Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding is an easy and delicious recipe to use up any bread that's past its prime. Stale bread is soaked in sweet custard and tossed with chocolate chips then baked until puffed and golden. It's absolutely awesome.

Early on in 2020, which was actually like a hundred years ago, I was working to form better habits around my personal environmental impact. I was making an effort to shop more locally and buy products that used plastic-free packaging. Everything that could be was reusable or refillable or natural or whatever. We were far from perfect, but we were making an effort.

Then Covid-19 landed, and suddenly you couldn't leave your house, and you didn't want anyone else touching your stuff, and you couldn't get half the food you wanted to anyway. Most importantly, you wanted things to feel safe and easy because you were stressed-the-fork-out, and all your good habits went out the window. Or was that just me?

One of my favorite ways to reduce food waste is to make bread pudding. Whether you've bought yourself a fancy loaf of bread from the organic bakery, baked your own fresh bread, or just picked up something from the day-old bakery rack on sale at the grocery store, this transformation is going be beautiful. So often I use up half a loaf of good bread, then the rest goes stale before I get a chance to eat the whole thing.

If you take a few minutes to tear or cut your bread into chunks and pop it in the freezer before it goes moldy, you can have bread pudding anytime, and your bread will never go to waste.

How to make Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding is incredibly easy to make. Chunks of stale bread get soaked in a mixture of eggs, brown sugar, Kahlua, cream, and milk. Scatter some chocolate chips or chopped chocolate over everything. Then just bake it until it's puffy but still a tiny bit squishy on the inside.

I like to serve this with some freshly whipped cream, but ice cream or custard would also be completely awesome.

And this recipe is so flexible. Add nuts or coconut if you like. Use a mixture of different types or flavors of chocolate. Throw in some berries. Just check your cupboards or the fridge and see what you've got hanging around. Nothing need be wasted.

This pandemic will pass. We'll find a vaccine and get it under control. But we have to make our planet last forever, so it's time we all started making some changes. Start by turning leftovers into Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding.

Don't lose your momentum. Check out this post "Be Awesome: Waste Less" for a few other environmentally friendly swaps you can easily make in your home.

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Recipe adapted from Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home by Nigella Lawson.