Chocolate Bread Pudding -- Tuesdays with Dorie

A huge thank you to Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle, she selected Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding for this week's TWD treat. I have to admit that this was a recipe that caught my eye on my first flip through of Dorie's book, before I had any idea who or what Tuesdays with Dorie was, and had no idea about the gorgeous food blogs and fun bake along events that live on the internet. Why did this catch my eye? Am I a huge chocolate fan? Nah, I like chocolate but it's not my favorite. Am I a huge bread pudding fan? Nope. Don't really like anything custardy or eggy. I don't know. I think it was the photo in the book, or maybe that when I read through the ingredients Dorie suggest Challah -- which is probably my favorite bread, or maybe that my mom has always loved bread pudding and it reminded me of her in a warm homey sort of way. And even though it really caught my eye, I doubt I would have ever actually made it, just because it's not really my style, and that would have been a shame, because this is one amazing dessert!

Challah is "my bread," I've always loved it, and love making it. It's kind of like my signature dish, people are always excited to have "my bread" when I am hosting a dinner or party. And as soon as dinner starts, people start claiming any of the loaf that might be left over. It's fun, I love when people enjoy what I make. Here are a couple challah making photos...

So I was happy to make a giant Challah loaf to turn into this bread pudding, this was my second challah this week!

I read on the TWD site that maybe there was a lot of custard, so after halving custard part of the recipe, I upped the bread a little (6 ounces would be called for in a half recipe, I used 9 ounces of bread).

For the custard I used skim milk instead of whole (since that's what we keep in the fridge), but kept the cream, and as for the eggs, the I used 1 whole egg and 2 yolks, one half of the recipe as written except for an extra half egg (which I didn't even bother with, I thought I would appreciate a touch less egg in the finished product). I used golden raisins and semisweet chocolate, baked in an 8 by 8 glass dish for 40 minutes. Yum!

The photo above is before baking.

Even if this wasn't the prettiest dessert and was hard for me to photograph, as delicious as it was, it was totally worth it :)