The bread pudding recipe seemingly passed down from her mother and with very little change, at times it seemed like they were still following ration book provisions of flavour and taste. The thing is, although it was a staple of growing up, and was a very economical dessert, there was no escaping that it tasted like a milky squishy bread under a hard bread, with dried fruit inside.

Bread and butter pudding is supposed to be easy and simple. It’s bread, butter, dried fruit, and a mixture of sugar, milk and egg.

Now, at times I can be quite inventive, and more often than not I can be lazy and cheap. I realised that sugar, milk and egg is custard; a very milky bland custard, but custard none-the-less. So, if I want to make a bread and butter pudding, surely I can substitute milky custard for ready-made custard, and benefit from vanilla flavouring?

Seriously, how hard can it be?

Cooking With Guise – Bread and Butter Pudding (Cheating!)

I wasn’t going to go overboard on ingredients or expense, because I was being very cheap. I pretty much went for the lowest common denominators of what was available at my local supermarket and what I had in the cupboards at home:

• Stay Fresh White Bread (I used about 12 slices in all)

• Butter (I used Light butter, because I’m big enough, sadly)

• Dried Fruit (raisins, sultanas, dried lemon rind – all from cupboards store)

• Ground Cinnamon (cupboard)

• Ground Nutmeg (cupboard)

• Ready-made Custard (I used 2 tins of cheap, but I’d highly consider low fat)

The first step was also the most time consuming, buttering the damn bread. Now, I like to use a back-forward sweeping motion that I was taught. When I was first learning to butter bread, I met up with an old frenchman who worked as a janitor in our apartment block, I asked him to train me and he started to show me how to do all these martial arts moves like blocking and chopping actions, turns out that it was his way of teaching me his culinary arts.

After spreading the butter evenly over the bread, you must focus your energies and with deft strokes remove the crust from the slices, and then as you would a foe, quarter or cut to ribbons the remaining body. You should lay his body in to a shallow grave, or create a layer of buttered bread at the base of a container. It’s best to use a square or rectangular container to get a tighter fit.

On the first layer, I sprinkled a generous helping of cinnamon and nutmeg, and those really help the flavour after the creaminess of the custard. After the sprinkling, scatter a handful of dried fruit.

For the glory of victory, you should rest upon your first victim and additional body, laying out an additional floor of buttered bread. I left a few gaps in this layer, to allow the custard to seep through. On this layer, just add the dried fruit, as you don’t want to overpower with spices.

As a final message that you mean seriousness, apply a top body, or final bread layer. You can choose whether or not to scatter fruit here, though I chose not to.

Now, pour the custard in to either a microwavable jug or a saucepan and heat that goo up until it’s very hot and extremely liquidy; the closer you can get it to a free-flowing state the better – though avoid burning it or bubbling over. Pour this custard directly over the bread grave, making sure that it flows through to the lower regions and covers the top evenly.

If you have any custard remaining, eat it. Seriously, custard is freaking delicious.

Store the mixture somewhere cool to set for between 15-45 minutes, depending on distractions. Then put it in the oven on a medium heat for about 30 minutes or until the top starts to carmelize.

You can either serves this hot (as I did) or let it cool and set to enjoy later.

Now, it didn’t quite come out as combined as my mum makes, I could have done with leaving a few more gaps and getting the custard more spread throughout the mixture, I guess. However, there was a lot more flavour in it, from the spices and vanilla of the custard, which made it very creamy. Overall, it went down well amongst myself, a brother and even my mum.

I’m domesticated a bit more though, and it cost me very little to make, seeing as I had most ingredients left over afterwards.

Bonus! Bonus! Bonus!

While shopping today, I came across something that I had to buy, try and photograph, despite my assertions that Easter was done. I found Cadbury’s Creme Egg Ice Cream Bar (and I spent ages trying to find out if it was properly a lolly, a popsicle, or what it was).

The ice cream bar is a lot like a Magnum; thin, cracking chocolate around an ice cream block. In this instance though, the block contains a white vanilla ice cream bit and yellow fondant-flavoured ice cream bit, which actually makes it taste quite like a very cold  creme egg.

Have to admit, I prefer it to the McFlurry version.

I wear the ears, the ears do not wear me.

The rabbit ears, I decided early on – even before I started the Easter 2008 entries – would be a constant throughout the Easter entries. I wanted something to show that there was an ongoing theme to make the entries special, also I hoped that they might distract people to focusing on that par of my photographs.

I bought the ears (which are actually Donkey from Shrek ears, but are more hare like to me) before Christmas, thanks to inspiration from Matt at X-Entertainment, his character of Hssxxlllo Ussall and the likes of Dio and Kittymao who fed me with inspiration and art about the character and others.

I like to think having the rabbit ears adds to the photographs, so instead of just boring photographs of someone eating and showing chocolate, there is a little bit of humour involved.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually have giant ears sticking from the top of my head, nor do I need glasses constantly. Unfortunately, as I’d taken the first photographs with my glasses on, it became necessary in my editorial continuity mindset to keep that trend.

Arrgh! The horror! The ungodly horror!

I knew that if I wrote about them, I’d have difficulty actually making a review. I’m fairly concise about whether I like or loathe something, so I reckoned that at most I’d probably squeeze two paragraphs out of each product, and most of that would be description. With that in mind, I decided to make each entry about multiple candies and place against each other in terms of taste, nausea inducement and/or value.

These scales are completely arbitary and don’t even work against each other, the value of small mini eggs against larger eggs just doesn’t scale the same. However, it did help me to get across concisely the level of my enjoyment or disgust, while being able to post within my reviewing ability level.

Taking photographs of candy is hard, especially trying to show a fair scale for size comparison. I tried to keep in the same position and distances for photographs, but it wasn’t always possible. Details and decals on white chocolate is also a huge imbuggerance to try to take photographs of, the surface being highly reflective when using flash and highly blurred when not. 

It is only wafer thin

The problem with reviewing chocolate is that you have to purchase and eat the chocolate. I’m lucky on two fronts there, family will still buy me candy if I look pathetic enough and athough I don’t have a social circle, I do have a brother that I can share my candy with to prevent me from exploding. Quite a lot of the additional items, for example the small Creme Eggs from the multi-bag, were passed over after I’d had my test victim.

The few eggs I’ve had were quite enough.

History and Myths

To me, things from my childhood amuse and interest me as much these days as back then. I still dislike scarecrows, love the concept of Halloween and think as highly of the notion of cosplay as I did of play-acting in my back garden. As such, I wanted to share them and hopefully amuse others in the process, and one of the things I’ve learnt is that you can always find something from childhood to talk about that either someone else will recognise themselves or will appreciate the thought.

I knew from the outset that I wanted to cover the mythology that my mind had crafted for the Easter Bunny over the years. Stories of the bunnies sacrifice had gotten me told off in school and received stern looks or rolled eyes from the parents of my friends during my youth. I’d always tried to place how Easter Bunnies grew up, could be small rabbits or giant Furries, and how different types of Easter Eggs came about, and later in my life had begun to appreciate bunnygirls and cosplayers.

This all harks back to thematic linking, I wanted to establish that I wasn’t just blogging about chocolate, but about Easter chocolate. This is why I tried to ensure a reference to the Easter Bunny in entries and kept the ears.

A bridge too far

Of course, in addition to the standard mythology, somewhere along the way I lost the plot.. To be more accurate, I found a different, seedier plot. Although it had been my intention to infer that breeding causing the egg flavouring, I had no intention from the outset to write such indepth tales of bunny love, and I didn’t expect them to be as easy to write as they were.

I don’t usually talk freely about that sort of thing, unless directly to someone I trust and value highly. Although I tend to be a terrible flirt and have twisted humour, I’m actually fairly bashful about the subject. I do believe though that there are three me’s, and one of them is a hyperactive monkey with poorly controlled lust issues, that Guise tends to write things that I then feel extremely embarrassed and guilty about. Luckily, I don’t think I offended anyone too badly, and I’m quite happy that I reached the compromise of protecting entries rather than running an edit of them. 

Communication

One of the most valuable things that I’ve had over this period, which I think anyone who writes should cherish, is communication. People who have chatted here have been major sources of inspiration and motivation, and had it not been for that support I probably would have lost the will to continue writing these things up. Ideas can often spring up from comments and you can learn a lot from others. The key here, appreciate those around you, engage with them and you’ll find yourself rewarded and stimulated.

The entry you didn’t see

Yes, there was a deleted scene. I hoped to do a Cooking with Guise episode again, which if you’ve seen the archives you’ll know is usually me attempting to cook and the majority of the time succeeding to some extent.

I had intended to make Baked Eggs for Easter Sunday, unfortunately what I created was solid milky egg with a burnt top, burnt sides and burnt bottom. Only the yolk was really edible, and photographs just showed blackness.

As I couldn’t really describe it for a review or recommend the recipe, I decided to skip the entry entirely.

Hope you all had a great Easter

The Lindt ‘Lindors’ chocolate eggs are exactly what would be expected, creamy luxury chocolate. Lindt is an established brand that makes it quite clear of their luxury status and uses works like ‘craftsmanship’ and ‘chocolateur’ in advertisments. The Lindt eggs have a solid shell and a slightly less solid filling. Tasty stuff.

Click on thumbnails for full size

Click on thumbnails for full size

It should be noted that both genders of Easter Bunny are able to produce and lay eggs, the method is a prized secret and not often discussed outside of bunnidom.

New Born Bunnies

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Four-Footed Stage

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The Two Footed Stage

Bunnies in the two-footed stage have begun to take a more anthromorphic state, often hopping or prancing about on their hindlegs whilst using their front paws to perform manual dexterous tasks, such as carry baskets or tying ribbons. Bunnies in this stage will begin to care more for their appearance, adopting Human-like apparrel. Two-footed bunnies often act child-like, seeming to be of a cute playful character. Eggs laid during this stage tend to be slightly larger, and because of their increasing closeness to the Great Bunny, will sometimes be brightly decorated.

From this stage, all Easter Bunnies are expected to help in the scattering of Easter Eggs throughout the world.

The Developing Bunny

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A recent advent to bunnidom has been the creation of devices to assist in experimentation without procreation. Although this is generally frowned on by the more senior Easter Bunnies, advocates for the method say that it allows for the better mixing of flavours without unwanted examples. A common side effect is that eggs that are created by the encounter, although remaining miniature, can often be flavoured and recieve scaled extras similar to the standard eggs.

Virginal Easter Bunnies will continue to lay miniature eggs or larger, hollow eggs. Eggs bought about by means of self-passion with devices can often contain small plastic toys or playful statuettes. The developing bunny is able to lay eggs that will hatch in to a future generation of Easter Bunny.

The Avatar Bunny

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During this stage, the Easter Bunny will often not procreate outside of Bunnidum. Put bluntly, encounters with non-Bunnies will often end with an external moneyshot. As a result the Avatar Bunny’s eggs are usually hollow and accompanied with a seperate gift of a lover. The Avatar Bunny is mainly responsible for laying eggs which will hatch future Easter Bunnies and to teach younger bunnies about their faith, cultural and interpersonal relations.

On a final note, for Easter I got a Maltesers Easter Egg (large egg with bag of Maltesers), a 5 pack of Fun Galore, a bag of Galaxy Eggs, a bag of Lindt Lindor Eggs, a pack of two small Lindt bunnies with two Lindt mini eggs, and a Large Lindt Golden Bunny.

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The bunny hopped over to the blogger’s wardrobe and smirked. He placed the eggs about the area and then bent over to ruffle the sleeping figures hair. He rubbed his nose against the sleeper in an eskimo kiss and hopped off.

How To Play:
* Download or copy the picture and mark on the picture the location of all nine (9) Easter Eggs and one (1) Easter Bunny.
* Email the marked picture to me at guise@1me.net
* Winners will be emailed back so that they can claim their prize.
* Entrants must be received by 06:00GMT Thursday 27 March 2008.

(Lame) Prize Details:
* For all winners, I will write an entry based on a subject or question you pose to me, although the following rules apply:
- Claims can be made anytime before 1 April 2008, to allow thinking time.
- I will name the person who made the request.
- I reserve the right to answer the request in a “Log In Required” entry depending on nature.
- Subjects needn’t be about Easter as it is nearly over, feel free to think outside the box to any subjects you are interested in.
- Please, for the love of the Bunny, do not get me to eat any more chocolate. I’m seriously on the verge of throwing up now!
- I’d love to have the right not to incriminate myself too badly on highly questionable (il)legal stuff, if you don’t mind. (If you really want an answer to those questions, ask me directly!)
* For the first winner, the same rules as above apply, but they get to submit TWO suggestions or questions.

Ok, so the prize is basically the meme going around about writing outside of your comfort zone, but I like to make things a bit quirky.

Christmas may be about scoring and giving presents, Valentines about stalking and giving things that people may be allergic to (chocolate, flowers, wasp venom cocktails) and Halloween may be about ghost stories and scoring candy, but it is Easter that is all in your face about chocolates, bunnies, sacrifice and procreation. The Easter Bunny is the party animal that has always ensured that the cycle of seasons remains intact and that the circle of life is more than just a Disney song.

At this time of year, it is the rabbit who rules the animal kingdom, not from Pride Rock or a jungle ruin, but from a clover field. It is therefore only right that the bunny is given his due respect above other animals by the race of man.

For years, Cadbury’s Animal biscuits have been a staple party and ‘sometimes food’ for children. Within the ‘Cadbury purple’ reside animal-shaped shortbread biscuits coated with a layer of milk chocolate on one side – notably the flat, featurelss side.

The main players of the zoo and safari industry have commonly been represented in biscuity form, with almost constant appearances from elephant, monkey, lion, tiger, hippo and seal. At Easter time, the lucky footed, heroic hopper doesn’t get included amongst the riff-raff, he gets rewarded with his own box.

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The biscuits in the Cadbury Bunnies box are marginally larger than the standar Animal biscuits, but otherwise they are the same thing. They have the familiar taste of slightly buttery shortbread biscuits and the same Cadburys milk chocolate layer, all of which brings back memories of nibbling on biscuits and sorting out order of eating.

Heck, just opening the box and white inner bag, getting the first sniff of butter and chocolate, is enough to make me harken back to days of minty green school custard, neon bermuda shorts and trying to convince parents that SodaStreams were something worthwhile despite all readily-available and demonstratable evidence to the contrary. To be honest, I’m now actually longing for that custard again, I’ll skip on the whole bermuda shorts deal, I must have looked a complete doof in the whole handed-down ensemble.

The Bunnies have a really nice, brightly coloured box which immediately caught my eye in the shops and made me desperately want a pack. Not only that, but there is a rather nifty ‘Colour In’ picture on the back that also doubles as a ‘Find The Egg’ game.

My choice is slightly limited for simple, fairly small eggs. Easter Eggs tend to go from diddy to fist-sized or bigger, skipping the mid-range to allow Creme Eggs and their ilk to take over, but I’ve got a few and a variant of a loved kids classic to experiment with.

For SCIENCE!

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Taste: 3.5/5
Value: 1/5

Nestle Smarties ‘Shakers’ Egg

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The egg is very much like the Rolo egg shell, a textured pattern with the Nestle logo, but when you bite through it you only get the taste of solid milk chocolate without mixing with toffee. This was actually a vast improvement and the chocolate was quite tasty.

Inside the egg were several micro-Smarties, only a fraction of the size of Smarties but they were as tasty as the full-size and remarkably different from the Smarties Mini Eggs. This re-established my faith in Nestle to sometimes get things right.

Taste: 3.75/5
Value: 3.5/5

Nestle Milky Bar ‘Shakers’ Egg

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The egg shell is the same pattern as the Rolo and Smarties, but is made of solid creamy white chocolate, which tasted just like a real Milky Bar, just thicker. The insides were full of small puffed rice crispies in a white chocolate shell, just like having a rice crispies cake!

This was a far cry from the disaster that was the Milky Bar Minis, I actually fancied another afterwards.

Taste: 3.75/5
Value: 3.5/5

Woolworths Easter Egg Hunt Eggs

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To be honest, the chocolate isn’t that bad for cheap eggs, it’s very much the taste of Generic Supermarket Brand where everything is made by the numbers. It isn’t especially milky, but at the same rate it isn’t dark or plain, so it balances out. There is a definate taste of chocolate and as the shell is fairly thin it isn’t a lingering taste.

If you were after just something to give kids so that they had a plentiful supply this would most likely be it.

Taste: 3.1/5
Value: 3.5/5 (You can pick up a bag of ten (125g pack) for the price of two Eggies (20g each))

Cadburys Easter Tea Cake – ok, it isn’t an egg…

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This Easter Tea Cake contains a splodge of orange jam on the biscuit (a biscuit that has been made with chocolate in the mix), a dome of marshmallow and a fine layer of Cadbury’s milk chocolate. Obviously, that’s supposed to be an egg, I guess.

You get ten in a pack and they are exceptionally scrummy.

Taste: 3.5/5
Value: 3.5/5

“Hey, you’re nailed to a cross, but cheer up, they’ve decided to call it ‘Good Friday” for you!”
“Have they, how feckin’ spiffy…get me down you bastards!”

But, Good Friday really marks the first of the proper days of Easter and is the scene of the fateful day that kick-started celebrations and, more importantly for this post, the traditions of Friday food.

It works like this, on “Bit of a Pisser Friday” the mortal form of the Great Bunny was visited by some right gits who dragged from his warren, took him up to the top of a hill and then staked him to a cross. This was addressed before, here.

This part of the story is where the first of the traditional food items comes in: the hot cross bun.

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In eating these symbolic buns we are freeing the bunny from his torment, removing his bondage, his solitude and the remnants of his fears. Hot Cross Buns can also be eaten with butter to represent the bunny’s sweetness, and the currants can sometimes be found to have been replaced by chocolate chips.

After the bunny was nailed to the cross, the builders, his friends and his followers waited with him; though admittedly the builders stayed because they were being paid by the hour and only had to hammer in two nails. After a while they all pretty much ran out of things to say – the bunny himself wasn’t really in to the spirit of talking about what everyone thought that hot little hare was going to wear to Spring Dance – and it was getting late, they’d all missed their dinners and it was getting close to supper anyway.

This is where the second vital feasting tradition takes place: fish and chips from the takeaway.

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When the squirrels would tell, after the bunny’s fate was decided, that his last request of a meal was a portion of fish and chips, it became a staple food of his following and pilgrimages would take place ever Bit of a Pisser Friday to buy a portion to consume on his behalf; sacrificing the food through themselves to his immortal spirit.

Now, it wasn’t until later years that the first pickled egg came about from later generations of Easter Bunnies, and has since been emulated by the race of man.

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In order to unwind, several bunnies started to host post-Easter parties, where the bunnies that survived the Easter could get together to enjoy copious amounts of alcohol, play pool, sing at karaoke, eat coleslaw and engage in hunny-bunny relations if they felt up to it. The eggs over the following days would come about as if they’d been swimming in the alcohol the bunnies consumed, the end result was hard boiled eggs that tasted slightly vinegary – though in extreme cases of bunny lushes, sometimes a soft boiled egg would be cracked open to find a cognac yolk swimming in high proof Vodka.

Nowadays, humanised versions are created when someone just leaves hard boiled eggs in a jar vinegar for too long.

What most people don’t know is that the mini egg is actually a pre-maturely laid Easter Egg, one that has not had the necessary interpersonal interaction to make it full of sweet flavour. Mini Eggs tend to be laid by the very young and virginal Easter Bunnies, the shy or the seriously ugly bunny.

For science, I shall raid the basket and sample from this range! (Though, not in vast quantities, this isn’t mad science!)

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Taste: 4/5
Value: 4/5

Cadbury Creme Egg Minis

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The fondant is quite a bit sharper than usual, and seems to be a think orange colour throughout.

Also available: Cadbury Caramel Mini Eggs. Yus.

Taste: 4.25/5
Value: 4/5

Terry’s Chocolate Orange Mini Eggs

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The orange flavouring itself is not too strong, but still comparable with the full size chocolate oranges.

Taste: 4/5
Value: 3.5/5

Nestle Milky Bar Mini Eggs
(Available in Tube or Bag)

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Taste: 3/5
Value: 3/5 (Bigger tube, but of bland candy)

Nestle Smarties Mini Eggs
(Available in Tube or Bag)

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It’s still better than the Milky Bar Eggs though.

Taste: 3.25/5
Value: 3/5

Mars Mini Eggs

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Taste: 4.5/5
Value: 4.5/5

Galaxy Mini Eggs

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That’s it, nothing fancy, just bite size Galaxy in a wrapper. By the Cottonbum of the Great One, NUMS!

Taste: 4.75/5
Value: 4.5/5

Mars and Friends Mini Eggs

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Ok, so really they’ve just taken their Celebration pack and made a few of them egg shaped, and to be honest the Teasers and Milky Way are let downs. The Maltesers are more crunchy than crispy, as the honey comb pieces are biscuity, and the Milky Way nougat is very sweet compared to the other eggs. But you do get the Mars and Galaxy together!

Taste: 4/5 (The two additionals bought the score down)
Value: 4.5/5 (If you want a range of tastes and textures, this is your bag)

Kinder Bites and Kinder Bueno Bites

Unfortunately, I can’t actually provide a review for these, as they were so exceptionally expensive, that I just couldn’t afford them. Despite being mostly aimed towards children, the price puts them on the luxury side of the market.

What I can tell you is that no toys come inside these eggs. The Kinder eggs are chocolate eggs with a smooth, nougat-like milk and hazelnut filling, where the Kinder Bueno eggs are similar but include a thin, wafer inner wall to seperate chocolate and nougat.