Bread Pudding - The Best Thing I Ate ...recently

Val at More Than Burnt Toast has thrown down the gauntlet for a new challenge called "The Best Thing I Ever Ate". All you have to do is recreate something that you've eaten lately that as Val says "blew your socks off". Deadline is on February 15th so get your thinking caps on.





The topic altogether made me smile - it took me back a few years, okay a whole lot of years when I really wanted to be like the other kids in school. They had white bread with yellow margarine and bologna sandwiches and I thought they were so cool. What did I know? My mother made sure we had hot soup and a sandwich that looked like it came from NY Deli. I was embarassed because all the kids would look at me and it took me a long time to realize that they were just drooling at my lunches. My mother always made sure we ate well. Food was holy and nothing was wasted.

So you're wondering how this story relates to my dish. During Christmas break when Psychgrad and R came to visit, I bought a challah bread thinking to have French Toast for Sunday breakfast. It didn't happen and I was left with the better part of a challah bread. What to do? Strangely enough I've only had bread pudding once and thought it was pretty decent so decided to use up the challah bread and literally throw together whatever odds and ends I had in the fridge. This would have ranked as one of the things my mother would never have done or served us - she's a serious carb watcher.



I didn't really have a recipe either so I started by cutting the challah into cubes and set aside.



4 eggs
1 1/2 - 2 cups milk
3 Tbsp butter, melted
2 apples (granny smith is what I used) peeled and cut up in small pieces and slices
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 cup raisins
1 cup sugar (I used brown sugar splenda)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Melt butter and pour into 9x13 pan
Distribute the cubed bread throuhout the pan
Mix together eggs, milk, sugar, cranberries, raisins, apples, cinnamon and nutmeg
Pour wet mix over bread and pat down the bread to make sure it's getting saturated; let it sit for about 1/2 hr.
Bake for approximately 45 minutes



I had absolutely no idea if this would even work but when I tasted the final outcome I couldn't figure out why this hadn't been a common dessert in our family. I loved it!!! It's the best thing I've eaten ... recently.