Pumpkin Bourbon Bread Pudding made with Pumpkin Brioche

Bread pudding is probably one of the hardest things to photograph. It's just not attractive. At all. However, the flavor more than makes up for the homeliness of this dish. Especially when the base of the bread pudding is Pumpkin Cinnamon Swirl Bread and leftover Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls. Those two things are pretty awesome all on their own, but then you add a pumpkin bourbon custard mix to that and you have pure heaven. Comfort food doesn't really get much better than that, which means the ugliness of the dish can be easily forgiven -- at least by me.

I was going to make french toast with a loaf of the pumpkin brioche as well, but Friday night we set the loaf on the counter to get stale and then about 3 am on Saturday morning I discovered it on the bedroom floor. One of my dogs decided to "help" by bringing it upstairs for us. Ironically he didn't eat any of it and he barely did any damage to it beyond dog drool and one small puncture mark -- well, that and making it unusable... He just carefully took it from the counter and brought it upstairs for us because he was sure we might need it in the middle of the night.

He has a habit of doing that sort of thing -- finding some random food container and carefully carrying it upstairs for us in the middle of the night -- but this is the first time he's done it with something that wasn't actually in a container or a box. It must be the retriever in him... Our other dog Tank is a pit bull mix and he would have gobbled it up in about 2 seconds flat and then licked all the crumbs up to ensure no evidence was left behind. But of course, that's exactly why he's crated at night too... :)

I found the recipe for this bread pudding on Smitten Kitchen's site and it is excellent. She pulled the recipe from Gourmet Magazine, but then tweaked it a bit -- the version I have below is Smitten Kitchen's and the only change I made was to use half heavy whipping cream and half milk (I only had non-fat milk so figured a balance of fats would be a bit better) and to use the pumpkin brioche instead of plain stale bread. Either way I'm sure it would be excellent.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole milk (Or 1 cup heavy cream plus 1/2 cup whole milk)
3/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
2 tablespoons bourbon (optional)
5 cups cubed (1-inch) day-old baguette or crusty bread
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted* (can skip this step if using the second set of instructions)

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

Gourmet’s Instructions: Whisk together pumpkin, cream, milk, sugar, eggs, yolk, salt, spices and bourbon, if using, in a bowl.

Toss bread cubes with butter in another bowl, then add pumpkin mixture and toss to coat. Transfer to an ungreased 8-inch square baking dish and bake until custard is set, 25 to 30 minutes.

Caramelized Apple Bread Pudding

Bread pudding just doesn't photograph well, which is too bad because it tastes far yummier than any picture could ever show.

After making bread pudding yesterday I figured I was done with bread puddings for a while -- then I realized that I still had a loaf of stale challah bread left and we didn't really have a chance to make French toast with it. I suppose I could have just thrown it out, but that just seemed wrong. So I started another search for bread pudding recipes.

This time, rather than sticking just with a search on epicurious, I actually googled the words "bread pudding" and "food" and "blog". I wanted to see what the rest of the food bloggers were doing when they made bread pudding. One recipe that I wanted to make was on Culinary Concoctions by Peabody -- an oatmeal raisin bread pudding -- but she actually had you make oatmeal bread, a fantastic idea, but no good for my stale challah bread.

After scrolling through many, many pages of results, (for anyone who is curious -- my own pages for bread pudding showed up around the 250 mark for results) I found this recipe on The Gilded Fork. I've never heard of the Gilded Fork before, but this recipe had several things going for it -- mostly that I had 4 apples and apple cider that needed to be used up. So this recipe -- besides sounding fantastically good -- would also use up my sorry looking apples, apple cider that had been in the fridge for a while (still good -- just getting drank very, very slowly), and the stale challah bread. I only had to send my dad to the corner store for eggs and cream to make it happen. :)

Actually, for full disclosure, the recipe calls for heavy whipping cream, but the store only had half & half so I used that instead. Plus, the recipe wants you to make caramel from scratch, but I also had a half bottle of caramel sundae topping that I had used on the Cinn-A-Bun Cheesecake, so I reduced the apple cider as the recipe directed, then I poured in some of the sundae topping, stirred until the two were incorporated and then poured that over the bread pudding.

One big problem I had with the recipe is that it calls for a loaf of brioche or challah bread ot make the pudding -- but it doesn't specify how big of a loaf. They apparently didn't notice that not all loaves are created equally. I think I ended up with more loaf than custard which is too bad. The flavor is still fine, but I was annoyed by the lack of specification.

Overall though, this may be my favorite bread pudding to date. (Although I think I said that about the banana one yesterday too.) Caramelized apples, bread, custard, cinnamon, caramel, and pecans... mmmmm.... yummy.

Ingredients
For the bread pudding:
4 apples (Braeburn, Gala, Fuji or Empire recommended), peeled, cored and coarsely chopped
1/4 cup butter
1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
pinch of salt
1/3 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 loaf of Brioche or Challah bread, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 vanilla bean (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla (increase to 1 tablespoon if omitting the vanilla bean)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
4 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
1 cup pecans or walnuts, toasted

For the cider caramel sauce:
1 cup apple cider
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 cup heavy cream, warmed
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt

Equipment 8x8 baking dish
Large saucepan
Non-stick baking spray
Pastry brush
Rubber spatula
Tall non-reactive metal pot
Whisk
Wooden spoon

Preparation For the bread pudding:

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Toast the bread cubes in the oven until they are crispy, but not burnt, about 10-15 minutes. Place in a large bowl and set aside.

Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a large saucepan. Add the vanilla bean, brown sugar and salt, stir until the sugar is dissolved and then add the apples. Sauté the apples until caramelized and the sugar becomes a thick syrup consistency. Set aside to cool.

Combine the heavy cream, milk, vanilla and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix together the eggs, yolks and sugar. Remove the milk from the heat and slowly temper the eggs with the hot milk, whisking as you combine the two. Whisk in the cinnamon and nutmeg and remove the vanilla bean. Pour the liquid over the bread cubes in a large bowl; add the caramelized apples, walnuts or pecans and mix to combine. Let sit for about 1 hour to completely soak all of the bread with the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a baking dish with either non-stick baking spray or butter. Place the soaked bread cubes into the prepared baking dish and gently press to create and even layer on the top. Bake in the preheated oven until the custard is set and bread is puffed and golden brown on top, about 45 minutes.

For the cider caramel: Place the apple cider in a small saucepan. Bring to a low boil over a medium flame and simmer until the liquid has reached a dense syrup-like consistency and has reduced to approximately 1/4 cup. Set aside to cool slightly.

Combine the sugar, corn syrup, water and lemon juice in a tall non-reactive metal saucepan. With one hand work these two ingredients together until it feels like wet sand. With a wooden spoon, stir the sugar constantly over low heat only until the sugar is completely dissolved. This step prevents the caramel from becoming grainy. Remove from heat and using either a pastry brush or your hand, clean the insides of the pan so that there are no stray granules of sugar on the sides. Do not stir. Return the pot to the stove and bring to a boil over moderate heat. Cook, without stirring but swirling the pan occasionally, until a golden caramel color is reached.

In a separate pan or in the microwave, heat the cream to slighlty warmer than room temperature. Remove the caramelized sugar from the heat and carefully whisk in the warmed cream. It will spatter and boil up, so it is best to stand back when adding the cream. Place back on the heat and whisk to remove any remaining lumps of sugar. Quickly pour into a clean glass or metal bowl to cool. Whisk in the butter, salt and reduced apple cider. Let cool to room temperature.

[Chef's Note: We use the "wet method", which when just enough water is added to sugar to make it a sandy texture, to make caramel in this recipe. During the boiling process, any excess liquid evaporates, causing the syrup to thicken, the sugar concentration to increase, and eventually the color to change from opaque to a rich, golden brown. This method takes longer than the "dry method", cooking sugar without the addition of water, but is easier to control and does not burn as easily.

When making caramel, there is always a danger of crystallization, which can give the finished caramel a grainy texture and cause it to cook unevenly. If the pan or spoon is not completely clean, if the syrup is stirred once it boils, or if the sugar is not properly dissolved, you are bound to get lumps of sugar that will agitate and crystallize in the caramel. However, this is easy to avoid by using a clean pot, adding a pinch of an acidic ingredient such as cream of tartar or lemon juice, and taking caution not to stir the sugar once it boils. Swirling the pan during cooking also helps to evenly distribute heat and color to the sugar without stirring.]
Service Serve the bread pudding warm, drizzled with caramel sauce. Bread pudding is delicious eaten cold, too. For easier slicing, refrigerate the bread pudding for a few hours and then reheat before serving.

Banana Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce

So my dad requested bread pudding for his visit which was easy enough to accomplish. I did a search on epicurious for recipes and said the title for each of them to my mom. She picked three recipes and then we let Chris make the final decision. (My mom didn't want to decide and my dad would have just said whatever mom wants...) Chris picked the Banana Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce.

Like most bread puddings this was incredibly easy to put together. The only really different thing was that the bananas were briefly cooked on the stove with some sugar before going into the pan with the bread, rum-steeped currants, pecans, and milk/egg mixture. I did mess up a bit with the rum sauce because I was chatting with my mom instead of paying attention to the instructions -- I should have melted the butter, then added everything except for the rum and bringing it all to a boil, only adding the rum at the very end. Since I wasn't really paying attention, I dumped everything into the pan and once and brought the whole thing to a boil. I don't really think I hurt anything, except for burning off the alcohol in the rum...

The flavor was good -- nice and banana-y and I really liked the crunch of the pecans and the crust of the bread. I kind of felt like it was missing something though and I can't quite put my finger on what. My best guess is cinnamon to give it a nice spice flavor, but I would be more than willing to take opinions on that. The recipe calls for pre-sliced white bread, but I used the challah I made earlier this week just for this purpose. Because the white bread would have been much softer than the challah, I actually let the bread soak in the milk/egg mixture for about 30 minutes before baking it.


Ingredients:
1/3 cup raisins or currants
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup dark rum
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
3 bananas, peeled, halved crosswise and then lengthwise
5 tablespoons sugar
2 cups whipping cream
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 ounces firm white bread slices, crusts trimmed, each slice cut into 3 strips
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans (about 2 ounces)

RUM SAUCE:
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons dark rum

Combine raisins and 2 tablespoons rum in a small bowl. Let stand 20 minutes.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add bananas and 2 tablespoons sugar and cook until bananas are tender, about 2 minutes per side. Remove from heat. Combine whipping cream, eggs, vanilla extract and remaining 1/4 cup rum and 3 tablespoons sugar in a medium bowl and whisk to blend.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 9X5X3-inch loaf pan. Arrange 1/3 of bread strips crosswise in bottom of prepared pan. Arrange 6 banana pieces atop bread. Sprinkle with half of raisins and half of pecans. Arrange 1/3 of bread strips crosswise atop bananas. Pour half of egg mixture over. Arrange remaining banana pieces atop bread. Sprinkle with remaining raisins and pecans. Arrange remaining bread strips crosswise atop bananas.

Pour remaining egg mixture over. Press gently on top layer to compact. Let stand 15 minutes.

Bake bread pudding until puffed and golden and knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool slightly.

Cut bread pudding into slices. Arrange on plates; drizzle with warm Rum Sauce and serve.

MAKE RUM SAUCE (Makes about 1 cup):
Melt butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add cream, sugar and salt. Bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat. Stir in rum. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over low heat, stirring constantly.)

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding with Cinnamon Rum Sauce

JB made challah bread recently, but when he brought it into work to share today it had tragically gone stale. He suggested toasting it and eating it with plenty of jam, but I suggested he donate it to me and I would make a bread pudding for everyone to enjoy tomorrow. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of bread pudding I would make, but stale challah bread makes excellent pudding and I rarely have any stale challah sitting around. The few times I have made challah bread (or brioche which also makes great bread pudding) I have usually used it up within a day or two -- no chance for stale bread in my house.

Without a set recipe in mind, I jumped onto epicurious and started looking around. A few recipes jumped out at me, but I emailed a list of them to Chris and he picked this recipe -- he wanted a spicy rum sauce. JB objected to the texture of chocolate chips in the bread pudding, so I used a dark chocolate dove bar that I had left from the extreme brownies the other day.

I had a nasty cold today though and ended up spending most of the afternoon wrapped in several blankets on the couch. The ever-wonderful Chris made me homemade ramen and let me sit there. He also volunteered to make the bread pudding since he knew I felt awful. By the time we got around to making bread pudding I felt much better -- not even close to 100%, but at least better than death warmed over -- so we made the pudding together.

It is delicious. Crispy around the edges, soft in the middle. The ultimate comfort food. Eating a few bites of this hot from the oven with the rum sauce made me feel instantly better. I'm sure it won't be quite as good cold tomorrow at work, but it should still be good. The chocolate is present, but not overpowering. The spiced rum sauce is excellent -- sweet with cinnamon and a nice rum flavor. As usual, we used a high-quality rum -- the Patron Pyrat Reserve which has been aged 15 years. It's good enough to sip straight up, so it's definitely good enough for a rum sauce with plenty of rum flavor.

Ingredients:
1 1-pound loaf brioche* or egg bread with crust, cut into 1-inch cubes
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 1/2 cups half and half
1 cup sugar
6 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (packed) dark brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Place bread in large bowl; pour 8 tablespoons melted butter over bread and toss to coat. Add chocolate chips and toss to combine. Transfer mixture to prepared dish.

Whisk half and half, 1 cup sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla extract, and salt in large bowl to blend. Pour over bread cubes in dish. Let stand 30 minutes, occasionally pressing bread cubes into custard. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.) Drizzle remaining 2 tablespoons melted butter over pudding; sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake bread pudding until puffed, brown, and set in center, about 1 hour. Serve warm with Cinnamon-Rum Sauce.

*Brioche is a golden, light bread made from egg- and butter-enriched yeast dough. It is available at French bakeries and some large supermarkets.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter 1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup dark rum 1 tablespoon vanilla extract Melt unsalted butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add dark brown sugar, ground cinnamon, and salt and whisk until sugar is dissolved and mixture is bubbling and smooth, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat. Whisk in dark rum and vanilla extract. Serve warm.

(Cinnamon-Rum Sauce can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over low heat, whisking occasionally, before serving.)

Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Kentucky Bourbon Sauce

for Mira. :)

I made this recipe a couple of months ago and liked it quite a bit. the bread pudding portion was easy to make -- mix the wet ingredients and pour over the bread then bake for a while. The Kentucky Bourbon Sauce was more of a pain, but I made Chris do that part. :)

due to the lazy factor I'm just cutting and pasting what I printed when I made the recipe. I actually found the recipe here.

Pumpkin Walnut Bread Pudding with Kentucky Bourbon Sauce
From chef and author Emeril Lagasse
Friday, October 13, 2000

Fall foods, is there anything more comforting? Emeril's pumpkin bread pudding will warm you like an electric blanket. Make it for your family and friends just once, and you'll never hear the end of it. It's a tasty and fitting dessert or snack for the month of October.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup half-and-half
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
5 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier
2 cups canned pumpkin puree
8 slices white bread, with crusts, torn into 2-inch pieces
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups Kentucky Bourbon sauce (recipe below)
Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Then lightly grease an 8-cup casserole or mold with 2 teaspoons butter and set aside.

2. In a large bowl combine the half-and-half, cream, eggs, and orange zest. Add all of the granulated sugar, 4 tablespoons of brown sugar, the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and Grand Marnier, and whisk together vigorously until well incorporated. Add pumpkin and whisk until incorporated. Fold in the bread and walnuts, and mix thoroughly.

3. Pour the mixture into the prepared casserole, dot with the remaining tablespoon butter, and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons brown sugar. Bake the bread pudding in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 1 hour (or 1 hour and 15 minutes; while the bread pudding is in the oven, make the Kentucky Bourbon Sauce.)

4. Serve warm at room temperature with the Kentucky Bourbon Sauce.

Makes 8 generous servings


Kentucky Bourbon Sauce

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half-and-half
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons Kentucky bourbon whisky
Directions

1. Heat the cream, half-and-half, vanilla and sugar in a heavy saucepan over high heat, whisking constantly, for 3 minutes. Stir the cornstarch into the bourbon to dissolve.

2. When bubbles form around the edges of the cream, whisk in the bourbon mixture. As the cream bubbles up, remove the pot from the heat and continue whisking vigorously until well blended and slightly thickened. Place the mixture over low heat and simmer for 1 minute. Serve immediately with the Bread Pudding, or store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 24 hours.

NOTE: This sauce is not meant to be thick, but fairly thin.

Makes 2 cups