Vegan Bread Pudding With Cinnamon Crumble

Continuing this tradition of chef’s desserts, or at least desserts that don’t require fancy baker’s techniques  (which will have their day, I promise!), bread pudding is one of those desserts you can make without a whole lot of fuss.  In fact, making vegan bread pudding is easier than making the non-vegan kind because there is far less mixing of eggs and milk to make custard.

Of course, I wanted to give this dish a little more oomph than a normal vegan bread pudding so after careful deliberation, I decide on adding a little cinnamon crumble.  Given the prevalence of vegan margarine these days, doing a vegan crumble is as easy as doing one with regular butter.  Still, if you can’t find vegan margarine, use just a little bit of soy milk.  It’s not going to be quite the same, but it will taste cinnamon-y and sugar-y and that’s a good thing!

Vegan Bread Pudding

You will need:

• Non-stick cooking spray
• 2 cups of vegan bread, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 1/2 cups grape or apple juice
• 1 cup of soy milk
• 1/2 cup real maple syrup
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 banana, cut into small pieces
• 4 tablespoons vegan margarine or 2 tablespoons additional soy milk
• 6 tablespoons of cinnamon (divided)
• 4 tablespoons vegan sugar

Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease an oven safe baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

In a bowl, add the bread, juice, soy milk, maple syrup, raisins, banana, and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon and stir very well to make sure the bread is coated in liquid.  Pour the mixture into an oven safe dish.

Bake for 30-45 minutes or until the pudding is dry.

Melt the vegan margarirne in the microwave.  Combine the remaining cinnamon, vegan sugar, and vegan margarine in a bowl and stir until it forms clumps.  Spread the clumps on top of the bread pudding and bake for another minute.

Let it cool and get to eating.  Enjoy!

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Okay Carissa, you asked for it…

Egg Nog Bread Pudding with Tequilla/Orange Sauce

So the other night on Twitter, I got to talking with the abovementioned Carissa about egg nog bread pudding, which I promised I would write up the recipe for. True to form, it took me a few days to get around to it, but late is better than never, right?

I love this recipe. When I created it, I took a basic bread pudding recipe and decided to see how much I could gild the lily (to steal a term from Mario Batali). With egg nog only being available around Christmas time, I figured why not? This is obviously a holiday dish and why eat low cal for the holidays? Right?

So beyond using the egg nog, there’s bananas and raisins because they taste awesome in bread pudding and lots of cinnamon. However, the version in the picture above uses povotica, which is a Polish Christmas bread loaded with sugar and butter and all the things that make life worth living. (Unless your one of my vegan readers when I would highly suggest vegan banana bread, but that’s another recipe…)

No Rum Sauce? Why Tequilla/Orange Sauce?

Good question. Part of it goes back to the whole guilding the lily thing. I thought tequilla/orange sauce for bread pudding sounded really good. Plus, I was out of rum. However, rum can easily be substituted in the recipe below. (Hopefully that’s okay…)

Anyway, now to the recipe.

Egg Nog Bread Pudding

You will need:

3 eggs
2 cups of egg nog
1 cup of skim milk
3 cups of diced bread
1/2 cup of sugar*
1/2 orange, zested (optional)
2 bananas, diced
1/4 cup of raisins
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Handful of pecans (optional)

* The amount of sugar is almost totally dependent on the sweetness of the bread you use. For my povotica version, I used 4 tablespoons of sugar because the bread and egg nog are so sweet. Also, no matter what type of bread you choose, remember the egg nog has sugar, too.

This one is real easy, I promise.

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs until the are combined. Add the egg nog, milk, sugar and orange zest. Beat together until well combined.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir gently to combine.
4. Pour into a buttered 9 by 9 glass baking dish. Top with pecans.
5. Bake for 1 hour or until an inserted knife comes out clean.

Tequilla/Orange Sauce

Bread pudding is always better if it has a little sauce on top. Here’s the one I use. However, there is a caution flag on this one.

I really, really liked this sauce, but I like sipping tequilla. If that’s not you, cut down the tequilla or use a different alcohol.

You will need:

4 tablespoons butter at room temperature
1/2 cup egg nog
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons of corn starch
1/4 cup water
Juice of one orange
1/8 cup tequilla (or more )*

*If you are serving this to minors, you can use 2 tablespoons of rum extract for an alcohol flavor.

1. In a sauce pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Once melted, add the egg nog, milk, and sugar. Bring to a boil.
2. Mix the corn starch and water together and then add to the milk mixture. Stir constantly until the sauce thickens.
3. Reduce the heat to medium low.
4. Add the orange juice and the tequilla and stir for 3-4 minutes.

Pour on top of the bread puding and enjoy!

This is my holiday endulgence…now, what’s yours?

Bread Pudding Notes

1. If you want your bread pudding to turn out EXACTLY like mine, start off using a bowl with a crack in it until you get to the step about adding the bread…
2. If you still want to do it like I did, set the oven to broil and don’t realize it until after you start to smell burning and realize your pecans are a loss…
3. If you’re still with me, one thing I noticed was that the top of my bread pudding still looked wet.  It was not.  In fact, it had set first and just looked kind of glazed.

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