Bread Pudding with a Twist (Budin de Pan)

Start licking your fingers now!This is an adaptation of the recipe "Budin de Pan Sencillo" from the book Cocina Criolla - Puerto Rico

WEPAAAAAAA!!!!

Original Recipe

1# white bread                   1/2 t salt                     

1 t ground cinnamon           2 t vanilla X                      

3.5 c milk                           2 oz butter

1 1/4 c sugar                      1/2 c raisins

3 eggs, whole (do not whip)

Procedure:

1.  Remove the crust from the bread.  Soak the bread with the milk until it gets soft.  Use a fork to crumble the bread.

2. Melt the butter and add to the bread-milk mixture.

3. Turn oven on @ 375F.  Butter the baking pan.

4.  Add the sugar, salt, vanilla, cinnamon and raisins to the batter.

5. Add the whole eggs to the batter.  Mix well and place batter in baking pan.

6. Bake for 1 1/4 hours.  Cool in pan.

My tweak-a-motion....

*I used about 1.5# of challah bread that I've baked the day before.

*I also added a small can of fruit cocktail and omitted the raisins.  Bare in mind the can fruit comes in a sugar syrup.  The juice was drained and sugar from the original recipe was dropped to about 1 c.

*I whipped my eggs, "shame on me", before adding them to the batter.

All other ingredients, I kept the same.  I rather let the bread soak the milk overnight.  Before I start mixing any ingredients, the first thing I do is turn on the oven and grease my pans.  I also melted my butter ahead of time, for it to have time to cool a bit.  My bread pudding started to brown to fast after an hour.  I reduced the oven temperature to 325F for the last 15 minutes.

I love Puerto Rican style bread pudding.  Yum Yum!

Chacho, este budin esta riquisimo....



Bread pudding exiting the oven