Four-Star Chocolate Bread Pudding and Using Up Leftovers
Bread pudding is traditionally all about leftovers, specifically using day-old bread. I purchased a beautiful loaf of challah bread for this pudding, but honored the roots of bread pudding by incorporating other leftovers.
I haven’t made many bread puddings, so I don’t have much to compare this recipe to in a head-to-head bread pudding sort of way, but as far as a dessert goes, it was really delicious, custardy, moist, and chocolaty. It was also easy. I did “stale” my fresh loaf of challah bread before making the recipe by baking the cubed bread in a 300 degree F oven until they were nice and dried out. This is a technique I use for French toast as well; dried out bread soaks up more of the custard and makes for a moist delicious result. If you haven’t staled your French toast bread, you definitely need to give it a try, and challah bread makes excellent French toast! Enough about toast, back to pudding.
Now that I’m baking every week I seem to accumulate little containers of leftovers like chocolate sauce, spiced sugar, nut filling, and I am always looking for ways to use them up. Bread pudding is a perfect place to incorporate these odds and ends, so I skipped over adding raisins and decided to use up some finely chopped walnuts and pine nuts that were mixed with spiced sugar. After sifting out the sugar I had ½ cup of chopped nuts, so in they went. I used the spiced sugar I sifted out of the nuts and added a different batch of spiced sugar left over from making crystallized ginger to get the ½ cup needed. I wasn’t too worried about what spices were in the sugar because any mixture would be tasty in the bread pudding and I knew it would be a background flavor rather than a dominating element. The spiced sugar worked perfectly, adding a nice subtle hint of cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, ginger and who knows what else. The hint of spice added slightly to the aroma and came through as a finishing flavor to each bite. The nuts also worked nicely adding a little crunchy texture to the otherwise soft cakey, custardy structure of the dessert.
After tasting this custardy-chocolaty-bready delight, I knew I needed to disperse the goods before I found myself standing over an empty pan with a fork in my hand wondering what happened to all the bread pudding. I chilled it overnight and was very pleased that when cut it held its shape really well and after thorough testing determined it was stable enough to be picked up and eaten by hand. To dress up each pudding cake, I dipped the tops in the chocolate glaze left over from the Amaretti torte I made a few days earlier.
Thank you to Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle for selecting the recipe for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie baking assignment, and giving me the perfect opportunity to use up three different leftover items. If you have some leftovers just waiting to become bread pudding, you can find the recipe on Lauren’s blog.
I, along with over 350 other baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 70 recipes completed 151 to go!
All photos by David Peterman unless otherwise noted
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April 21st, 2009 at 12:28 pm
This is the loveliest and most delicious bread pudding presentation that I have ever seen! I have never used Challah bread for French Toast. I will definitely give that a try.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Gorgeous presentation! This was a really delicious treat. It was my first time trying bread pudding and I’m a convert!
April 21st, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Nice use of leftovers! Love the addition of nuts and a glaze – they look so classy!
April 21st, 2009 at 3:36 pm
How perfect! I love the way you used leftovers and bread pudding is wonderful for that. I love the individual servings.
April 21st, 2009 at 4:02 pm
LOL I love your idea of dispersing the goods, juste in case!!! …and as much as it was almost a sin the force challah to stale, hummm… this what well worth it, I agree!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I loooove the minis you’ve cut out! Absolutely takes the rusticity out of the pudding and turns it into fancy, classy, mushy bites! Very nice touch!
April 21st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
All of your leftovers sound like great additions, and the individual pudding cakes look fabulous. Great idea!
April 21st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Ooh, another gorgeous presentation! I think putting the glaze on top of the bread pudding bites is inspired!
And congrats to you for having run the Boston Marathon! That’s an incredible accomplishment.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I know what you mean about accumulating stuff.. it drives me crazy. If it wasn’t for your egg white freezing tip, I would waste so many eggs.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:05 pm
I love how you used the leftovers, how creative! Your pudding looks really good. I’ve never had challah, it’s something I’ll have to try.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I love that little comment about thorough testing! Yum, testing! Great use of leftovers. I managed to use up some dry kuglehopf and some egg wash, but darn, I didn’t even think about the bowl of chocolate ganache sitting in the fridge. Well it’s in the freeze now! Great job.
Nancy
April 21st, 2009 at 9:33 pm
This looks wonderful . . . I used cinnamon bread instead with mine.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:26 am
I don’t know which is better your great description of the perfect leftover recipe or the photo of your beautiful individual desserts. Well done!
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hahah I have a MILLION containers of leftovers in my fridge! It is dangerous, because I find myself picking at them! The bread pudding looks great… and I love the addition of the spices! It sounds amazing!
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Very nice little cakes there!! Way to use up and dress up the left overs. Very creative!
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
This looks and sounds amazing! I love how you got the deep, deep chocolate color, and chocolate glaze would take these over the top!
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:43 am
Creaive way to use up those left overs. They look wonderful. I have thought of bread pudding as a finger food, but you got it. Great job.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Ooh, nice job taking these tothe next level. I think the glaze on top sounds yummy.
They look so cute!