A Bread Pudding Kind of Day

I hate this time of year. After seeing and partaking of the season’s offerings for the last two months, all anyone can talk about is dieting. How passive aggressive is that? During this time of rabbit food and rice cakes, I give you comfort food. Even though we shouldn’t, we do comfort ourselves with food. It’s solitary and instantaneous. No one has to know, unless our butts start getting wider. As someone who managed to lose ten pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can honestly say, you can still lose weight and treat yourself now and then. I think the more you deprive yourself, the harder you fall off the wagon. You know what I mean, the whole bag of cookies, or the whole container of ice cream, or the whole bag of Dove Promises, we reach for when we can’t stand one more carrot stick and it’s been the day from Hell. Try this recipe, it’s really good. You can have a little and the world won’t end.

Bread Pudding with Norma’s Hard Sauce

1 cup raisins
½ cup whisky or brandy

6 to 8 slices of bread, depending on how big your slices are, I like to use French or Italian
½ stick butter
4 eggs beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
2 tsp pure vanilla extract, I use double strength, but regular will do, as long as it’s not imitation.
1 cup light or dark brown sugar
1 tsp to 1 and ½ tsp cinnamon, if your cinnamon is really strong, like Saigon Cinnamon just use 1 tsp, if it’s just regular cinnamon use 1 and ½ tsp.

Place raisins in a small bowl, pour whisky or brandy over raisins, let sit for a couple of hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. You will turn oven down when you put your pudding in oven.

Tear bread into one inch pieces and place into a buttered 2 and 1/2 quart casserole. Melt the half stick of butter in the microwave. Whisk brown sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon with the melted butter. Drain raisins discard liquid. Add raisins to milk mixture and pour over bread, stir to combine. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes while the oven is heating. Turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake pudding for 50 to 60 minutes. Pudding will be puffy and set. I loosely cover with foil for the last 20 – 30 minutes so the raisins won’t burn. Serve with Norma’s (my mom) Hard Sauce.



Norma’s Hard Sauce

1 stick butter
1 and ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
½ tsp vanilla
2 Tbls whisky or brandy from the raisins if there is any left, otherwise from the bottle is fine.

Cream butter and confectioner’s sugar together. Add vanilla and whisky or brandy. Chill until used. Put a dab on warm bread pudding.