Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding

This is the true account of how a semi-disaster in the kitchen was transformed into an amazing success story. It’s about a challenge that was issued, a challenge that was accepted and a challenge that was completed, with mixed results. It’s about a Choclate Babka that hinted at great things but ultimately came up short (and a little flat in the middle). And it’s about how a not-so-perfect chocolate babka got its act together and reinvented itself to be this delightfully decadent Chocolate and Raspberry Bread Pudding!

Most Saturday mornings we go to a local produce store to buy groceries (mainly veggies). But they also have an amazing bakery and cafe that we just cannot ignore every time we go there. What’s even better is that we always get to sample (for free) whatever’s usually new or on special at the bakery. And they almost always have something really tasty. About a month ago they were handing out samples of chocolate swirl Brioche (which is essentially Chocolate Babka) and they were SO GOOD! My husband loved it and naturally my response was “this is easy. I can make this at home.” So a challenge was issued by him which I accepted. I wanted my Brioche to be really rich with a deep chocolate flavour.

Three tries later I got pretty close to perfection. Not quite there but still pretty close. And it was amazing! We devoured that third one in a couple of days. This post however is about those first two very delicious but not so perfect chocolate babkas that we were left with. They did taste great but the first one just didn’t have enough chocolate for me and the second one stubbornly refused to rise in the middle for some reason. Of course I wasn’t going to throw them out (gasp!) and I still wanted them to feel special at the same time. After all they had been the stepping stones in my quest for the perfect chocolate swirl brioche.

So I gave them new life by transforming them into what you see below. Bittersweet chocolate swirls swimming in delicious warm custard and paired with fresh tangy raspberries and then topped with crunchy buttery pieces of brioche and a delightfully rich chocolate fudge sauce. Yup, it’s just as good as it sounds. And that’s how my chcolate babka casualties were turned into pots (ramekins?) of gold.

Chocolate Babkas are everywhere this time of year. The holidays are a wonderful excuse to indulge a little and chocolate babkas fit the bill perfectly. It’s made with Brioche which is a wonderful yellow hued bread that gets that amazing richness and flavour from butter and egg yolks and dark chocolate layers in between. This is also why brioche is great for bread puddings. I added the raspberries because I cannot imagine a bread pudding without some kind of berry and I thank my mother for that. She used to make an amazing (dairy-free) queen of puddings and that creamy bread pudding and meringue separated by a warm layer of jam always made cold winter nights very enjoyable (even with that scoop of ice cream I always added to it, winter or not). For those who don’t know what queen of puddings is, here is a recipe. Although truth be told, I will always prefer my mother’s over anything else.

A few notes about this dessert.

• This recipe can also be made in a 7 x 9 inch dish and that will be just fine.
• Or you could make them in 6 ounce ramekins (about 6 portions)
• You can make these with any kind of bread, or even chocolate or Nutella swirled bread. Brioche just has a richer taste.
• You need to layer them with soaked bread at the bottom and then raspberries (which can be fresh or frozen or fresh frozen like I did).

•  When filling these with the milk mix, make sure there is a half centimeter gap between the fill line and the top edge of the ramekin. Why? The custard will expand when baking and will flow out of the ramekin if it’s completely full. Trust me on this one. Here I have used 4 ounce ramekins and they turned out to be a little too small to contain all that delicious goodness of the bread pudding. Which is why I’m suggesting 6 ounce ramekins.

In my opinion, a perfect bread pudding should have pockets of beautiful silky custard visible amongst all the soaked chunky bread pieces. Here I have used fresh raspberries (that I quickly froze, hence fresh frozen) because I really like the tartness that these berries yield to this rich dessert. I usually buy an excess of fresh berries when they are on sale and immediately put them in the freezer for days like this when I just have to have a berry fix. Plus they taste better than the frozen berries in the store.

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5 from 3 votes

Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding

Author: Dini K.

Servings: 6 servings

Print Rate

Ingredients:

• ▢ 14 ounces of chocolate babka you can use store bought or make your own
• ▢ 2 1/2 cups of half and half you can use milk or a mix of milk and cream
• ▢ 2 tsp vanilla extract
• ▢ 5 egg yolks
• ▢ 2.8 oz sugar
• ▢ 1 punnet of raspberries
• ▢ Melted butter to brush on top
• ▢ Brown sugar to sprinkle on top

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.
• Cut the bread into small bite sized chunks and spread them in one layer on a baking tray.
• Bake the bread chunks in the oven for about 10 minutes until they become crispy around the edges but still soft in the middle. Check on the bread chunks after the first 5 minutes, as you don't want them to become too dry and hard.
• Remove them from the oven and let them cool. Put aside 1 cup of these toasted bread chunks.
• Lower the heat of the oven to 325°F/165°C.
• In a bowl, whisk eggs and sugar until they become pale and frothy.
• Whisk in half and half and vanilla.
• Place the bread chunks (not the one cup of toasted bread chunks) in the milk mix and let them soak for at least 30 minutes, till they are completely soaked through with the milk mix. From time to time, give them a stir and press them down to make sure they are soaking up the custard evenly.
• TO MAKE ONE BIG PUDDING - . Pour the milk and saturated bread mix into a buttered 7inch by 9inch baking dish. Sprinkle about 3/4 of the raspberry in the dish and gently press them into the custard and bread mix.
• Sprinkle the one cup of toasted bread chunks on top of the bread pudding and press them down slightly into the custard. It should still be the top layer. Leave to rest for about 10 minutes and brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle a little brown sugar.
• Bake in a preheated oven for about 40-45 minutes or until the custard is set. When you insert a tooth pick it should come out clean without any liquid.
• Serve warm with the rest of the raspberries.

TO MAKE INDIVIDUAL SERVINGS -

• Butter six, 6 ounce ramekins. Using a spoon place enough of the soaked bread chunks in each of the ramekins in one thick layer at the bottom (about 1/3 of the ramekin).
• Place 2-3 raspberries in each ramekin on top of the bread.
• Ladle the custard to fill the ramekins up to 3/4 full.
• Evenly divide the one cup of toasted bread chunks between the 6 ramekins and gently press them down.
• Add more milk to each of the ramekins making sure there is a half centimeter gap between the fill line and the top edge of the ramekin. Leave ramekins to rest for 10 minutes and brush the tops with butter and sprinkle about 1 tsp of brown sugar on top.
• Place ramekins on a baking tray and bake in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes until the custard has set.
• Serve warm with the rest of the raspberries.

“This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.”

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You can serve these warm (or even cold if you like) with maybe a dusting of powdered sugar?

Or some chocolate fudge sauce?
Maybe even whipped cream?

I love eating this while it’s still warm and soft. That’s how I’ve always had bread pudding. And with a scoop of ice cream on top. This time I didn’t have any ice cream in the freezer (I blame the weather for that!) so I topped it with this amazing chocolate fudge sauce. This is my favourite chocolate fudge sauce recipe and it’s from Brown Eyed Baker. I love eating it with ice cream or puddings or dare I admit – just straight out of the bottle. For the full recipe you can follow this link.

The custard layer in this bread pudding was delicious and I love how the chocolate swirls merged with the custard and the soft bread chunks. The crispy/crunchy golden brown bread at the top is a wonderful addition to the texture as well. And those bright red/pink patches you see in the pudding are where the raspberries used to be. They provide that sweet sourness which pairs wonderfully with the creamy richness of the chocolate bread pudding. There is certainly more than meets the eye in this amazing dessert in terms of all those lovely flavours and textures.

Mr K loves eating this pudding cold. I don’t get it. But each to his own. How do you like your bread pudding? Warm or cold? With whipped cream? Ice cream? Chocolate sauce? Or something else entirely? Let me know in the comments. You can keep this in the fridge for about 3 days (that’s how long ours lasted), and then just warm it up in the microwave before eating it (unless of course you’re part of some alien species that likes to eat bread pudding cold like my husband).

So Christmas is only two weeks away. This is my first Christmas with Mr K and we are going to be building a Gingerbread house together this year which will hopefully be a holiday tradition for us going forward. You will see and hear more about it in another post very soon!

I made these chocolatey desserts in time for Christmas too! You can check them out below.

Fully Loaded Rocky Road Brownies – Fudgy Chocolate Brownie topped with Chocolate ganache mixhed with all the Rocky Road Candies!

Intense Dark Chocolate Rum Balls – {or Rum Truffles} These are amazing! Don’t take my word for it. Intense bitter sweet chocolate with a nice boozy Rum kick! Perfect to give as gifts, ONLY if you can bear to part with them.

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