Cliodhna's food Recipe #1: Far Breton from Nantes Brittany

Hi All,
In 2008 I visited Nantes in France and rediscovered Breton Cider, Le Corbusier and the Breton Far.

Brittany is a Celtic Nation and Breton is a language very similar to Welsh. My mother used to tell me that when French sellers came to Wales and travelled into the Valleys they would speak to the women of the house in Breton and not English as the Welsh women could understand and some would not have spoken English anyway.

Having travelled to Brittany twice once to Dinan I want to share one of my absolutely favorite recipes #1 and this is for Breton Far or Far Breton, a sort of sweet and heavy Yorkshire pudding with a layer of prunes soaked in brandy. In Nantes I found not only the mechanical elephant above but the Far Breton in a cake shop. In Dinan my friends mother cooked it for us and it was amazing!

Ingredients
22-24 prunes soaked in brandy, rum, armagnac or tea
2 cups milk
4 eggs
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 oz melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup flour (I used Einkorn flour)

Soak the prunes in spirit or cold tea for a couple of hours and arrange in a buttered dish. Beat the eggs and add the flour, salt, sugar, vanilla extract and melted butter. I put the dish or prunes in their buttered dish into the over to warm up and after five minutes or so then pour in the milk and flour mixture. Bake then for 45 minutes at 400 degrees F. It is a good idea to soak the prunes overnight and make the custard mixture ahead of time and leave the custards mixture to stand overnight before baking.

This is an absolutely delicious dish.