Pud!

Bread pudding does not get a lot of respect. Any time I tell anyone that one of my favorite desserts is bread pudding, I get a raised eyebrow. But I decided I would go ahead and make bread pudding for my friend's potluck anyway. Screw the naysayers! Bread pud forever!

This bread pudding is an unholy, university student-ized chimera of about three different recipes I found online, along with my own experiments. I followed the body of this one, mainly, except I used plain white bread instead of cinnamon challah because it's cheaper, and instead added some cinnamon to the milk mixture. Then I substituted a cup of eggnog for some of the milk, on a suggestion from some other recipe, and reduced the sugar a tiny bit. Then I ground chocolate, cinnamon, and sugar over the whole thing because the spice grinders that President's Choice makes have always intrigued me, so I finally bought some to entertain myself. I also made the vanilla sauce from this recipe because I didn't want to go and buy bourbon.

Oh, and there's a ring, thimble, coin and button in there too. I'm not trying to support the dentists of the greater Montreal area- I warned the kids before I served it to them, I swear. Rather, I thought it would be nice to engage in the old Christmas pudding tradition, where the one who gets the ring in their slice will be the next wed, the one with the coin will have wealth, and the one with the thimble will have a life full of luck. Conflicting stories tell me that the latter may stand for spinsterhood, but since I'm keeping the button (which supposedly means bachelorhood? Stupid conflicting traditions) in we'll keep that one happy. Totally outdated custom? Hell yeah. But that's what Christmas is for! Why else would I watch the early 90s commercials on all of my Christmas tapes? I want to re-live the time, no matter how backwards, when the GST was new, Eaton's still existed, and mullets were de rigueur at DeVry.
Here it is baking in the oven. I know it's a crappy picture, but I wasn't about to risk my life and limb (I have a phobia of heat, mmkay?) to get a better one.


I was supposed to take pictures of it before serving at the party, but alas... I forgot. It turned out much better than I expected. Here's the recipe, if you're interested in recreating my experiment:

Martha's Bastard Bread Pud For the Holidays

Pudding:
8 eggs
1 loaf of day-old white bread
1 cup eggnog
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 pinches salt
1 cup of raisins
President's Choice Cinnamon, Chocolate and Sugar Grinder*
Sauce:
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup whipping cream
President's Choice Cinnamon, Chocolate and Sugar Grinder*

*optional

1. Butter 9x13" baking or casserole dish, and set aside.
2. Tear bread into small pieces about 1" in size, place in large mixing bowl.
3. In another large mixing bowl, whisk eggs together to blend. Add eggnog, milk, whipping cream, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt. Whisk until-blended.
4. Pour mixture over bread pieces. Stir in raisins, making sure that all bread pieces are well-soaked in the mixture.
5. Spoon into prepared baking dish. Cover and refigerate for 2 hours.
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If desired, grate PC Cinnamon, Chocolate, and Sugar generously over top of pudding. Bake uncovered for 1 1/2 hours, or until pudding is puffy and golden.
7. As pudding cools, mix sugar, vanilla and cream together in saucepan over medium heat. If desired, grate in a fair amount of PC Cinnamon, Chocolate and Sugar to the sauce.
8. Serve pudding warm with sauce.