers of each element, depending on the size of your chosen dish. When you’ve finished, cover the Tea-ramisu with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 24 hours before serving.

When thoroughly chilled and just before serving, dust the top of the Tea-ramisu with sweet matcha powder.

Credits and Original Recipe Links:

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate about Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home, and Baking Obsession.

Links to the original recipes, which I adapted to create my own flavor variations, can be found here:

• Carminantonio Iannaccone’s Tiramisu, as featured in the Washington Post
• Baking Obsession’s recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese, by Vera
• Le Cordon Bleu at Home Ladyfingers recipe (Buy the book, or check out my adaptation from which you can easily calculate the original)