Bread Pudding Muffins

This is the ultimate comfort food. It’s very easy to put together. I used pagnotta for my bread and thought it was a very good choice. The recipe says it makes 12 muffins but I ended up with 18. I ate one hot out of the oven, and it was a very good basic bread pudding. The crunchy top and the custard on the bottom were a taste treat. The next one I sprinkled with cinnamon powdered sugar, and it was very good. For breakfast the next morning I popped one back in the oven to reheat it and served it with sliced strawberries sprinkled with vanilla sugar. Tonight I had another one with a homemade caramel sauce, and it was just over the top. Bottom line: This is a very versatile recipe and makes a fantastic breakfast, snack, or dessert. I believe this recipe would be great with blueberries, too. The toppings you can add to this recipe are endless.

You must try these straight from the oven. They’re surprisingly light, with a delicious crispiness along the edges. A nice substitution for French toast at your next brunch. For an added treat, brush on a glaze of warm apricot preserves and sprinkle with crushed pecans or hazelnuts.

Add my voice to the approval for this creative recipe. The very idea of bread pudding muffins deserves applause, and I wonder why I haven’t seen this particular stroke of genius elsewhere. These are extremely easy to prepare, light yet satisfying to eat. They’re moist on the inside, which is exactly what a muffin should be—but, better than a muffin, they feature a top crust that takes full advantage of everything that’s fabulous about bread. “French toast in a cup” is a pretty good description. The recipe is generous in its yield. I actually got 15 mountain-high muffins out of the recipe, versus the dozen stated. Because of the quantity of bread and the relatively small sizes of my mixing bowls, I needed to break this up between two bowls to do the initial combining of ingredients. Once the custard was poured in, though, I could place the mixture into a single recipient for refrigeration. I would recommend taking the time to pull this together the night before and let the bread soak overnight, not just for four hours. I did both, and the portion of bread pudding that sat overnight came out with a more pleasing consistency: moist, with a top crust that was still crisp but less dry than the ones I made after soaking a shorter amount of time. A final recommendation, to take this recipe from “great concept” to “wow, gotta have more!”: Try drizzling a bit of melted bittersweet chocolate over the tops of the muffins, after the powdered sugar has been sifted on. My family went bonkers over the muffins with this one, simple addition. You can also play with a sprinkling of slivered almonds over the top or try add-ins to the pudding itself, such as fresh berries, chopped dried fruits, chocolate chips…. The possibilities are only limited by your own imagination.