How to Make Panettone Bread Pudding

Well hello everyone and welcome to another delicious bake-along episode. Now here's a question for you. Have you ever been gifted a giant panettone? And as delicious as they are around holiday time, sometimes you're stuck with leftovers. Well not anymore because That combination of citrus, sometimes raisin, little hint of rum and lemon zest in there. And of course there are so many flavors. You can get chocolate or chocolate chip, but they're massive. And if you don't have a big family or group to feed a panettone, sometimes you're stuck with leftovers. And so making a classic bread pudding, but using the panettone instead of day-old bread, oh, is delicious. So I wanted to show you first, I have cut up my six cups of panettone. So it depends on the size that you make. Sometimes if it's the smallest panettone I've seen, you'll get 10 cups of diced bread from, but sometimes panettone are just huge. Now this is a good idea. If your panettone has a cream filling in it, don't use the cream filling when you're dicing the bread, just cut around it. And I've actually got a mix of chocolate chip panettone and then the more traditional that's got citrus peel and raisins in it. So really you can mix it up. Day-old is best. And if you're cutting a fresh panettone and you find it's a little too soft and squishy, then take these cubes, spread them on a baking tray and toast them up for just 10 minutes to dry them out a little bit. You don't need to color them or have them turn brown at all. Just dry them out. Actually, and a good point for the appearance of these bread, uh, puddings. What I like to do is cut the brown crusts off. So I'm just left with the interior. Now, what I'm making as the base for the bread pudding is called a Royale. And it's a fancy term for just simply eggs, sugar, and milk. This is your custard base for your bread pudding. So what I start with is two whole eggs and two egg yolks. And I'll give these a little whisk with my sugar. Don't feel you have to stick with panettone for this recipe. You could use a leftover challah or another egg bread, um, or any brioche, even croissant would work beautifully. Any sort of day old, but rich bread. Now I'm going to whisk in my milk and you will be surprised when you see this volume of custard base for the amount of bread, it looks like it's too much, but that is the point. The bread absorbs a lot of the liquid as it cooks and it makes the bread pudding wonderfully creamy. It's really about the custard, not about the bread. I am adding a splash of vanilla extract. And once you've got that all combined, you pour that over your cubed panettone. So see what I mean? It's the panettone is swimming in the custard, but that is what is supposed to happen. Now it's a general rule with any bread pudding recipe. When you start soaking the bread, it's you don't put it in the oven right away. So you want to give time for this diced up day old bread to soak up some of the liquid. So I find setting this aside for about 15 minutes is all it needs. And then I have some, you will notice there's a little difference. So the bread, you want to stir this once or twice, the panettone because it is delicate and rich may break down a little bit, it may not stay in precise cubes. That's absolutely fine. Because even those little pieces will absorb the liquid as it sits. So you can really see the difference after 15 minutes. So I'm going to set this one aside. And I have my ramekins already. I'm making this an individual plated dessert. So if you wanted, you could put this in a baking dish, but it has to be able to fit into a roasting pan because we do want to bake this in a water bath to gently cook it so we don't brown the outside of the bread pudding. So I have six ramekins, and I've rubbed the inside with some butter. And with a ladle, I want to scoop out generous amounts of custard and bread and fill these right to the top. In order to bake off a version for you to see I had to mix and match my ramekins so I had enough to go around. I hope you don't mind but it means you've got different sizes. And as a note, you're not serving your bread pudding in the ramekin. You can if you wish, but it turns out nicely into a plated dessert. All right, right to the bottom. Six nice portions. Once baked, you can freeze these desserts in the ramekin or turned out and well every last bit of panettone goodness in there. Perfect. I've had a tea kettle on the boil. And so the reason I'm putting this in the roasting pan, as opposed to a baking tray is so I can pour boiling water around them just coming up halfway. This just the hot water is a buffer against the dry heat of the oven. And it allows a custard dessert like this to bake evenly, but gently so that it sets without overcooking the custard on the outside, but fully cooking it on the inside. Some cheesecake recipes use this technique to I've preheated my oven to 350. And you'll be surprised how long these take to bake because of that custard. You want to give them time so they can take up to 50 minutes to bake. But before I put them in my finishing touch, I've just got a little cinnamon sugar that I sprinkle on top. This adds a nice little crunch and just a hint of cinnamon flavor. So it's festive, but not too festive. So if you're serving these after the holiday season, with your leftovers, it doesn't feel too Christmassy, but it still has that nice treat aspect of it. All right, I'll pop these in the oven. And when they come out, you can let them sit in the water for a little bit just to make them easier to handle. And then take the ramekins out, cool them on a rack. And then it's up to you. If you'd like to serve them warm, you can just serve them warm. Or personally, I have always loved bread pudding chilled when it's ice cold. So these, I actually have, they're very cold. I chilled them overnight. And now they're ready to plate. And I think it's fine. You can serve them on their own or prepare a sauce if you want. I'm just going to turn it upside down. That was not very glamorous, but it did what it should. I like to serve the cinnamon sugar side up. But you can see that custardy layer. But now you've got that nice crunchy layer right on top. So something like a caramel sauce or a fruit coulis is excellent with it. I've got a little creme anglaise. So it just enhances that custard character. If you've got chocolate chip panettone, a little chocolate sauce would not be out of place on a recipe like this. So there you have it, a delicious, easy bread pudding dessert made from your holiday leftovers. I hope you'll give this recipe a try. It's so simple to make. It's a keeper. Let me know your notes below how the recipe turns out when you make it. And if you have any questions or tell me how you've made this recipe your own, changing up the flavors a little bit. I love to hear from you. And quite frankly, it's you that I take inspiration from when I create my recipes. And I am I'm thinking of you when I'm in the kitchen baking. So let me know you what you want to see. And I'll get on it. In the meantime, enjoy your bread pudding. Happy New Year to everyone. And I will see you in the next year with lots more delicious recipes. Cheers. So good. And the panettone comes in, already comes with such built-in flavor. So easy to work with. Oh, that's good.