Heaven In A Pan

Good day, Kitchies!  The days are flying by.  Never enough time to get things done that I want to do.  And Christmas is coming FAST!!  I have most of my shopping done (except for the hubs' stocking) and we started wrapping this weekend.  Work isn't quite as hectic today, so I thought I'd share a recipe with you.

A while back my mom emailed me this recipe.  As soon as I saw it, I *knew* I had to make it.  Especially since I was on a pumpkin kick!  I gathered up the ingredients and I gave it a go.  If you like bread pudding, you'll love this recipe!

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

1 egg
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups whole milk
2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
3 1/2 cup white bread cubes
3/8 cup miniature chocolate chips
2 Tbsp brown sugar 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease 6 large custard cups.

Whisk together the egg and egg yolks in a large bowl. Add the milk, sugar, pumpkin puree, vanilla extract, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; whisk into a smooth batter. Add the bread cubes and toss gently to dampen. Set aside for 15 minutes. 

Pour the batter evenly into the prepared cups. Sprinkle chocolate chips and brown sugar over each portion. Arrange the custard cups in a shallow baking pan. Pour hot water into the baking pan to halfway up the sides of the custard cups. 

Bake in preheated oven until pudding is golden brown and puffy, about 40 minutes; transfer to cooling rack for 10 minutes. 

NOTES:  I don't have custard cups, so I used an 8x11 glass baking pan.  It worked just fine.  I used half a loaf of French bread and though that was just a touch more than 3 1/2 cups of cubed bread, it was the right amount.   I used fresh pureed pumpkin instead of canned and I think that gave the recipe a little added moisture.  I didn't measure the chocolate chips, nor did I measure the brown sugar.  I added whatever looked like enough.  

I used fresh French bread so it was a little difficult to cut the bread in to cubes, but I imagine you could tear up the bread instead.

Everybody in the pool!  I didn't have mini choco chips on hand so I used regular milk choco chips.  Sprinkled them on and threw the batch in the oven.

This was SOOOOO good!!  I *had* to have a helping after I pulled this out of the oven because the smell of it baking drove me insane.  If I wasn't planning on taking this to work the next morning, I would've had half the pan!

Making this post makes me want to go home and make this tonight. *drool*  You could easily do without the choco chips, but it was a nice added bit of sweetness.

This is best served warm with a drizzling of caramel sauce.  Gah!  I'm torturing myself with this post.  Seriously one of the best desserts I have ever made (in my opinion).  I took this to work and it vanished by 10:00.


Back to work I go!  The EMR system is coming together slowly.  Thankfully only one of the docs are using it right now.  When we do finally go "live", it's going to be chaos and I have a feeling I'm going to want to change my name.  LOL