Saturday, April 10, 2010

Hodge-Podge Pudding

I made a realization the other day - I have yet to ever make bread pudding using actual yeast bread. I've made it with Irish soda bread, with banana bread, and even with biscuits. And every time, it's been really yummy!

Having already done quite a bit of experimenting with the basic bread pudding recipe, I decided to branch out even further and see what else I could use to make a delicious, custardy pudding. This actually came about because I wanted to make biscuit pudding, but found out after mixing up the custard that I didn't have enough biscuits. What to do?

At that point, I went ahead and tossed in the biscuits, then started improvising, tossing in a bit of this and a bit of that. Leftover muffin, graham crackers, cereal crumbs, all were added with the hope that the pudding would at least be edible.

Turns out, I needn't have worried. It was delicious! It had a wonderfully soft, custardy texture and a delightful combination of flavors. Thus Hodge-Podge Pudding was created. Here is a recipe/formula for making this fun pudding, which can be used for either breakfast or dessert. It utilizes foods that you have on hand, and need to use up, so it saves money while creatively using leftovers.


Hodge-Podge Pudding
2 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
5 cups assorted grain foods (at least 2-3 cups should be bread-like: bread, biscuits, waffles, pancakes, muffins, etc. Fill in the rest with stuff like cold cereal, leftover cooked cereal, leftover cooked rice, crackers, etc.)

Heat oven to 350. Grease a 1 1/2-qt. casserole.

Mix milk, sugar, cinnamon, and eggs in large bowl with wire whisk until well blended. Stir in bread/grains. Pour into casserole.

Bake uncovered 40 to 45 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge of casserole comes out clean.


I later made another batch of this hodge-podge pudding (pictured above), this time using biscuits, waffles, saltines, and cereal crumbs, and baked it in a 9x13. It turned out really good.

To make this into a great dessert, try topping it with a dessert sauce as found in any of these recipes: cottage pudding, Woodford pudding, Irish soda bread pudding.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great idea! With only two of us, I can now bake pans of biscuits and muffins and transform the resulting leftovers into my favorite dessert!!

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  2. That's brilliant. Love the idea.

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  3. Ok, made this last night, and yum! We had extra people for dinner, and their kids just devoured it, even though it "didn't look like pudding!" Ha ha ha.... :-)

    I used 4 cups of crumbled hot dog buns and 1 cup crumbled banana bread. It took longer to bake because the hot dog buns were more mush than bread, but the end result was still really yummy!

    I also heated up some caramel topping and dribbled some on each serving. Mark's grandma used to make a carrot pudding with a caramel sauce, and it gave it that familiar, much loved touch.

    SOOOOOOO making this again!

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  4. One of my favorite recipes! I make different variations using rum (vodka works wonderfully as well), neutella, almond milk and tapioca pudding. This time i did that and used stale caramel rice cakes and leftover spinach cake. The end result turned out better than the original cake!

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