This amazing recipe is from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book and was picked for us to try with Sweet Melissa Sundays by Carmen of Baking is My Zen, thank you Carmen! I am a new lover of bread pudding, I used to not like the stuff, but after baking Chocolate Bread Pudding for Tuesdays with Dorie and Almond Brioche Bread Pudding for a previous Sweet Melissa Sunday and fiddling with the custard to bread ratio, I've become a huge fan. Turns out I never liked bread pudding because the few times I'd tasted it, I was overcome with mushy bread and eggy custard, two things I can't stand. So now I always up the bread to custard ratio -- I usually do 1/2 recipe of the custard and 3/4 recipe of the bread -- and am rewarded to a delicious bread pudding!
One of my favorite parts of making bread pudding is making my own bread for it. This recipe called for brioche, mmm!
Oven toasted cubes of brioche are then covered with a pumpkin spice custard -- in the recipe you are to use fresh ginger chunks and cinnamon sticks and strain the custard, I just used ground cinnamon and ginger to eliminate the straining.
Before baking...
After baking...note the crunchy cinnamon sugar topping, yum!
The bread pudding is then served with an amazing caramel rum raisin sauce, that starts out with caramalizing sugar, adding cream, and then adding raisins soaking in spiced rum, absolutely delicious!
This has got to be one of my new favorite desserts, it would be perfect served during the fall or even at Thanksgiving, and I'm so glad we got the chance to try it now :)
