Apple-Apple Bread Pudding

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Elizabeth of Cake or Death? She picked the Apple-Apple Bread Pudding. I was really excited to make this recipe. It’s a traditional bread pudding, but you add caramelized apples and apple butter to the mixture. I really like apple desserts, so even though this dish isn’t exactly seasonal, I was really looking forward to making it. You can get the entire recipe on Elizabeth’s blog and you can also check out how other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers did with this week’s recipe.

I already had practice making the caramelized apples, since I used the same recipe to top last week’s tart. I contemplated using apple mincemeat instead of the apple butter since the flavors are somewhat similar, but the way you assemble the recipe, I don’t think that would have worked out very well. I had apple butter in the cupboard, since I had planned to make some apple cookies last fall that use apple butter. I never got around to making those so I had a big bottle just waiting to be used up.

The biggest change that I made was that I couldn’t find brioche or similarly eggy bread at the grocery store. My husband was with me and he suggested using glazed donuts, which sounded interesting. I did end up using those and they worked fairly well. I did leave the sugar out of the custard though, since I figured that it would be sweet enough. I’m not typically the biggest fan of bread pudding, since I don’t care for the texture, but I really like this. I’ve had a case of food poisoning lately and have just started eating anything, so I only had a bite or two, but it was really good! Making it with donuts is a bit extravagant, but I’d always wanted to try a donut bread pudding and this was certainly a success.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 408 and 409