Outside the Box Peanut Butter Bread Pudding Served Cold

I love it when people think outside of the box and I really love it when the idea works.  Does cold bread pudding work though?

I’m not ready to let go of peanut butter month yet, so here is one final post that I just had to share with you.

Another Food Network show I love to watch is Sugar High.  I am known for my sweet tooth, in fact people say, “Oh I bet Dionne would love this!  She has such a sweet tooth!”  Cookies especially.  Cinnamon rolls mostly.  Cake with frosting of course.  Lindsay’s blondies (any of them) and Kita’s Maple French Toast and Bacon Cupcakes, which are on my to do list.

Anyway, I like to watch Sugar High.  One place that caught my attention is Shulzies Bread Pudding.  Sarah created these bread puddings that are served cold instead of the traditional warm and dripping with gooey frosting.

I had some leftover cookies from Thanksgiving and I had to hide a few so I could put together my attempt at a replica of one of Sarah’s creations.

I baked a fresh loaf of bread, chopped up some cookies and started to think about how I was going to pull this off.  Fortunately, Sarah allowed the Food Network to share a recipe for me to go off of!

A few things Sarah mentioned she uses in her bread pudding is fresh bread (instead of not-so-fresh) and if I remember correctly she doesn’t soak it ahead of time and she doesn’t serve it warm.  If my memory serves me correct, after baking she puts the bread pudding in the fridge overnight.  Hmmm.  Curious.

I would never imply that I could come close to something she has taken much time to perfect but I merely wanted to taste for myself what cold bread pudding made Sarah’s way tastes like.

After letting the bread pudding sit in the fridge overnight, she breaks it up into pieces and scoops it into serving dishes.  That’s pretty much what I did.

For my recipe I used fresh bread, chopped cookies and peanut butter as the stars of this dessert.  After baking and cooling I tasted my bread pudding cold.  It was…different.

Letting it sit overnight was fine, I crumpled the bread pudding and I could see pieces of the now soft cookies looking up at me.  So I bit one.  I’m not a huge fan of the texture, but I don’t think I got it right.  Sarah’s bread pudding wasn’t solid when she took it out of the oven (again, if I remember right) and mine was so I think mine is more firm.  Not gooey.  Boo. 

When I tasted mine I was soooooo disappointed that I don’t live anywhere close to Schulzies.  [sigh] I will never get an accurate opinion this way! And I didn’t like my bread pudding.

But I never give up.  Never.

I sprinkled chocolate chips into the bread pudding mess, scooped it up the best way I could into little serving dishes and I tasted it.

My less-than-par bread pudding was quite different with the hard semi-sweet chocolate chips!  I loved the soft texture of the bread and the firmness of the chocolate.  Win!

Since it’s a known fact that most bread puddings need a frosting to make them complete I crossed my fingers hoping I could take this over the top.

I mixed 1 tbsp. Nutella, 1 tbsp. softened cream cheese, 1/2 tsp. vanilla and 3/4 cup powdered sugar with a wisk until smooth and I drizzled it over my poor bread pudding.  I crossed the fingers on one hand and I spooned a bite with the other…

Gourmet.

Somehow the Nutella really brought out the peanut butter flavor of the bread pudding, the chocolate gave it the much needed textural contrast and the sauce brought this b. p. together in perfect harmony.

I can’t make a good cold bread pudding like Schulzies, but I can make an impressive substitute good enough to satisfy curiosity.  Still, it’s not the real thing….

But it will have to do.

Here are my modifications for cold bread pudding:

• The bread recipe I baked for this bread pudding is here.
• I used two bread loaf pans to make this bread pudding and split the ingredients.
• I used a total of 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar and 6 eggs for the liquid mixture in addition to the other ingredients.
• For the peanut butter rendition mix 1/2 cup peanut butter into the wet ingredients and wisk it together until there are little peanut butter clumps in the mix.
• I added 1 cup of chopped cookies per loaf pan.
• Don’t forget to add the chocolate chips right before serving.

You can find the recipe for Celestial Chocolate Chunk Bread Pudding here.

If you are even close to Venice California stop by Schulzies and try some of Sarah’s bread pudding and tell her there is a lady in Washington she doesn’t even know that is a big fan of hers!   I want to try the Cookies N Cream Dream, the Eggnog Experience and the Gracious Grasshoper Cookie!  I’m really curious about the Biggie’s Figgie Pudding too.

I am not being compensated to endorse Schulzies or any other entity.  I am just giving credit where it is due and sharing with you something that I cannot yet try.  My knockoff doesn’t cut it.

Is there something you’ve seen lately that you wish you could recreate just to see what it might taste like?

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