Mmmm. Bread pudding. I love bread pudding, and today in class, I experimented with my own Cinnamon Bread Pudding with Caramel Whiskey Sauce. It was good. Not just good. It was pretty great.

Everyone today made a different bread pudding recipe, but there were a few rules to go along with it. Number 1, it had to be pretty plain. No nuts, no raisins, no apples, no extra ingredients. Just bread soaked in a custard mixture, and baked. And rule number 2, it had to be accompanied by a whiskey sauce. The reason being that the culinary department has to cater a fancy dinner – the Kossen Dinner – in a few weeks, and they requested plain jane bread pudding with whiskey sauce. No extra, fun ingredients. So, we had a small competition in class to see who could make the best, plain bread pudding.

Everyone voted mine to be the winner; although, I do believe that they were all pretty good!

My only complaint with my recipe is that the bread pudding was quite dense. Chef and I believe this is because my bread was too fresh and absorbed too much liquid – becoming too soggy. Since everyone voted my bread pudding as the best, I will retest it next week with toasted/stale bread to determine if that is the problem.

**UPDATE: the retested bread pudding with stale bread was significantly better and not nearly as dense! Make sure your bread is stale, or toast it very well prior to using in this recipe to get the best results.

ABC.