Chocolate Bread Pudding

One of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks is Babe's Country Cookbook. You know, Babe, the pig movie! It's got an "animals are family, so don't eat them" theme, so the cookbook was right up my alley! If you are looking to add some veggie recipes to your meal plans, check out this book.
Here is the recipe for Chocolate Bread Pudding. I make this all the time. It is just one of those "comfort food" recipes and is lovely! Enjoy!

Ferdie's Chocolate Bread Pudding

Pudding:
1/2 stick of unsalted butter
2 large eggs
2 cups milk (last night I used 1/2 cream, 1/2 2% milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (last night I was out and substituted hot cocoa mix and left out a bit of sugar)
1 cup sugar
2 cups 1-inch pieces of fresh bread with crusts (I always us "hearty" bread loaves and add a bit more bread that this calls for and last night the bread was 100% stale)

Whipping Cream:
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon sugar
3-4 drops vanilla extract
(or just buy Redi-Whip or vanilla ice cream)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Use one tablespoon of butter to grease a 6-cup baking dish or souffle dish.

Pudding: Cut rest of butter into pieces and set aside. In a bowl, stir together the eggs, milk and vanilla. In another bowl sir together the cocoa powder and sugar, then combine the two. (Sometimes when I am in a hurry or I am using turbanido sugar I just mix it all together at the same time...I'm a rebel!)

With a spatula, gently fold the bread into the pudding mix. (If you are using super stale bread, let it sit for about 10 minutes to soak up the pudding). Pour into baking dish and top with the remaining pieces of butter.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, until set.

Remove pudding from oven and while hot, stir the pudding with a fork for a minute or so to even up the consistency and break up the hard lumps. (Sometimes I'll do this at the mid-way baking point too) Let cool.

Whipping Cream:
In a big bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed beat the cream, sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form.



Serve the pudding warm or chilled (great both ways!).

Uummm...I'm off to raid last night's leftovers!