Bread Pudding - I Used To Hate It

One of my coworkers brought in bread pudding this past week. One had cranberries and chocolate laced throughout it. She also brought a quart of heavy cream to drizzle over the top. Mmmmm, delectable!

So I remembered that Pioneer Woman made some Bread Pudding and checked out her recipe again today. I decided on the spur of the moment to make some.

I used week old white bread - real artisan style white bread. It was pretty dried out and would have been hard to eat sandwich-style.

And... true to form, I couldn't follow Pioneer Woman's recipe exactly. I printed out her recipe and started out okay, but started to deviate starting with the sugar... so here are my ingredients:

2 eggs
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 1/2 to 5 cups white bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped finely
1 handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 handful of fresh cranberries

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Beat together eggs, butter, vanilla, and milk. Add sugar and mix until sugar is dissolved. Arrange bread cubes tightly in a nine-inch baking dish. Pour liquid over the bread, making sure you get all of it good and soaked. Sprinkle chocolate chips and cranberries on the top. Take a spoon and smash the bread cubes down so they soak up some of the liquid. Sprinkle walnuts all over and bake for 55 to 70 minutes, or until crust is golden brown all over the top.

At 55 minutes, there was still liquid in the center. So I took the dish out and used a spoon to mash down so that the liquid seeped throughout the bread. I cooked it for another 25 minutes and then it was done.

Pioneer Woman makes a whiskey cream sauce, but I drizzled heavy cream over mine instead. I also used less sugar than she called for - I find typically that most dessert recipes contain way too much sugar and I have not had a problem using half as much sugar. I don't try that trick with cookies though.

Until next time.