Recipe Sundays: French Toast Bread Pudding

Sundays and food have always gone hand in hand for me. Growing up, Sunday was church day. After service Sunday meant tons and tons of good food! Everyone always ate together after church. Several families including mine would all go out for lunch at one chinese restaurant or another. Some Sundays everyone would stay at the church and have a huge pot luck lunch. Kids would play, teenagers would look bored and gossip while scarfing down platefuls of food, parents would chatter and chase after their kids and the seniors would get a chance to catch up with each other. After lunch, the moms would all go to one family's home and prepare a huge meal for everyone with everyone chipping in for groceries. So big meals and big flavours were always huge for me on Sundays. 

Now that I am older and no longer living in that type of a community, I still try to incorporate cooking into this day every week if I am home to do it. Usually it's my big meal day. Lately at our house it has been chicken. It is also the one day out of the week I cook breakfast instead of just downing a bowl of cereal or eating a quick sandwich. 

While working for various restaurants, I have had the pleasure of making many a different bread puddings, everything from a sticky toffee caramel conncotion to a mexican chocolate version. The method is quite simple, it always involved eggs, milk and of course bread. The flavourings after that is completely up to the baker. It can be anything from savoury to sweet. One day I was making french toast for dessert and thought to myself, it is not that far off from a bread pudding! And voila! Recipe born!

Serves 4-6

8 slices of bread (hint I use bread ends that I froze from sandwiches great way to use it up)

4 large eggs 

2 cups milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375F

Cube bread into 1" cubes and place into a greased casserole dish

In a bowl, whisk together egg and brown sugar, slowly pour in milk, vanilla and cinnamon.

Pour mixture over the bread and gently toss to make sure it is coated.

Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden brown. It should be super puffy as well kind of like a souffle.

While still hot, drizzle with syrup and scatter 3 tbsp of cubed cold butter on top. 

My trick is to always use a butter knife and try to poke some holes in the casserole so that every bite gets some syrup and butter.

Let rest until butter is melted and sprinkle with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Now I know all my dieting friends are probably going, ugh why?!?! This recipe can easily be done without the butter and try agave syrup instead of the regular syrup and powdered sugar for a lighter version of this. This dish is super rich so that's why it made so infrequently. Great Mother's Day or Christmas morning treat. When do you serve rich breakfasts?