“We were raised eating bread pudding. You can experiment as I do! Sometimes I add cocoa instead of cinnamon and raisins and I have chocolate pudding! Taste to make sure you don’t need more sugar. Some people like it better with a little bit more! Enjoy!” ~ Mama Peggy
Bread pudding dates back to 11th- and 13th-century England, where it was originally called “poor man’s pudding” because poor cooks used whatever leftover scraps of bread they had. It makes perfect sense that it would become a Southern mainstay during the Great Depression, where meals were often made of biscuits and whatever simple meals could be cobbled together. Biscuits were a constant. Bread pudding was an easy sweet to make.
Ingredients
- ▢ — 4 or 5 soft cold biscuits
- ▢ — 2 cups milk
- ▢ — ½ cup butter
- ▢ — 1 cup sugar
- ▢ — ½ tsp. cinnamon
- ▢ — ¼ tsp. salt
- ▢ — 2 eggs (beaten)
- ▢ — ½ cup raisins (if desired)
- ▢ — 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- ▢ — Pour milk over crumbled biscuits.
- ▢ — After a few minutes add other ingredients except butter.
- ▢ — Mix well and pour into 1 ½ quart casserole dish!
- ▢ — Dot with butter.
- ▢ — Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes!
From Kevin (Peggy’s Son)
When I was growing up, Mama almost always made the chocolate version of bread pudding, not the version as listed in the recipe. So when Mama wrote “Sometimes I add cocoa instead of cinnamon,” that’s the only way I remember it. I’m sure she made it the regular way, too, and it’s the way she grew up eating it. After all, she titled this “My Mama's Bread Pudding” By my Mama's bread pudding was usually chocolate.
One funny aside; whenever I’ve tried to describe Mama’s bread pudding to
people through the years, I most often get a confused look. The tide seems to have shifted,
but for a long time when most people thought of bread pudding it was as something to be scooped
out onto serving dish, like a serving of a casserole, or dumped into a bowl. I”d
tell them, “No, Mama’s was served in squares and you ate it like a piece
of pie.” Now if you search for examples of bread pudding, you’ll find them served
both ways.
Norman
November 4, 2017 10:10 amJust like what my Grandma made when I was little. Down to the last ingredient, I had my Grandmas recipe but it did not have any amounts. NOW I DO! Thank you very much for the memoeries this has brought back.