Recipe courtesy of John Barnes
Bread Pudding:
- 4 cups milk
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 5 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 18 cups loosely packed cubes of stale bread, crusts removed
(dry in oven at 250 degrees for 30 minutes) - 1/2 cup golden currants or raisons if you want
- 1 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ Stick of Butter
- Bourbon to taste
Bourbon Sauce:
- 1 Stick of butter
- 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- Bourbon to taste
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Whisk together the bourbon, milk, sugar, eggs, currants cinnamon and vanilla. Pour mixture into a bowl over the cubes of bread and allow bread to soak for 30 minutes. (If mixture is too dry, add a little more milk.) Transfer soaked bread mixture to a buttered 8 by 8 dish. Bake for 1 hour, or until golden and crusty on top. Allow pudding to sit for 20 minutes after removing from oven.
For the Bourbon Sauce: Heat the butter, vanilla, and sugar in a saucepan over very-low heat. When butter is melted and sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and quickly whisk in a well-beaten egg. The egg should be added slowly and whisked in quickly to produce a smooth sauce and not just sugary scrambled eggs. Then add the bourbon, be careful not to make the sauce to thin (I add just a teaspoon). Serve sauce warm over bread pudding. This can also be done using a microwave.
Almost any liquor can be substituted for bourbon, but bourbon, run, and cognacs work best. Southern Comfort is the best.
For a quick version of this, you can substitute Borden’s Eggnog for the first four ingredients in the Bread pudding recipe and add a tablespoon of flour to the eggnog before pouring over the breadcrumbs.
Shopping list:
- 2 Pints of Milk
- Eggs
- 2 ¼ cups of sugar
- Vanilla extract
- Cinnamon
- 1 ½ Sticks of Butter
- Bourbon
- Bread (one loaf of French bread is about right.)