Breakfast Bread Pudding with Maple Rum Sauce
For a sweet start to your day and a perfect use for leftover biscuits. It can be prepared the night before and it makes a wonderful Sunday brunch, especially if you have company.
For a sweet start to your day and a perfect use for leftover biscuits. It can be prepared the night before and it makes a wonderful Sunday brunch, especially if you have company.
- sauce:
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 6 large eggs lightly beaten
- 1 lb bulk sausage browned and drained well
- 1 c sugar
- 5 c half and half fat free is okay
- 1/2 tbsp cinnamon
- 8 biscuits, day old you may use up to 10 if small
- 2 apples peeled, cored and diced
- 1/2 c oatmeal
- 1 1/2 c sugar
- 3/4 c butter
- 3/4 c maple syrup
- 1/2 c rum i prefer a dark rum
- Carbohydrate 154.217240833333 g
- Cholesterol 336.748333333333 mg
- Fat 49.8094633333333 g
- Fiber 1.24145003684362 g
- Protein 15.6855233333333 g
- Saturated Fat 26.6916540833333 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (408g)
- Sodium 514.288833333333 mg
- Sugar 152.97579079649 g
- Trans Fat 3.99244708333334 g
- Calories 1124 calories
Step-by-step
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl mix eggs and sugar, add half and half, vanilla and cinnamon.
- Set aside.
- In a large greased casserole, lightly mix biscuit cubes, apples, sausage and oatmeal.
- Pour liquid mixture over bread mixture.
- Let sit for 30 minutes or overnight if desired.
- Bake 60-90 minutes (depends on pan used).
- Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat on low.
- Heat until butter is melted and sauce is warmed through.
- Pour over individual servings.
Standard measurements on a page cannot reveal how standard grocery store apples behave when exposed to prolonged dairy saturation, releasing internal moisture that actively dilutes the surrounding custard if the fruit is cut too large. Autumn harvests bring Honeycrisp and Braeburn varieties whose dense cellular walls hold up better under weight than mealy summer types, though any firm baking apple diced to uniform half-inch cubes will integrate cleanly without turning the casserole into a watery mess. Selecting day-old biscuits with a higher fat content ensures the crumb structures absorb the half-and-half mixture evenly over thirty minutes without disintegrating into mush before the pan ever hits the oven.
Adjusting yields upward or downward requires careful attention to the ratio of eggs to dairy rather than just scaling the solid components, because multiplying a casserole past twelve portions demands switching from a standard glass baking dish to a deeper commercial hotel pan to maintain consistent heat penetration. Halving the recipe works predictably when baked in an eight-inch square dish, but reducing the volume too far drops the total cooking time below forty-five minutes and risks burning the edges before the center sets. Measuring liquid dairy by weight rather than volume guarantees precision when splitting batches across multiple smaller baking vessels for a large gathering.
Overbaking remains the single most frequent error cooks commit with baked custard dishes, mistaking a soft center for undercooked eggs when residual carryover heat will finish the firming process during the mandatory ten-minute resting window outside the oven. Pulling the casserole out when the internal temperature registers 170 degrees Fahrenheit prevents the eggs from breaking and weeping watery whey into the bottom of the dish. Rushing the rum reduction on too high of a flame causes the dairy fats in the butter to separate from the maple syrup before the alcohol completely flashes off, leaving an oily film on the surface of the sauce.
Preparing components ahead of time allows the starches in the oatmeal and bread to fully hydrate overnight in the refrigerator without requiring chemical leaveners. Letting the assembled unbaked dish sit covered for eight hours ensures maximum liquid absorption, yielding a uniform texture throughout each slice. Whisking the eggs thoroughly at room temperature before incorporating the cold half-and-half prevents proteins from coagulating prematurely when exposed to the sugar granules during the initial mixing phase.
