AH-HA! Now I’m Cooking With Broadband

I love bread pudding and I’ve always liked recipes that do something with leftovers. I really don’t like leftovers so I would much rather make something new out of them. I had about half of a pound cake sitting on the shelf that was starting to go stale (it wasn’t great to begin with, got it at King Soopers on discount as a midnight snack, and its been sitting on the shelf for quite a while) . So I decided to try a little experiment.

For those of you who don’t know bread pudding is just bread soaked in a custard and baked. It’s very tasty and easy. For my custard I used:

3 eggs
1 cup cream (could easily replace with milk also)
1 cup milk
.25 cup sugar
vanilla to taste (I poured in maybe a teaspoon)

You don’t need much sugar since we’re using pound cake. If you were using plain bread you might want a bit more or if you are going to make a sauce you might want a bit less. Mix the eggs, cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla until well blended and smooth. You can also add nutmeg or cinnamon for flavor.

The rest is even easier. Slice up your pound cake (or tear up your bread if not using pound cake) and gently mix the slices into the custard. I say gently because if you mix the poundcake too hard it turns to crumbs and you lose some texture (doesn’t affect the flavor) . Let it sit for a while (5-10 min) then pour the mixture into a greased 8x8 (9x9?) pan and bake for 30-45 min at 350 degrees.

This turned out great for me, perfect texture and awsome flavor. You can make almost any bread or cake into a pudding using the same custard. I really like sourdough and I’ve heard that doughnuts work really well. For a more traditional pudding you can use white bread and mix raisins into the custard. Often bread pudding is served with a sauce whiskey sauce is standard but I prefer a vanilla. If I get a chance I might try out a couple of sauces and post the best.