Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding {Recipe Revealed!!}

This is a fantastic recipe that I am definitely adding to my regular rotation. Huge thanks to the recipe I worked from Five Heart Home. This gal has amazing ideas and a humorous way of describing her OCD process of baking.
This would be an awesome Valentine’s day treat to make for your lover or with your lover. You could also make it and not tell anyone–more for you! It may look like a lot of steps but it is really pretty easy to throw together. I might just make it again in a few weeks…heh heh.

As always I made a few changes:

Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding
6-8 cups of cubed stale bread
1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
4 eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups half and half (*see tips below)
6 oz or one small box of fresh raspberries
1/2 cup seedless raspberry jam (optional—do it!)

Reminder: if milk and eggs are room temperature they tend to blend better with the melted chocolate. Lay all your ingredients out.

Step one
If you are using an old stale loaf lying around the house then first cut it into 1″ cubes and put them into your preferred baking dish. Eight cups is around right for a 9×13. I wanted to give part of my dessert as a gift so I split my bread into an oval glass baking dish (9×9?) and a glass loaf pan. Note, you may want to grease your pan, bt I noticed no issues using my glass pans.

Step two
Melt 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips on medium low in a saucepan with 1/2 cup strong brewed coffee. Keep an eye on the chocolate and stir periodically. When it becomes smooth (no chip lumps) turn it off and allow to cool.

Step three
In a large bowl beat 4 room temp eggs. Add vanilla, brown sugar and half and half. Combine well and then stare down your chocolate until it cools down. Mix chocolate into large bowl with the rest of the ingredients.

Step four
Pour prepared mixture over stale bread in pan. Pour evenly if possible. If you used a white bread it will be easy to tell if you haven’t soaked a corner piece.

Step five
Reserve a few raspberries from the carton for the topping if you wish. I think the flavor is better baked in though. Place berries evenly around pan and mash into pudding with fingers or a fork.
Sprinkle reserved 1/2 cup chocolate chips evenly on top.

Step six
Bake 30-45 minutes in the oven. You can do the knife test to make sure the pudding is baked through. Mine was perfect at 30 minutes but the original recipe said to bake up to an hour.

Step seven (optional)
Warm seedless raspberry jam in a saucepan (I don’t own a microwave) until you get a nice smooth sauce. Drizzle over top of your hot bread pudding and if you wish, throw the reserved fresh raspberries on top for presentation.
Best served warm.

Now go eat it!!!

Tips

• If you’re worried about the pudding drying out when you reheat it cover the pan with tinfoil.

• *As the original blogger noted, you can use a heavy whipping cream of lighter milks if you’re worried about the caloric overload.

• This is not a sweet overload, but there is plenty in there to make it sweet. If you would rather a less sugary dessert you could reduce the brown sugar to 1/2 cup and be just fine.

• I used strong brewed coffee because I don’t keep instant coffee granules around the house. When I know I want to bake something chocolatey soon, I brew a few extra cups in my coffee pot. Best way to use old coffee ever.

• Even if you’re not a coffee drinker, don’t spazz, do add it. Coffee enhances the chocolate. Hubbster hates coffee but couldn’t taste it in the pudding and loved the whole thing.

• If you plan on baking all the raspberries you could save a little cash and go with frozen berries. Or if the seeds bug you, put small dollops of seedless jam in the pudding prior to baking.

Enjoy!
~Kat

Tour de Louisville Garden

Last week, Kit and I went to L-ville to visit some dear college friends.
One of my buds is the estate manager for a famous author, so as part of our visit we got a tour of the grounds.

I loved this statue of Pan and my friend couldn’t help but ham itit up for the camera. Love it!

One of the owners had a special garden that he personally likes to care for. The shapes happen to be a special part of his studies and teaching.

Check out that river view!!

One of the water gardens on the property. This one had adorable floating garden pieces which moved around because of the little waterfalls at the edges of the garden.

Check out those lemons! My horticulture friend hand pollinated all the flowers to get those enormous fruits! I hope they like lemonade.

My Hort friend nerding out and explaning the process of making and using compost tea. He is standing next to an amazingly huge African Shield plant.

Check out these awesome land owners. They have rocket box style bat houses on their property! Anyone who helps make a happy home for bats are alright in my book!

I ended the day by cashing in on a favor and grabbing a cafe miella (cinnamon and honey) latte at Sunergos.

Spain Series: Bread, Coffee, and Wine

If anything can be the staple of a country it must be the bread in Spain. Followed closely by the local wine and coffee.

This was a snack or light breakfast that I discovered by way of the lovely Chinese woman I met on trail. Yan has lived in Spain for several years. During her time there she learned language, worked and found all the awesome foods.

Tostada con tomate means toast with tomato. The unlisted ingredients makes it delish too. Diced or mashed up tomatoes mixed with olive oil and spread on toast. Sprinkle with black pepper. Maybe it doesn’t sound too special, but I can promise it is good. I can’t wait for my garden tomatoes to come up so I can make this for my hubbster.

Red wine (vino tinto) was another common sight in Spain. Every single town had their own brand of wine. I don’t just mean the wealthy towns either. I mean the po-dunk of the bunch with a population of 200 or so. You want to know what comes from the town of 350 where I grew up? Mullets.
The folks in Spain have as many bodegas (wineries) as we have cricks around Kentucky. Crazy frequent.

Like I said, bread is a staple. We had some sort of bread with every meal. The particular meal (pictured above) is a breakfast made up bread, bread, and bread, with coffee and juice.
Really. There were two sweet breads and a toast for breakfast.
Other meals were usually served with a crusty French bread.

Some wineries took their business very serious. This huge form of advertisement was along side the Camino and invited a photo.
Link to Irache free winery

My first night in Madrid I had to try to wine. It surprisingly helped to settle my stomach, if just for a little while from the gawdawful jetlag. I swear the jetlag felt like a hard night of drinking that left one feeling hungover and unable to sleep it off. So I figured, why not have a glass of wine–
I could feel as though I had earned that sickness.

I’m normally an anytime of day type of coffee drinker, but this espresso I had to be careful with. Typically, I drank the cafe con leche. Not cold milk, this was heated and sometimes frothy.

As you can plainly see, this was a midmorning snack of champions. Chips and coffee. There were some bread crusts and chorizo.

Just remember, if you end up in Spain and it is not during one of the strangely late meal times you can always have bread, coffee or wine.

Re-Blog: Blue eyed dragon [coffee painting]

Why don’t my coffee rings end up like this?
If you need the inspiration then check out the art blogger Chosen Voice.

Blue eyed dragon [coffee painting].

Day 219: Winter Mugs

So cute!
A Wal-Mart sighting of course. These little penguin cuties are just begging for some steaming hot chocolate to be poured into their brain pans.

In all honesty, I didn’t buy these. I am pretty particular about my mugs. They must have a certain handle (big) and I want to be able to drink out of any side without fear of kissing a beak or eyeball. Sounds creepy and I don’t want to do that to a penguin.

I have a mug from the Human Bodies exhibition I went to see and everytime I drink from it I am disappointed it doesn’t have a running or backflipping body on it. Perhaps that would be too much meat with morning coffee however.