Desserts

2 recipes

Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce

The New Orleans bread pudding, the warm dessert that lands on the table at the end of every Cajun Sunday lunch with a slug of bourbon sauce poured over it. You tear a French baguette or stale brioche into chunks and soak them in a custard of whole eggs, double cream, milk, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg until they're saturated. Raisins (often rum-soaked the night before) and toasted pecans fold in for sweetness and crunch. The pudding bakes in a buttered dish at moderate heat until the top has crisped to deep bronze and the middle is just set but still soft and quivering. While it bakes you build the bourbon sauce: butter, sugar, an egg yolk and a generous slug of bourbon whisked over low heat into a glossy, silky pour. Spooned hot over the pudding at the table, the sauce running down the sides and pooling on the plate. A small scoop of vanilla ice cream alongside if you're feeling ambitious.

1 hour 40 minutes Serves8

Pecan Pie

The defining dessert of the American South, and a Thanksgiving table fixture from Louisiana up through the Carolinas. You blind-bake a simple all-butter shortcrust shell to a deep gold, then toast pecans briefly in a dry pan to bring out their oils before scattering them across the base of the cooled crust. The filling is whisked smooth from eggs, brown sugar, golden syrup (or corn syrup), butter, vanilla, a slug of bourbon and a pinch of salt, then poured over the pecans where it bubbles up between the nuts. Bake at moderate heat until the centre has just set with a slight wobble - rushing it gives a runny centre, overbaking gives a dry, granular one. Eaten warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a generous dollop of softly whipped cream, with the kitchen still smelling of toasted pecans an hour later.

2 hours 30 minutes Serves8