A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [178]
6. When the pudding tests done, remove from the oven and cool for 10 to 15 minutes.
7. To serve, spoon the warm pudding onto dessert plates and ladle a little of the sauce over each portion.
“Edna Earle!…Have you got a few cold biscuits I could have before supper, or a little chicken bone I could gnaw on?”
—EUDORA WELTY, THE PONDER HEART
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KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS
When I was growing up in Raleigh, I knew exactly when the doughnuts would come out of the fryer at the Krispy Kreme shop on North Person Street and I’d beg my mother to drive me there. Later, when I was old enough to drive, I’d go over myself and buy a big bag of honey-glazed doughnuts, still warm and as light as a dandelion puff.
In the beginning, I believed that Krispy Kreme was a small Raleigh business, but I learned a few years later that the company had been founded in Winston-Salem, about 100 miles west. It all began in 1937 when a doughnut maker named Vernon Rudolph managed to buy a New Orleans pastry chef’s secret recipe for yeast-raised doughnuts. Rudolph set up shop in a little Winston-Salem storefront, made some batches of dough, cut it into rings, fried them in deep fat, then glazed them with honey. Captivated by the aroma, passersby pounded on Rudolph’s door and begged to buy some of his doughnuts. Soon they were selling as fast as he could make them.
To North Carolinians, Krispy Kremes are the only doughnuts worth eating, vastly superior to the heavier sugar-dusted variety made of cake. Even after I’d moved to New York, I would make a pilgrimage to Krispy Kreme whenever I came home to visit.
Today Krispy Kremes are sold in nearly 300 stores across the country, each one capable of producing 10,000 doughnuts a day in twenty different flavors.
For me, however, the original honey-glazed Krispy Kreme remains the one and only.
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KRISPY KREME BREAD PUDDING WITH JACK DANIEL’S–RAISIN SAUCE
MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS
There’s a popular Krispy Kreme bread pudding down south that contains both honey-glazed doughnuts and sweetened condensed milk, but as much as I love sweets, this one sets my teeth on edge. So I’ve come up with a version that’s a tad less sinful. The only doughnuts to use are the original honey-glazed Krispy Kremes. And they should be at least two days old. Note: This pudding puffs majestically as it bakes, hence the need for a 2½-quart baking dish. Rush it to the table just as you would a soufflé. If you’re not in the mood for the sauce, top the pudding with fresh berries or thinly sliced fresh peaches and a trickle of milk or cream.
2½ cups milk
3 large eggs
1/3 cup raw or granulated sugar
¼ cup Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey, dark rum, or brandy
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
6 dry honey-glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts, broken into 1-inch pieces (about 7 cups)
Jack Daniel’s–Raisin Sauce
1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Thoroughly butter a 2½-quart soufflé dish or straight-sided casserole and set aside.
2. Whisk the milk, eggs, sugar, whiskey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl until well combined. Add the doughnuts, toss lightly, and let stand for 10 minutes.
3. Scoop all into the soufflé dish, spreading to the edge and smoothing the top.
4. Slide the soufflé dish onto the middle oven shelf and bake uncovered for 35 to 40 minutes or until puffed, lightly browned, and set like custard.
5. Serve at once with Jack Daniel’s–Raisin Sauce.
These suppers—stag affairs served by the ladies—offered the same collations, with trifling differences, month after month…fried chicken or chicken pie, a baked ham, four or five vegetables, cornbread and beaten biscuit and hot rolls…and a dessert course of a homey dish like tipsy parson, ambrosia, or Cousin Pokie’s apple pudding.
—FRANCES GRAY PATTON, THE FINER THINGS OF LIFE
…a cousin twice removed, Harriet