Chai Bread Pudding

Don't toss away stale bread! It can be salvaged into an easy, comforting dessert.

In an ideal world though, if you're going to buy bread, finish it before it gets stale and don't forget that you have it. Sigh. :'(

Ingredients

• 1/2 loaf of stale bread
• 2 cups almond milk (or whatever milk you like)
• 1/2 cup eggs
• 3 tbsp sweetener (I recently bought a 0 calorie caramel sweetener from Home Goods for coffee and desserts!)
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground giner
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/8 tsp salt

Methodology

Preheat oven to 325F.

Cube up the bread.

If your bread is as dry as mine, you might get a bonus (!!) of bread crumbs.

Place the cubed bread into a baking dish.

Combine everything else in a bowl to create the custard that the bread will soak in.

Pour the custard over the bread and let it all soak for a bit. I flipped the bread around a few times to get it all covered in some custard before stepping away for 20 minutes of Yoga with Adriene.

By the time you're done with the yoga session, the bread-custard mixture will be all mushy.

Toss into oven, uncovered, for an hour.

Results

Bread pudding is not the prettiest dessert, but it definitely is tasty, and it feels good to know that the rock-hard bread you made or bought isn't going to waste.

I added some chocolate syrup over top, and the SO had a portion with some ice cream--both pretty good. Next time tragedy strikes with stale bread, I'd like to play around with a savory bread pudding recipe.