Challah Bread Pudding With Bourbon Sauce

Elevate your next dessert game with this challah bread pudding recipe; bite-sized pieces of challah bread in a flavorful custard with bourbon soaked golden raisins and drizzled with a crazy good bourbon sauce!

Heyyyy y’all hey, so ya girl is back with this challah bread pudding recipe and it’s easy like Sunday morning!

^ Sorry, the song was stuck in my head while writing, ha! I am a huge fan of bread pudding. In fact, whenever I have some leftover day old french bread or brioche bread; I almost always use it up with some type of bread pudding recipe. It’s fairly quick, it’s easy, and there’s so many variations that one could make. And while I do love all kinds of bread pudding; I am obsessed with the use of challah bread that I did here.

What Is Challah Bread?

Challah bread is typically a braided loaf of yeast dough that is enriched with egg; thus giving it a very deep golden-ish shiny hue. Additionally, challah bread is a special type of loaf among Jewish cuisine and used in a lot of ceremonial holidays like Shabbat. Challah bread is really sweet, rich in taste, and super moist.

You will find that a lot of bread pudding recipes using French bread, Italian bread, brioche bread, and even regular sandwich bread. I honestly love ’em all but challah bread just has some extra oomph to me.

What Is Bread Pudding?

Bread pudding is a classic old fashioned dessert recipe that is a great way to reduce food waste. It contains simple pantry ingredients such as day-old/somewhat stale bread cubes, eggs, milk, and sugar (the custard base). The bread cubes get soaked with the custard mixture and delicious spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. The entire dish gets baked and at it’s very best; once done cooking, is also served with some kind of tasty sauce to drizzle on top. I think of bread pudding as being very similar to French toast but deconstructed.

Challah Bread Pudding Ingredients

• Challah Bread: Yup, a nice slightly stale loaf, then cut into bite-sized pieces.
• Golden Raisins: I am not a fan of regular raisins but give me some golden raisins all day, every day! These ‘lil babies are softer, plump, and tangy. I typically purchase mine from Trader Joe’s.
• Whole Milk: I love the use of whole milk here for creamy deliciousness but you could also use half and half, evaporated milk, and heavy cream too!
• Eggs: 3 of ’em! Gives bread pudding some sturdiness and structure.
• Brown Sugar: Is the best for that extra molasses-y flavor, yum.
• Spices: Tasty flavor from vanilla extract/paste, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.

Check Out These Other Recipes:

• Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream
• Double Chocolate Bundt Cake
• Best Ever Chocolate Chunk Cookies
• Caramel Pecan Cheesecake
• Lemon Sheet Cake With Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
• Brown Sugar Banana Bread
• Blueberry Streusel Muffins
• Soft Peanut Butter Cookies

How To Make This Easy Bread Pudding Recipe

(Note: the full ingredients list, including measurements, is provided in the recipe card directly below.)

This challah bread pudding recipe couldn’t be any easier, y’all!!!

1. To begin, start with a slightly stale loaf of bread, one that is at least a day old. Then slice bread into cubes. For this recipe specifically, I used challah bread. The reason you use day old bread is because fresh bread is very soft and will end up resulting in a more mushy bread pudding. Don’t have stale bread? You can also put your fresh bread cubes into the oven for a bit to dry them out before use in bread pudding. To do this method, place bread cubes on a baking sheet and bake at a low temperature like 200-250°F for 10-12 minutes until cubes are dry but still light in color.
2. To make the custard, simply whisk eggs together. Then add in sugar, milk, vanilla extract/paste, and salt/cinnamon/nutmeg spices. This mixture is creamy, delicious, and full of flavor!
3. In a large 9×13-inch baking dish, add in bread cubes, then pour custard mixture over bread. Lastly, toss in soaked raisins. Most of the bourbon should have been absorbed by the golden raisins. However, if there is any remaining liquid, you can add into dish or save for later use in the bourbon sauce.
4. Then bake bread pudding in the oven for 35-45 minutes or until edges start to brown.

Make Ahead Tips + Tricks

This bread pudding recipe is a great recipe to make ahead of time!

• You can prepare this recipe overnight or up to 12 hours ahead. Simply prepare all ingredients in baking dish and cover with aluminum foil. Before baking, take dish out and allow bread pudding to sit out on counter to come back up to room temperature and then bake.
• Soak the golden raisins in bourbon (equal parts raisins to bourbon, 1/2 cup) overnight before starting anything else with this bread pudding. The raisins will have absorbed the bourbon and be extra plump!
• The bourbon sauce can also be made ahead of time. Simply warm in microwave before serving.

How To Make The Bourbon Sauce

Ummm…this bourbon sauce is no joke that it’ll make ya wanna slap ya mama! But don’t, okay.

It’s also sooo easy to make: in a small sauce pan, simply combine butter, brown sugar, bourbon, dark corn syrup, heavy cream, vanilla, salt, and let come up to a nice boil. Then drizzle this amazingness to your hearts content over finished bread pudding. It’s sweet, it’s boozy, and it’s just the perfect partner to this dessert!

Wanna Jazz Up This Recipe?

• Add in some nuts! Some pecans and/or walnuts will work great here! Add them in with the raisins.
• Top with ice cream! Pair this bread pudding with your fave ice cream and have a real good time.

REMEMBER TO LEAVE A ⭐️STAR RATING⭐️AND TAG ME ON THE ‘GRAM IF YOU MAKE ANY OF MY RECIPES! I ALWAYS LOVE TO SEE IT WHEN YOU DO!

UNTIL NEXT TIME…LOVE AND BUTTER,

Q.

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