Bread Pudding @ MindSay

Last nights dinner consisted of Stuffed pork chops, sugar snap peas, mashed potato casserole and bread pudding. I don't know if it is a Southern thing, but I just love bread pudding. Sometimes I will let bread sit out on the counter for a day or two and get stale, just so that bread pudding can be made. Any kind of bread can be used and yesterday's stale bread was Crescent rolls. The last time we went to SAMs we got a huge container of crescent rolls and didn't eat all of them before they went stale. Oops, what a shame, guess I'll have to make bread pudding out of them, which is what I did. I think the recipe was originally invented from some frugal cook who didn't want to waste the stale bread so what better than pouring some eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla on it and baking it in the oven.

Here is what I did: First I split the crescent rolls in half, lengthwise, then I slathered both sides with butter (real butter, not margarine)and layered about 1/2 of them in the bottom of a casserole dish. Next, I dug through the pantry to see what dried fruit I could come up with - apricots and dried plums. Yeah I know their called prunes, but if you call them dried plums then your family won't know any better and will eat them - he, he. Anyway - chopped up some apricot and dried plums and sprinkled over the layer of crescent rolls. Lastly top with remaining crescent rolls. Next, mix up 4 or 5 eggs, 1 cup of milk (or half & half or heavy cream), 1/2 cup of sugar 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp of vanilla (I use mexican vanilla because it has a better flavor). Then pour this mixture over the stale bread and mash the bread down with your fingertips so it can soak up the milk. Now wait 2 hours. You want the bread to soak up all the liquid - I leave mine out on the counter, but you can put it in the fridge if you're concerned with leaving the eggs out for so long. At the end of 2 hrs, cook it in a 350 oven for another hour. This dessert does take some forethought, but the good thing is that you can let it sit for more than 2 hours if you need to and just pop it in the oven right before you sit down to eat. It's better hot with either rum sauce or heavy cream poured over it, but is also good cold for breakfast the next day. We've also sliced it, the next morning, dipped it in egg and fried it like French Toast but usually I will just nuke mine for a couple of seconds and dig in.