Raspberry Bread Pudding

Raspberry Bread Pudding elevates baked French toast into a fruity breakfast casserole or dessert. Best served warm with an optional vanilla cream sauce. This recipe is inspired by Kneaders, but with fewer calories.

*This post is brought to you by Rhodes Bake-N-Serv. Thanks for supporting the brands that make Dessert Now Dinner Later possible. 

What is Bread Pudding?

Much like a French toast casserole, bread pudding is a bread-based dessert that combines cubed stale bread with a creamy egg custard, that is then baked to perfection.

While most variations are sweet, there are savory bread puddings like this breakfast bread pudding. (Don’t knock it till you try it! It’s actually quite good!)

Raspberry Bread Pudding (aka. Baked French Toast)

This Raspberry Bread Pudding is essentially baked French toast, but with the addition of sweet, tart raspberries. I love adding berries to bread pudding, like in my blueberry bread pudding with lemon glaze. It brightens up this typically rich dessert.

The best part about this raspberry bread pudding is that you can make and bake it right away, or make it ahead of time and refrigerate it overnight for a breakfast casserole the next morning. The vanilla cream sauce makes it more indulgent for a dessert, but is highly recommended.

This recipe was inspired by Kneader’s Raspberry Bread Pudding, but uses far less cream and sugar, while adding extra eggs and some spices for additional richness and flavor. These tweaks give it fewer calories (about half as much), while still tasting indulgent, as bread pudding should be.

What to Put on Top of Bread Pudding

Bread pudding may be eaten as-is, but can also be topped with some sort of sauce or syrup — caramel, maple syrup, chocolate sauce, etc.

This raspberry bread pudding goes well with a quick vanilla sauce. It is thick, creamy, and subtly sweet with a hint of vanilla. Like a pudding for your bread pudding — or like the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Bread pudding like this may also be topped with something as simple as a dusting of powdered sugar, if making a sauce is too much work, or whatever.

Bread for Bread Pudding

What kind of bread should you use for bread pudding? Bread pudding is a dessert made of stale bread and custard. The custard gives it a soft and spongy texture after baking, so it makes sense to use a dry (stale) bread.

Why does bread pudding need stale bread? Stale bread holds its shape better when soaking up the custard mixture, while fresh bread tends to mush completely together. This causes the cubed bread pieces to disappear into one solid slab of bread pudding.

TIP: If you don’t have stale bread, you can cheat and toast the bread in the oven to dry it out. (Instructions for this are in the recipe card.)

While you can argue that any stale bread would work, a heavy, sturdy bread like French bread, Sourdough, Brioche or Challah are popular choices.

For this raspberry bread pudding recipe I wanted to use Rhodes Warm & Serve Artisan French Rolls for their sturdy texture and great taste. I’ve also used them for campfire sandwiches, so they can stand up to hot coals as well.

Rhodes Artisan French Rolls crisp up so nicely on the outside when they are warmed in the oven, while keeping the inside soft and fluffy.

Since I wanted the entire bread to be crisp/stale, I simply thawed the rolls, cut them up into cubes, and toasted them in the oven to dry them out. The slightly open crumb is perfect for absorbing that milk and egg custard.

These Warm & Serve dinner rolls are kept in the freezer, so you can pull out just what you need, and warm them up in the oven (or microwave). I used four rolls (to equal 4 cups of cubed bread) for this raspberry bread pudding recipe.

Raspberry Bread Pudding Ingredients

You will need 10 ingredients to make the raspberry bread pudding:

• Rhodes Artisan French Rolls, cubed
• Whole Milk
• Heavy Cream (You could also buy “half & half” in place of the whole milk and heavy cream.)
• Brown Sugar
• Granulated Sugar
• Eggs
• Vanilla
• Ground Cinnamon
• Ground Nutmeg
• Fresh Raspberries

How to Make the Bread Pudding

1. Thaw the frozen rolls, cut them into cubes, and spread the cubed bread into a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake bread cubes at 275˚F for 15-20 minutes to dry out/stale the bread.
2. Whisk together the milk, cream, both sugars, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl until smooth.
3. Add the dried bread cubes to the egg custard and mix to coat. Let rest for 20 minutes to absorb the liquid. (May need to press bread down periodically so it doesn’t stay floating on the top.)
4. Empty bread pudding into a greased 9-inch oven-safe dish. Tuck/insert raspberries randomly throughout the mixture in the pan. Bake at 350˚F for 45-55 minutes or until golden brown on top, puffed up, and baked through in the center.

Vanilla Cream Sauce Ingredients

This quick vanilla cream sauce is the perfect topping for raspberry bread pudding. To make it you will need:

• Butter
• All-Purpose Flour
• Granulated Sugar
• Vanilla
• Whole Milk
• Heavy Cream (You can also buy “half & half” in place of the whole milk and heavy cream.)

How to Make the Sauce

1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the flour.
2. Whisk together to form a roux. Cook until it bubbles, about 30-60 seconds.
3. Whisk in the the sugar, vanilla, milk, heavy cream, and a dash of salt.
4. Whisk constantly until the mixture simmers and thickens. (May bubble and rise suddenly.) Remove from stove immediately. Cover and keep warm.

Serving and Storing

Serve this raspberry bread pudding warm, with a drizzle of vanilla sauce.

Store leftovers covered in the fridge up to 5 days or in the freezer up to 3 months. (As long as the bread and sauce are frozen separately.)

Problem Shooting

How do you make bread pudding moist? For moist bread pudding, make sure that the bread soaks up most, or all of the liquid. If you don’t need to cook it right away, it’s a great idea to let the bread pudding soak in the fridge overnight. You can also cover the pan with foil while baking, to help lock in any liquid.

Why is my bread pudding watery? Bread pudding may be watery if it didn’t have enough time to soak up the custard, or there wasn’t enough bread for the amount of custard.

Why is my bread pudding dry? Dry bread pudding can be the opposite problem of a watery one, where there was an insufficient quantity of custard to soak the bread. It’s also possible the bread wasn’t given enough time to absorb the custard, or it was simply overcooked.

Do I have to use whole milk and heavy cream in bread pudding?

Bread pudding is a notoriously rich and indulgent dessert, since it is made with whole milk and heavy cream (aka. half & half).

If you are opting for a healthier alternative, you may skip the heavy cream and use all whole milk. You may also use 2%, 1%, skim or even almond milk.

NOTE: The bread pudding may seem less dense and pudding-like if using a lower fat option.

Alternative – Bread Pudding Cups

A fun alternative for this dessert is to bake it in a muffin tin for individual servings. This raspberry bread pudding recipe should fill about 12-15 muffin cups. You could also use small ramekins.

To make bread pudding cups, scoop the mixture into a greased muffin tin, making sure the liquid is evenly distributed amongst each cup, and bake at 350˚F for about 30-35 minutes.

Enjoy!