Tres Leches Bread Pudding

This recipe requires you to do a little math. I recommend you check out the original bread pudding recipe I posted here to get an idea of how bread pudding works. I tweaked the bake time for this. The main difference is that I replaced some milk with evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.

Ingredients

• Stale bread, torn or cut into smallish (1" or 1.5" pieces) - bagels work, too
• Eggs
• Sweetened Condensed Milk
• Evaporated Milk
• Whole Milk
• Vanilla
• Sugar
• salt

Preheat oven to 375. Add bread into a casserole pan. Now you have to make the custard. You need the following ratios: 4oz dairy (which is 1/2c milk), 1 egg, .5tsp vanilla, 2tsp sugar. So, for example, one can of sweetened condensed milk is about 15oz. Evaporated milk comes in 5oz cans. That's 20oz total. Add another 1/2c milk, and you have 24oz., so you add 6 eggs, 4tbsp sugar, 3tsp vanilla. Add a pinch of salt, too. If this math is too hard, just do:

• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 can evaporated
• 1/2c milk
• 6 eggs
• 4tbsp sugar
• 3tsp vanilla
• 1/2tsp salt

Anyway, whisk those ingredients together thoroughly and pour over the bread. You want it to be pretty well soaked. Here's the secret. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then pack down the bread with a spatula or something similar. Let it go another 5 minutes or so and pack down again. You want the bread packed quite densely and quite soaked in custard.

Cover the pan in tin foil. Bake for 30 minutes, then take the foil off and bake for another 15 minutes. Make sure it's set (you want it to look slightly damp, but not "wet" - it's a custard, so it shouldn't be completely dry.) Let sit 10 minutes.

While that's baking, you can make the brandy sauce. You can kind of add your own flavors to this, too. Do what seems right. Rum might be good.

• 1c sugar
• 2/3c water
• 1/3c brandy
• 2tbsp grand marnier
• vanilla bean or cinnamon stick, if you have it (or similar)

To a pan, add 1c sugar and about 2/3c water and vanilla / cinnamon (if using). Boil over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and sauce is slightly thickened, about 5 or 10 minutes? Then take it off the heat and add the brandy and grand marnier.

When the bread pudding is done sitting for 10 minutes, poke holes in it with a chopstick or fork or something. Pour the brandy sauce over the top and serve with whipped cream.

Thoughts: I think I've done something really smart here. Judging by the reaction, this was something of a hit. I only regret that when I put the bread pudding together, I didn't poke holes in the bread pudding and pour the sauce over - I more or less put it on individual servings. I think that in the future I want the brandy sauce to really soak into the dessert. Also, I had so much bread that I needed a LOT of whole milk. I used only 1 can of the sweetened condensed milk and 1 can of evaporated milk, but I could have doubled that and used less whole milk - this would have given it a stronger "tres leches" flavor. But I think we have a winner.

Disaster Index: 1/10