Orange Cognac Bread Pudding: New Year Blog With Friends

Today’s post is the next in our series of Blog With Friends themed collaborations. Each month a group of bloggers get together and each publish a project based on a theme. What I love about his partnership is that it's not bloggers with similar interests or strengths but a diverse group coming up with a variety of posts. In any given month we may a recipe, sewing tutorial, crocheting, crafts project, book review, and/or technology post all related to the theme of the month.

This month's theme is New Year.

There will be individual project pictures and links to what everyone else has to offer at the end of my post, but here's a peek at what we all came up with:

 

I made Orange Cognac Bread Pudding.

Orange Cognac Bread Pudding

It's the new year! You probably knew that. January is such a strange month. Having just gone through 3 months that included my birthday, College Boy's birthday, Hubs' birthday, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's Eve, I feel like I've planned, prepped, cooked, baked and cleaned in a way that hamsters on a wheel might relate to. One thing just rolls into the next and the next and the next.

Then suddenly January rolls around and after the first it's a dead stop. No family birthdays until next month. No holidays to cook and bake for until Valentine's Day. It feels eerily stagnant.

So although January is often a time for people to wholeheartedly attack yet another set of resolutions or {{gasp}} commitment to diet, for me it's a time to work on staying creative. So this year for our New Year's day dessert, I decided to try something new and I'm glad I did. This bread pudding is so easy to make and smells amazing as it cooks. No question, I'll be making it again soon. 

When I say this is easy to make, I mean it. The most effort you have to make is just chopping the bread.

Mix it with the liquid ingredients, cover and refrigerate. I do this part the day before I'm going to serve it. The bread will soak up all that yummy liquid. 

Once it's in the crockpot, be sure to put paper towels under the cover. This stops the condensation that forms on the cover from dripping into your dessert. It only takes about 3 hours. You'll probably have to replace the paper towels once or twice while it's in the crockpot, but that's the extent of your effort. And just wait until you smell it 
cooking!

You can serve this dessert a number of ways, I top the warm bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Or top with whipped cream. Or just serve it naked.

 

As always, any time you make one of my recipes, feel free to post a picture of it to my Baking In A Tornado Facebook Page. I'd love to see it!

Be sure to visit all of this month's other Blog With Friends projects:

Dawn of Spatulas on Parade shares her recipe for Sugar Free Pear Bundt with Vanilla Whipped Cream.

Minette of Southern Belle Charm shares a DIY, What's Old is New.

Lydia of Cluttered Genius shares Go Mom! 2019, inspiring Mom through the eyes of your kids.

Jules of The Bergham Chronicles shares New Leaf.

Orange Cognac Bread Pudding

                                                                          ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1# Italian loaf
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup milk 
1/3 cup cinnamon coffee creamer (can substitute with other flavors, too)
2/3 cup orange cognac
3 eggs
6 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp orange zest
1 can mandarin oranges, drained

Directions:
*Cut bread into approximately one inch chunks.
*In a microwave safe bowl, melt the white chocolate chips with the heavy cream until completely smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.
*In a large bowl, whisk milk, creamer, orange cognac, eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and orange zest together, then add the melted white chocolate. Mix in the bread cubes until all the bread is coated. Carefully mix in the the drained oranges, then cover and refrigerate for an hour, or up to a day.
*Spray crockpot with non-stick spray.
*Pour bread pudding mix into crockpot. Manipulate the mix so it's thicker along the sides of the pot with less in the center, as the edges cook faster.
*Put a paper towel over the crockpot so that the cover holds the towel up under the cover. It shouldn't be anywhere near the pudding. Check and replace the paper towel every now and then when it gets too wet.
*Cook on low for approximately 3 hours. Serve warm.
*NOTE: times vary depending on size of crockpot and differences in heat levels. Keep an eye on it the first time to know how long it will take for you.

Team Summer: Secret Subject Swap

Welcome a Secret Subject Swap. This month 7 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. Read through mine and at the bottom you’ll find links to all of today’s other Secret Subject participants.

My subject is: Some of us hate winter and live as far south as we can go. Some of us love winter and enjoy the cold and snow. Which one are you? What do you do to enjoy it?
It was submitted by: Minette of Southern Belle Charm.

It's a barometer, when I get prompts like this one, of how much things have changed. At heart, I'm a summer girl. All things considered, I much prefer the heat to the cold, not to mention driving with the windows open as opposed to skidding on ice and snow. Truth is, not just because of where I live (and I'll explain that in a minute) but because the older I get the less tolerant I seem to be of the cold, as it stands right now I would love to move south. Permanently.

There was a time, though, when I would tell you that I love both seasons, all four, really. I would have thought, long ago, that much of the way I felt was a product of having grown up with the four distinct seasons. I now know it's more involved than that. I didn't just grow up with both winter and summer, but I grew up in an environment where you can make the most of both. 

I lived a little over an hour from amazing beaches. Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket to the south. Plum Island, Gloucester and Rockport to the north. Lakes for boating and my love of water skiing, and pools for raft floating. I adored having sun kissed skin and being brown as a berry (well, once I burned and peeled a few times).

I also lived just a couple of hours drive from some pretty great ski mountains, large and small. There were many times we'd spend the day floating downhill on white powder, and picking myself up, laughing, after a patch of ice got the best of me. But that's OK, the day always ended with a cocktail (hot cocoa when younger) and something sweet served beside a fire roaring in the fireplace. Thoroughly exhausted but nonetheless invigorated best described those days.

Mocha Cinnamon Cake

I now live in the Midwest. Still a part of the country with the same four seasons but, I'd argue, no way to enjoy them. I have told this story about finding myself landlocked before, but I'll tell you again today. When I first moved here, I was distressed by not having access to what, to me, represented the fun of the seasons. Knowing there were no oceans (duh), I decided I'd just have to get used to beaching it on lakes. I could find lakes on the map but no indication of where beaches were. I knew I was in trouble when I called the Parks Department to ask which lakes had beaches and they laughed. They laughed!

Winter came and, of course, I knew I was out of luck with a mountain but, desperate, I asked a neighbor if maybe there was a local ski hill. And there was. I got a little glassy-eyed and tuned out when she was explaining something about snow-making on a garbage dump. Nope. I'm out.

In order to raise our boys to appreciate the joys that the seasons hold for us, we had to fly with them to the ocean. Learning to ski took a 10 hour drive to a neighboring state with ski mountains. The fact that both of the boys love lobster and searching for sand dollars, know how to ski and snowboard, makes me happy. But it required an extraordinary amount of effort and was only for planned and extended vacations, not part of daily life.

I remember, years ago, an enterprising young real estate agent going door to door in our neighborhood. "I have a home for sale in this area," he said, "do you have any friends or family who might be interested in living in your neighborhood?"

"Sure," I answered, "put in an ocean, a nice ski mountain and we'll talk."


Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Climaxed
Wandering Web Designer 
Cognitive Script 
Southern Belle Charm
The Bergham Chronicles 
Part-time Working Hockey Mom

Mocha Cinnamon Cake

                                                              ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe


Ingredients:

Box white cake mix and the ingredients specified in the package directions

2 TBSP instant coffee granules
3 TBSP baking cocoa
1/2 tsp cinnamon

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 TBSP cinnamon flavored creamer
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup powdered sugar

3 TBSP chocolate syrup

Directions:
*Preheat oven according to cake package directions. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans. 
*Prepare the cake batter and divide into the 3 prepared pans. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the cake springs back to the touch.
*While the cake is baking, make sure your coffee granules are finely grated. Mix them with the baking cocoa and cinnamon and set aside.
*Once baked, cool the cakes in their pans for 10 minutes, then remove and cool completely.
*Beat cream cheese, 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar and the flavored creamer until smooth.
*In a separate bowl, beat heavy cream until soft peaks form. Add the 1/3 cup powdered sugar and beat until stiff peaks hold, then fold into the cream cheese mixture. Set aside 1/2 cup of this frosting.
*Place one cake layer onto your serving plate. Spread with approximately 1/4 of the frosting mixture. Sprinkle with about 1/3 of the coffee/cocoa/cinnamon and cover with the second cake layer. Repeat with another 1/4 of the frosting, then another 1/3 of the coffee/cocoa/cinnamon. Top with the third cake layer and frost the top and sides with the remaining frosting. Sprinkle with the remaining coffee/cocoa/cinnamon.
*Mix the chocolate syrup into the 1/2 cup of frosting that had been set aside. Pipe along the bottom of the cake. Store in the refrigerator.
 

Mystery at the Castle. Chapter Three: The Past is Present

Welcome again to the latest of our collaborations that we call the Progressive Story Project. These stories are so much fun both to write and to read. The way they work is simple, a group of writers craft a story not by collaborating with each other, but by, one by one, adding our own piece to what those before us have written. The end result is one cohesive story.

This time the story is called Mystery at the Castle. So far I've posted two chapters including the contributions of 9 writers. Be sure to read them before picking up the story today.
Chapter One: Friends for Life and 
Chapter Two: Suspicion 

As usual, the author of each section is to the far right of their contribution. For more of their writing, be sure to check out their blog, linked by their names.

Chapter Three:

Jules of The Bergham Chronicles

{{Flashback}}

Jill, Kath and Ash stared at the body on the ground in front of them. Kath and Ash looked at each other, confusion and fear shining in their eyes. They then turned to Jill, who was just standing there, a look of utter shock animating her normally unreadable face. She looked up at her two best friends, and back at the dead body.

"This is so not good," Jill said, her normal blankness returning to her face. "I am so sorry. This is not what I was expecting when I asked you to come with me."

"Well," Kat chimed in, "I would certainly hope not. Who is this? Do you know him?"

"Yeah," said the now crouching Jill. "I have known him nearly my whole life. It's my stepbrother Mikey."

"Your what??" squeaked Ash. "You have a stepbrother? Since when?"

"Since I was two," Jill said as she stood back up and faced her friends. "Before Robert became my stepdad, I had another one, Barry, who had five sons. My mom and he were married when I was two, and it lasted until I was six. Barry and four of his sons lived with us. I never knew the fifth son, beyond knowing he existed. After my mom was finally able to rid us and our life of him and his boys, she ended up marrying Robert. He had actually been her divorce attorney. Barry did not quietly exit stage left. In fact, it was quite loud and messy. At times it was downright terrifying."

"Where does he play into this?" Kath asked, turning to look at the dead body laying just feet away.

Ash walked over to a nearby wall and leaned against it, her face still showing signs of shock. She thought she had known Jill better than she knew herself. She suspected there were secrets she kept about her childhood, but she certainly did not think it would be anything this big. This was crazy. This was front page news. This was a mess. She returned her attention back to Jill and Kath, who had walked over to where she was leaning against the cold cement wall.

"Well, he was my oldest stepbrother Mikey. He was almost eleven when he moved in with my mom and me," she paused looking at her friends, her face showing the guilt she was feeling for dragging them into this mess. "Dom was the second oldest. He was eight and so quiet you barely knew he was there. Joey and Vinny were the babies. I say babies, but they were still older than me by three years. In the beginning the change was not too bad. All the boys were in school, so my mom and I still had plenty of alone time. I guess things went downhill when Barry got a new job, where he worked from home, and he really turned into a dictator. He controlled my mom and me with an iron fist, and he let his boys do whatever they wanted. Every few weeks, they would all go on a trip, and it would just be mom and me. We lived for their trips. They would go visit their youngest brother. He was the same age as I was, and their mother had been able to retain custody. I never met him, and they never really talked about it. I know his name was John Phillip. I always thought it was weird they always went by shortened names, but the baby brother was always John Phillip. Anyway, once my mom was finally able to get the divorce finalized, I heard Barry and the boys moved back to Maine, to be closer to John Phillip. I heard stories over the years, about the boys getting into trouble, and had heard they all got it all straightened out for the most part. Except for Mikey. Good ole Mikey." Jill stared at Mikey's lifeless body, and you could tell he was anything but good.

"What led to the divorce?" Ash the always nosy investigative reporter asked, as she stared at Jill, glancing briefly at Ash.

"Barry was always a bit controlling," Jill started quietly. "I really never liked him. Other than Dom, I really did not like the boys either. Things were not actually too bad until Barry began working from home. That is really when everything went downhill. He became beyond controlling of my mom and I. We were kept on short leashes. Of course the boys did not have leashes. they also never got in any serious trouble, no matter what they did. Mikey got away with the most. Things got weird, and he did some awful things but I really never saw him in trouble, ever. He started being super controlling of me. It really got bad once I started Kindergarten. He appointed himself my guardian. He would walk me to school and home from school. I don't know how he did it, but he was always around me at school. He would get mad if I played with boys at recess. If he did not like a friend, I was not allowed to play with them. I hated it. My teacher noticed, and she tried to tell Barry what she had been seeing once when he picked me up for a doctor appointment, but Barry told her to mind her own business. A while into the school year, I asked Mikey to leave me alone, told him he was not my Dad. He told me of course he was not my dad, but one day I would be his. I was confused by what he meant, and then he told me I would marry him one day."

Kat cut in, "Ew! What a total creep! I cannot imagine anyone saying that to their stepsister, especially their five year old stepsister! He never touched you, did he?"

"No," Jill said with absolute conviction in her voice. "My mom definitely would never have let that happen. I was so upset after Mikey told me I was going to marry him. The first time Barry and the boys went to see John Phillip after he had said that to me, I told my mom that I did not want to marry Mikey. She wanted to know what I was talking about, so I told her what Mikey had said and what he had been doing. That was the day we met Robert. It took a year, but my mom divorced Barry and saved me from anything Mikey would have done. The first few years were great. We had a rough patch when I was in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. Mikey began stalking me. He kept his distance, for the most part, but he always managed to make his presence known. He got in big trouble, right before the end of my freshman year, and I never saw him again. I received the occasional creep letter and I am fairly certain they were from him. I never saw him, though. Until tonight." Her voice trailed off, and she glanced over at Mikey's body.

"Well," said Ash, concern coating her voice. "What do we do now? I mean, we should probably call a lawyer."

"Why a lawyer?" asked Kat, fear showing in her voice and on her face.

"A lawyer," chimed in Jill "because there is no way we are getting out of this unscathed. There is no way anyone will believe we ended up at an abandoned warehouse, in the middle of nowhere, and just happened upon a dead body. We are screwed. I am so sorry, ladies. I had no idea this was going to happen."

"We just need to make sure we make it out of this," Kat said, her normal confidence returning to her voice. "Not only unscathed, but completely scot free of any accusations and suspicion. We did not do this, and I damn sure am not gong to let this ruin any of our lives. Especially not you, Jill. This jerk caused you enough trouble already."

"I agree," Ash said, grabbing her friends' hands and squeezing them tight. "No way is this jerk going to bring any of us down. That is why we need to make sure nobody ever learns we were here. We need to do this right, and we need to do it quickly."

That was the night that not only solidified their friendship, but made them the Tres Amigas, closer than any of their other sorority sisters. It was the night they all gained a secret, a big dark secret. One that had seemingly remained hidden. At least until now.

Sarah Nolan 

{{back to present day, a few hours later}}

Jill sat by the window, staring out at the dark sky. The feeling in the pit of her stomach was not unfamiliar. She knew that something big was about to happen, something she couldn't control. She closed her eyes, willing the premonition to come. Call it a sixth sense, but she could always tell when something was off. Thinking back to conversations she'd had previously with Kathryn, she tried to figure out who was responsible for her death. She kept coming back to Phil, Kathryn's possessive boyfriend. They'd never met him . . . evidently he didn't approve of Kathryn having friends other than him. Jill knew that Kathryn coming here was going to be an issue with Phil. Was he capable of murder?

Getting up, Jill headed to Kathryn's room in search of her phone. Finding it on the nightstand, Jill sat on the bed and punched Kathryn's birthday, knowing it was her passcode. She looked at the call list but it revealed nothing suspicious. Same with the text and Facebook messages. So far, she wasn't getting anywhere with her phone search. She looked at the wall, wondering what else she could check.

Then it hit her . . .

She pulled up the photo gallery and searched through her pictures, stopping when she saw a picture of Kathryn with a familiar looking man. The face staring back at her caused the memories she'd boxed up to come busting out of their housing. While it wasn't actually Mikey, it was eerily similar. Putting two and two together, Jill surmised that Phil was actually John Phillip.

Her ex-step-family was coming back to haunt her again.

Dawn of Cognitive Script
and Spatulas on Parade

Jill knew it was crazy, but she had to confide in someone. Taking her phone out of her pocket she pulled up "favorites" and then stopped. Did she dare tell anyone? Steph was the quiet one, shy, introverted but very insightful. All the girls were close but no one knew that Steph had become her confidant several years earlier when all the trouble happened with Barry and his boys. Well, the boy really and especially Mikey.

Taking a deep breath, she punched Steph's number. It rand and rang, hmm, no answer. While she was contemplating her next move, the door opened. Startled, she jumped up. Now she stood face to face with the great mystery, Phil.

She froze, he did for a moment, then he demanded, "WHO the hell are you and WHY are you in Kat's room? I demand you tell me right now!"

Oh dear lord, that voice, he sounded just like Barry and Mikey, her suspicion was right. Phil was John Phillip! She felt faint, she felt weak, flashbacks of horrible threats and screams from so many years ago came rushing into her head . . . deep breathing, calm yourself, she tried to gather her thoughts before she spoke and in came Detective Schmidt.

"Well, what do we have here? The guilty parties trying to cover up evidence? Lovers meeting behind the back of a girlfriend and best friend? So, who do we have and just what are you two up to?" Detective Schmidt asked.

"LOVERS? Have you lost your ever loving mind?" Jill spewed out far too loudly and quckly.

Phil looked at her, cocked his head and then a slow very creepy sadistic smile spread over his face. She knew it, he was just like Mikey and he knew who she was.

All of a sudden the room became crowded, the girls who had been held up in Melissa's room, all came rushing in. Now here stood Ash, Charly, Jenn, Heather, Steph and Melissa all looking with questioning eyes at Jill and Phil. The Detective seemed the most interested in this scene.

Officers Jones and Baylor joined the group. "This is the victim's room, we need to know WHY each of you are here, and exactly WHAT is going on."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ For the conclusion of this story, be sure to read Mystery at the Castle, Chapter Four: Reckoning ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Before you go, don't forget to check out today's recipe: 

Delmonico Ham Casserole 

Delmonico Ham Casserole        
                                                   ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

8 medium sized new potatoes

1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar

2/3 cup half and half

1 TBSP sweet hot mustard

1# pre-cooked thick cut ham

1 green onion, sliced

4 oz jar of pimentos, drained

3/4 cup asparagus, steamed and chopped

salt and pepper to taste

paprika

Directions:

*Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8 X 11 pan Whisk together half and half and sweet hot mustard.

*Slice all potatoes into 1/4 inch slices. Layer half of them into the casserole dish and sprinkle with half of the green onions and pimentos. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover with about 1/2 cup of the shredded cheddar. Drizzle 1/2 of the whisked liquid over the cheese.

*Next evenly distribute the ham and asparagus into the dish, then another 1/2 cup of the cheese.

*Layer the remaining potatoes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle the rest of the liquid, the remaining cheese, then green onions and pimentos. Sprinkle with paprika.

*Cover with tin foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours.