Bread Pigs

I have a habit of saving heels. You know, from loaves of bread. I probably learned this from my Gram. As a teen and young adult, I worked for her in her restaurant. She showed me how to make a couple hundred dollars out of a couple of chickens! We would save heels to use for croutons and breadcrumbs and bread dressing.

So, for years I have stuffed my freezer with heels from nearly every loaf of bread we use. Over the past year or so, I haven't had much time to cook yummy homemade dishes with my bread stash. The freezer was getting to be ridiculous. I almost posted a picture, but way too embarrassing. I'm all for keeping it real, but I have to draw the line somewhere!

The other day I was reading Christine's blog and found her bread pudding recipe. I started thinking it was time to introduce the kids to a old-fashioned dish and clean out the freezer at the same time. I actually made a dent in my bread stash! Christine's recipe didn't have cinnamon so I looked up some other recipes and ended up making up my own. It turned out pretty good.

Here is what I came up with:

Bread cubes - crusty and dry or stale
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
8 eggs
4 cups milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon

I buttered my 12 x 18 cake pan generously. I filled it with the bread cubes and sprinkled the bread cubes with the brown sugar. I blended the remaining ingredients together with a hand mixer and poured over the bread cubes. I pushed down some of the floating bread so that none were dry. I baked at 350 until a knife came out clean, about 25 minutes. If your kids like raisins you could just toss them in with the bread cubes, I'll bet.

This was supposed to be dessert for dinner, but guess what? The house smelled so good when the kids got home from school that there was no way it was going to last. I was even going to get a picture of my pretty brown pan of bread pudding, but it was gone in a flash. Ralph even ate some. It was sweet enough that no sauce was needed. Rose told me, "We are all just bread pigs!" How true.