Pancake and Blackberry Bread Pudding

Pancake Bread Pudding

Unsustainable practices found in large scale food production, distribution, and commercialization are not primarily focused on nutrition, profit margins dictate our large scale food production and agriculture practices. There are many issues that I hope to address in future posts, but today I wanted to focus on food waste. Food waste is both a humanitarian and ecological issue, which neither mainstream journalism or politics has adequately addressed, yet almost every one of us is guilty of wasting food to varying scales. In fact, the USDA states that in 2010, 30-40% of the US food supply (about 133 billion pounds of food) were thrown out and never consumed. These numbers included retail food suppliers, restaurants, and home kitchens.

133 billion pounds of food per year is an incredible amount of food to sit in a landfill for the rest of eternity, considering that a large portion of it could go to feeding hungry people or be used in agriculture to feed animals or compost. I do not have a cure-all solution for our food waste problem, but I do think that through better management, storage methods, and creativity our nation can reduce food waste especially in the home sector. That is why I want you to take a moment and think about what food you have thrown out in the past week. What steps could you have taken to preserve and utilize that food?

This recipe came about after a Sunday pancake breakfast where I was faced with a wasteful dilemma of my own. There were plenty of leftover pancakes and despite a desire to trash the leftovers and be done with it, I started to brainstorm ways to re-purpose, and the result was a winning dessert. Bread pudding is a perfect way to save and re-purpose bread, or other dough/batter products, and it generally only requires staple pantry and refrigerator items.

Pancake Bread Pudding



Pancake and Blackberry Bread Pudding


Ingredients
  • 1 & 1/2 c Whole milk
  • 3 c Pancake scraps, torn
  • 2 Large eggs
  • 1 c Sugar
  • 1 T Vanilla extract
  • 2 Blackberries per pudding
  • 1/2 t Cinnamon
  • 1/4 t Ground sage
  • Butter to coat tin
Cooking Directions
  1. Coat cupcake tin with butter and preheat oven to 350 .
  2. Add milk and pancake scraps into a bowl and combine with hands.
  3. Mix eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, and spices in a separate bowl.
  4. Combine both bowl's contents and mix.
  5. Pour batter into cupcake tin.
  6. Stick 2 blackberries in each cupcake.
  7. Bake for 40 minutes or until set.
  8. Let sit for 10 minutes then remove and transfer to a wire rack.
Total Time: 1 hour
Citations and Further Readings:
  • "USDA and EPA Launch U.S. Food Waste Challenge Calls on both Public Sector and Private Industry to reduce food waste." www.USDA.gov. USDA, 4 June 2013. Web.

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