The Best Part of Brunch...

...is booze and dessert, obviously. This is my last post about what I made for Mother's Day this year (first and second here), and today we're focusing on the cocktail and the sweets!

First up, drinks:

French 75

-2 bottles of champagne

-5 lemons

- simple syrup

- gin

Now, the classic recipe for this is: 4 parts champagne, 2 parts gin, 1 part lemon juice, and a dash of simple syrup. I find depending on the dryness of your champagne and the tartness of the lemons that a lot of playing around is needed. I would say I usually prefer it more like 5 or 6 parts champagne.

Mimosas

If you don't know how to make a mimosa, get thee to a brunchery, and get back to me.

And now, my favorite part of everything, always. The course so nice I made it twice, because it's really not a meal without two desserts.

Classic Bread Pudding

serves 6

- 6 cups cubed French or Italian bread (fresh, stale, doesn't matter, it's getting toasted)

- 2 cups almond milk

- 1/4 cup maple syrup

- 1/4 cup brown sugar

- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom

- 1 tsp ground cinnamon

- black sesame seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Grease a 9x9 in dish.

3. Once oven is hot, arrange bread on a baking sheet and bake 5-10 minutes, til pretty well toasted.

4. Meanwhile, whisk together everything else except the sesame seeds.

5. Once the bread is toasted, toss with the almond milk mixture until it's all moistened, without tossing until it starts to become mush.

6. Transfer to the baking dish, toss with sesame seeds, and bake for 50-65 minutes, until the top is getting crusty and the milk has been absorbed.

Fresh Fruit with Cashew Ricotta

serves 6

- 3/4 cup raw, unsalted cashews

- 1/2 cup blanched almonds

- 1 cup water

- 10-12 dates

- 2 tsp lemon juice

- 1.5 tbsp vanilla

- fresh fruit (berries are especially nice here!)

1. Put the water and nuts in a bowl and let sit 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, rough chop the dates.

3. After half an hour, put the water, nuts, dates, lemon, and vanilla in a blender and puree smooth. There will still be very small chunks but they should be pretty uniform. If the mixture is too wet, throw a couple more cashews in there, and if it needs to be sweeter, more dates.

If you're serving it with berries, I highly recommend hulling and chopping some strawberries, tossing them with a little bit of balsamic vinegar and sugar, and letting them sit during dinner until you're ready to serve them with the ricotta and other fresh berries.

This is a really versatile recipe- if you want to go savory you could skip the vanilla, go light on the dates, and add a pinch of salt. Or, best option of all, you could use it to have a pretty scrumptious tea time:

Fresh biscuits with Earth Balance, homemade jam, and cashew ricotta is the type of snack dreams are made of. Nearly too good to be true.

Happy eating (and drinking)!