Sunday Sweet

Sunday Dinner,

I’ll admit, I don’t know when I made this. It was on a day when I wasn’t making anything really special for dinner. Maybe it was a roast chicken day. Anyway, I decided to make a bread pudding.

Let me state right now that I don’t like the feel of wet bread. Wet bread feels so gross and many puddings I’ve had were just wet bread. Bleah. This recipe, however, is pretty good.

Again, I pull from Alton Brown with his Chocolate Bread Pudding but with modifications.

Ingredients

  • 2 large whole eggs
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup hot chocolate mix
  • 3 cups half-and-half
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 2 ounces espresso, slightly cooled
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and divided
  • 18 ounces stale challah bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into 1/2-inch pieces

Modification 1: No hot cocoa mix
Modification 2: No espresso
Modification 3: No chocolate chunks

So here you’re asking “Then why are you using the chocolate bread pudding recipe if there’s no bloody chocolate in it?” Because his other recipe is not what I was looking for. Trust me. It works

Modification 4 aka Here’s your damn chocolate:  I had a chocolate babka sitting in the freezer for over a year. The plan was to make bread pudding out of it. It just took longer than I thought. I have no idea how much bread I used. I just cubed it up and put it in a pan. A bundt pan.

Modification 5: Some rum. “how much is ‘some rum’?” No clue. Less than a half cup, more than a tablespoon. I like rum.

I followed the recipe with my mods. I have made this before using a homemade cinnamon bread that had very little salt but was perfect for this. So this time I knew I could kinda wing it. Last time I had too much for my pan. This time, though, this time I was determined to have things turn out differently!

Nope!

That’s a lot of bread pudding. No one else will eat it. Just me. I made a nice bourbon sauce for it as well. I’d post the recipe but I have no idea what I used. Sugar, butter, flour, bourbon, milk all cooked for a bit. It turned out lovely. Really. Just…a lot. I gotta learn how to cook smaller portions.