Pumpkin Bread Pudding

The weather was glorious this morning - fog covering the mountains and descending into the streets, a wet drizzle soaking into the ground and nourishing plants for the winter ahead. I'm wearing a sweater, and smelling the delicious candle lit in front of me. And enjoying pumpkin bread pudding for breakfast, with a cup of black coffee (no sweetener, thank you). Perfection. 

What could make this even better? The fact that this bread pudding was left over from last night's supper. Yes, I did say supper. Or dinner, your preference. It was one of those days yesterday, and I was dead-tired. Didn't want to fix anything for supper, but wanted comfort food at the same time. My experimental food often turns out best when I'm in these moods.

When it was the last thing I needed to be doing, I cleaned and cooked and pureed a couple of pie pumpkins on Sunday. I have more pumpkin than I need for a pie.

And another package of some gluten-free rolls that I was disappointed in recently because they were so stale.

(Ignore the lack of rotation here - I uploaded this one form the phone and can't figure out how to rotate it now)

Pumpkin bread pudding? It sounds good. Did I see a recipe for that recently? Oh yes, I pinned it. And so it was with inspiration from Martha Stewart's recipe combined with a bread pudding recipe from my beloved Cooking Down East that this one was born, giving us not-so-healthy-but-quite-comforting sustenance last night with a side of eggs.

And it is good.

I (finally) had another post planned for you this week, but felt I needed to share this one. Because it does good things for the mind, and if your mind is like mine these days, you might just want that extra comfort!

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

(Printable Recipe)

15 ounces pureed pumpkin (fresh or canned)

1 1/2 cups milk

2 large eggs

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup organic pure cane sugar

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. pure vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Few small dashes of ground ginger

Few small dashes of ground cloves

Couple of small dashes of ground nutmeg

Package of Schar classic white rolls, cubed into 1 to 1 1/2- inch pieces (let sit out to dry a couple of hours if they aren't already kind of dry) - or a gluten-free bread of similar consistency

1/2 cup chopped pecans

(Optional) Cinnamon and sugar to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a 2-quart baking dish.

Place bread in baking dish and set aside.

Mix together pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugars, salt, vanilla paste or extract, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg.

Pour over bread and gently stir until all is covered. Let sit for a few minutes.

Sprinkle pecans over the top, and shake cinnamon and sugar lightly over it all if desired.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 45-50 minutes.

Enjoy!