Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Homemade Caramel Recipe
Pumpkin Bread Pudding is flavorful, rich, and decadent weekend breakfast or brunch drizzled with Homemade Caramel sauce! Serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or just a generous topping of caramel.
About 24 hours before making the bread pudding:Cut bread into ½ inch cubes (use serrated bread knife to cut easier) and spread it out on a large baking sheet (or two). Leave it out to get stale for about a day.PRO TIP: put the loaf of bread into the refrigerator for a couple hours before cutting, it's easier to cut cold bread.
Bread Pudding:
Preheat the oven to 375° and grease a 9×13 casserole baking dish with some butter all over the bottom and up the sides (you can also use cooking spray).
Spread stale bread in the baking dish evenly.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, milk, heavy whipping cream, pumpkin puree, melted butter, vanilla extract, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon. Whisk until all is smooth and combined evenly.
Pour pumpkin eggs mixture over the bread cubes evenly, making sure to pour it evenly all over. Stir and press down all over the bread so that it all gets soaked.
Bake bread pudding for 30 minutes and then cover the top loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil. Bake another 15-20 minutes until baked through. PRO TIP: to make sure the bread pudding is baked through, you can check the internal temperature in the center of bread pudding and aim for 170°F-175°F.
Homemade Caramel:
Do not walk away while making the caramel. Keep an close eye on the sugar.
Preheat a heavy-bottom sauce pot over medium heat. Spread the sugar in the pot evenly. (No need to stir yet.)
When the sugar begins to melt, start stirring with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring as the sugar melts and starts to turn brown.
When the sugar reached deep brown color (350 degrees F), add the butter and stir constantly.
When the butter is all melted, you will notice that it gets thicker and looks more like caramel. Take off the heat.
Slowly, add heavy cream while stirring. When the mixture is all smooth, let it stand until cools and settles.
Drizzle what you wish over the cooked bread pudding and save the rest for addling to individual portions. (Keep leftover caramel refrigerated in a jar.)
Notes
*Forgot to leave out the bread? Make stake bread fast: Preheat oven to 200°. Cut bread slices into small cubes that are about 1/2-inch in size. Spread bread in two large, rimmed baking sheets in one even layer and place the trays in the oven. Let them bake and harden for about 2 hours. Take them out and you can prepare the stuffing right away.
Need To Make Less? If you don’t need that much bread pudding, you can easily half the recipe and use a 2-2.5 quart baking dish, or even an 8×8 dish. The baking time won’t be affected because you are using a smaller dish, since the thickness of the bread pudding is still the same.
Storing: you can easily store bread pudding in the same dish you baked it in. Make sure to cover it air-tight with plastic wrap or use a baking dish that comes with a lid. Store it for 3-4 days in the refrigerator! To reheat, simply cut off a slice and microwave just until heated through.
Make it salted! Sprinkle some flaky or coarse salt on top of the bread pudding after you drizzle the caramel to make it salted caramel flavor.