Weird Dreams, Chocolate Cherry Bread Pudding

Last night I dreamed I was at Tanya's and she had made this two-layer shortcake, strawberry jell-o and cool whip creation that tasted really funky, but it was a huge hit and she'd won some sort of gourmet prize for it.

Anyhow... I've been busy with school starting back up and riding a new horse at the rescue, so sorry about the lack of posts! The archiving is on hold while I figure out how to keep my head from exploding during cell biology lecture. But I did make a nice bread pudding yesterday, so I'll share that.

I had made some chocolate cupcakes out of a box and was disappointed by how lame they came out (and my lack of frosting). But I still wanted chocolate deliciousness so I decided to give this a try.

Breakfast of Champions

I whisked up 6 eggs and a little over a cup of heavy cream, added some almond extract (maybe 1/2 tsp) and some vanilla (about 1 tsp) and a quarter cup of sugar. Then I tore up the 16 remaining cupcakes (Mike apparently ate 2) and stirred them in along with about a cup of chocolate chips and a can of sweet cherries, drained. Not maraschinos, not pie filling, just canned cherries I found in the canned fruit section. The cupcakes pretty much completely crumbled apart, but it came out well so don't worry about it. If you don't have enough egg/cream mix to soak up all the cupcake crumbs you can stir in a little more cream (hoorah death by dairy fat!).

I greased a 9"x9" glass pan and poured in the mixture, which fit perfectly. Remember that it won't rise a whole lot and won't get runny, so it's safe to have a small mounded portion over the top of the pan. I baked this concoction at 350 for about 45 minutes, until a knife stuck in the middle came out with only a few fine crumbs stuck to it and the edges were starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.

I highly recommend serving a nice warm square of this pudding with a scoop of ice cream on top.