Ingredient Adventure: Lavender

I loved it in soaps and perfumes, but I couldn't imagine what lavender would actually taste like. Nevertheless, for my first ingredient adventure, I decided to forego something too intimidating (like geoduck) and shoot for simplicity. I had a few sprigs of lavender--what next?

I pored over recipes. Sondra Bernstein's lavender creme brulee sounded divine, but this college student doesn't even have a pair of salad tongs, much less a torch to caramelize the sugar-coated tops of the dishes. Plus, eight eggs is excessive for one person.

Then, it struck me: the leftover loaf of ciabatta that was not getting any younger sitting on my counter. There are a plethora of great recipes for using up leftovers, but bread pudding is one of the best. It takes pure magic to transform a stale loaf of bread into a creamy, delicious dessert, right? Pure magic, or at least a cup of heavy cream.

After some heavy Googling, I found a recipe for a lavender bread pudding that after some tweaking would make a great foundation for my own version. Heating the heavy cream and then allowing the lavender to steep gave the pudding that yummy, aromatic lavender-ness. I nixed the recipe's suggestion for apricot jam and raisins, and I didn't arrange the bread in neat little slices. I tore up the loaf of ciabatta and threw the shreds in a baking pan. Then I poured the mixture of lavender cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, and milk over the bread and baked it in the oven for about 45 minutes.

My moment of genius came when I remembered the Meyer lemon that was hiding in my fridge. Meyer lemons are a sweet lemon hybrid that taste like meadows and flowers and unicorns wrapped up in lemony deliciousness. My big idea was to make a Meyer lemon cream to top the pudding by adding a tablespoon of zest, a tablespoon of juice, and some sugar to a cup of cream. I delegated the task of whipping the cream to my boyfriend. Bad idea.

The problem is that my boyfriend doesn't know his own strength. Or at least he doesn't know how quickly a lovely cream can warp into a misshapen batch of butter. "Uh, it's getting kind of... lumpy..." he mumbled. I dashed over, arms flailing, but my clever garnish had been permanently mutated into a weird cream-butter mongrel. Oh well. I used it anyway, because I was proud of my idea, and you know what? All lumps aside, it tasted wonderful.

I worried that the combination of lavender and lemon would have my bread pudding tasting like an Aveda massage oil, but it was a great success. Even Jerry the Dog, whose tastes normally sway towards the savory, wanted a taste (see below). Check out the original recipe here.