Jake had a lot of happy brothers when this Croissant Bread Pudding came out of the oven. He had been wanting to make this recipe all week, but with the hour-and-a-half baking time, we couldn’t seem to pull it off for dessert. We finally got to it for brunch, since it’s just croissants baked in a sweet custard. The flavor was reminiscent of my family’s sweet, vanilla-y kugel recipe, although the texture of this, baked in a water bath, was smoother and creamier.
The recipe is deceptively easy, until you get to that bain marie. I had nothing in this house other than a half sheet pan for the water bath, and it’s not like the sides of one of those puppies come up terribly high. So Jake got a lesson in how to be super-careful when moving a pyrex pan relaxing in a sheet pan filled with water ““ all wrapped and tented with foil. And you can bet your butt we didn’t include the raisins she calls for…how blasphemous to ruin such an otherwise yummy dish! (Had I found chocolate chips in the pantry, I definitely would’ve substituted.)
Ben and I each found the dish a little too rich after the first couple of bites, but the rest of the Reiser bunch raved about this recipe for the rest of the day.