Almond Brioche Bread Pudding with Raspberry Sauce

Time for Sweet Melissa Sundays! I missed baking along with the group last month but am back and ready to bake :) This Sunday's selection was picked by Candace of Candy Girl , she picked Melissa Murphy's Sweet Almond Bread Pudding with Raspberry Sauce. You can find the wonderful recipe here at her site if you do not have the Sweet Melissa Baking Book.

This was such a great pick for this time of the year, those of us with frost warnings and wind chills to worry about need something warm and comforting for dessert and this fits the bill, plus it adds a little something extra with the raspberry sauce to remind us of sweet summer berries.

I have never been a huge bread pudding fan, but ever since we made Dorie's Chocolate Bread Pudding with Tuesdays with Dorie and I fiddled with the ratio of custard to dried bread, I've found the perfect balance for my tastes. I halved the custard part of the recipe, and reduced the bread my 1/4, so my bread puddings are a little more set and solid, rather than runny and gooey -- which does not appeal to me at all.

For this recipe the recommended bread is brioche, I made my own with this recipe for Golden Brioche from Epicurious. I've baked brioche a few times, and thought this would be a fun little extra baking project to do along with the bread pudding. The brioche was delicious and we had plenty left for snacking after I measured out about 12 ounces in cubes for this bread pudding. The original recipe calls for 1 lb loaf of brioche so I think that 12 ounces is just about 3/4 of that, right? For the custard I just halved the custard ingredients. So my new formula for bread pudding is 3/4 of the required bread and 1/2 of the required custard, perfect-o :)

Above is the brioche in the pan, I used a 2 quart deep dish glass pie plate. Below: adding the custard...

And here is the baked bread pudding, yum!