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Why I love it: This delicious bread pudding is made with challah bread, infused with maple and vanilla flavors and drizzled with a maple cream sauce. Because there is no butter in this recipe, the pudding is not greasy at all, instead it’s delightfully rich and creamy.
This bread pudding is one of my favorite desserts of all time, it is so delicious and easy and foolproof that it has become my go to for serving at our house and also to bring to parties. Everyone always loves it.
I adapted the recipe from America’s Test Kitchen but put a maple slant on it by adding maple syrup to the custard and making a maple cream sauce to go with it.
How to make the maple pecan bread pudding:
This bread pudding takes time to prepare but a lot of that time is inactive, so it’s not actually a lot of work.
You start with the bread and the only bread that works in this recipe is challah. Unfortunately I’ve found that it’s not easy to find challah in the store anymore but the good news is that it’s actually not difficult to bake a nice challah loaf yourself. I recommend The Kitchn’s recipe for that, it works really well: How To Make Challah Bread. Since you know you’re gonna cut the loaf into little cubes you don’t need to bother with the braiding, I always just make one big plain loaf.
So, once you have your bread cubes, you add them to a large baking pan along with chopped pecans. Then you make your custard by whisking together egg yolks, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, maple syrup, cream and milk. You pour the custard into the baking pan and let the bread cubes soak up all the goodness for half an hour. After that you put the whole thing in the oven for about 50 minutes and that’s all you need to do for the pudding.
How to make the maple cream sauce:
For the sauce, you whisk cream and maple syrup together in a pan, bring the mix to a low simmer and don’t stop stirring until you have a nice thick, creamy sauce. (It takes quite a bit of stirring but I promise it’s worth the effort.)
How to serve the pudding:
I like to serve the bread pudding warm, I think it tastes best that way. If you have some left over that you want to eat the next day, you can easily warm it up for a few seconds in the microwave, it won’t hurt it a bit.
And one last thing: be sure to drizzle the sauce on right at the table and not before, if the sauce sits on the pudding for too long, it’ll turn it soggy.
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Related Post:
Looking for more things to do with pecans? I can recommend this speedy but delicious Stovetop Apple Crisp:
Maple Pecan Bread Pudding
Ingredients:
For the pudding:
- 10 cups bread cubes (1-inch) from challah bread
- 1 cup roughly chopped pecans
- 9 egg yolks
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 2.5 cups heavy cream
- 2.5 cups milk
For the maple cream sauce:
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
Instructions:
For the pudding:
- Mix the bread cubes with the pecans and fill into a 9" by 13" baking pan.
- Whisk the yolks with the sugar, salt and vanilla in a bowl until they are lighter in color and texture than when you started.
- Whisk in the maple syrup, the cream and the milk, then evenly pour the mix over the breadcrumbs.
- Cover and let the bread soak for 30 minutes in the fridge, meanwhile heat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- Bake the bread pudding until no liquid remains in the center when you push down on the surface (about 50 minutes). Let cool a bit.
For the maple cream sauce:
- Combine cream and maple syrup in a sauce pan, bring to a low simmer and stir continuously with a wooden spoon on medium-low heat until thickened (about 15 minutes).
- Serve the bread pudding warm and pour maple cream sauce on it right before serving.
Nutrition
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Just stop. Seriously. Just stop. I can’t even handle this right now. I’m going to pass out from this amazingness. Someone catch me!
You’re so sweet, Meg. Thank you! :)
I love bread pudding too! This looks so wonderfully decadent – I think I could eat the entire pan!
Thank you so much, Kathleen! Hehe, I think the entire pan would put you in a food coma. :)
I can see why this is your favorite! I feel like I could also work it into a breakfast rotation for holidays, too, you know.. versatile dish eh? :)
Absolutely! (I personally don’t do sweet for breakfast, although I have had a spoonful of this as a second breakfast. :)).
I love bread pudding and this one looks rich and delicious! Thanks for sharing the recipe and also the photography details, very helpful!
Thank you, Mira! So glad you find the posts helpful!:)