Loaf Spanish-Fashion

Cut off the tops of six rolls, take out all the crumbs, fill them with a ready made [chocolate] cream, and cover them with the tops that were cut off, soak them in sweet Spanish wine, about a quarter of an hour; then wipe and flour them; fry of a good colour, and glaze them with sugar.
George Dalrymple, The Practice of Modern Cookery adapted to Families of Distinction as well as to those of the Middling Ranks of Life, Edinburgh, 1781

Here is the modern adaptation.

Let me just say that the chocolate custard is so fantastic by itself, I thought the wine-soaked, deep fried, sugar-strewn rolls took away from it. Yes, the chocolate is that good. Since I'm going to be making this over an open fire in as yet unknown weather conditions, I think I'm just going to stick to the custard.

Here are some of my amateur observations:

If you let the rolls sit out for a day, it's just about impossible to grate the crust off, at least with the microplane I have. Instead, I grated them and hollowed them out and then let them get good and stale.

I think soaking in wine is a bit of overkill and made them soggy. I just dipped them in a bowl of wine, and still thought they were too soggy. I would actually do this step first, and give them more time to drain, or I'd sprinkle them with wine and let it soak in slowly.

Deep frying in a saucepan (because all I'm going to have at the event is a spider) is not my strong point. Especially with cup-shaped, hollowed out rolls. And deep-frying in the rain doesn't sound like fun.

YMMV, but I think I'll just stick with the custard.