Sweet Potato Bread Pudding

Bread Pudding is the quintessential New Orleans dessert. Every restaurant in the city has some sort of variation. Here’s an twist to this southern dessert. Sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie spices along with pecans really dress up classical bread pudding. And it appears like a cake when baked in a spring form pan. I served the dessert with bourbon sauce. Delicious. With Louisiana sweet potatoes available in the fall, this is a good time to make this variation.

What is bread pudding?

Bread pudding has old, old beginnings dating to the 11th and 12th centuries. It was a way for frugal cooks to use leftover, stale bread rather than wasting it. In the traditional recipe, the bread is soaked in a custard of milk and eggs along with seasonings then baked. Bread pudding can be savory or sweet. The Romans made a variation of bread pudding. The British made bread pudding as early as the 13th century when this dish was known as “poor man’s pudding” in England. For some reason, this dish has become associated with New Orleans. When made with crusty and airy New Orleans’ French Bread and served with a whiskey, rum or butter sauce, this dessert is irresistible.

Recipe

Here are the ingredient for my recipe. It includes six eggs as well as milk, sugar, butter, pecans and spices. It is very similar to a recipe I featured several years ago for “Pumpkin Bread Pudding” with several slight modifications.

I use only traditional French bread to make my recipe. I am able to purchase authentic French bread from Rouse’s market since this New Orleans’ family chain added a location close by. This is Reising’s Poor Boy Enriched New Orleans French Bread. It has a very porous texture and really soaks up the milk and eggs without becoming soggy. If you can’t find French Bread, then baguettes would work.

For this variation, I added a sweet potato. I baked the sweet potato in the oven and then mashed it before adding to the bread pudding. You just need a small (8 oz) potato, about 1/2 cup when baked.

Place the bread cubes in a well oiled 9″ spring form pan. Blend the rest of the ingredients together with an electric mixer (except the pecans) and add to the bread cubes. Stir. Then let the pudding sit in the refrigerator for two hours. Stir occasionally and mash some of the bread cubes. (As an alternate approach, you can soak the bread cubes for only 15 – 20 minutes; then bake the dessert. This results in a puffy flavored custard which retains more of the bread cube texture. This is delicious, too.)

When ready to bake, top with one cup of coarsely chopped pecans. Bake in a slow 325 degree oven for one hour until the center is set and the edges pull away from the pan. Let set in the spring form pan for an hour before removing the sides of the pan. The pudding will puff up while baking and the settle back down when cooled.

I served the bread pudding with a Bourbon Sauce made of corn syrup, bourbon, vanilla extract and butter. Yum.

Here’s my “Sweet Potato Bread Pudding.” It makes a good dessert for a Thanksgiving or a festive holiday meal.