Bread Pudding

So, what do you do when you have stale country bread, the bread you took apart to make troughs, stale coconut macaroons and stale cookies? You make bread pudding... the Belgian way...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup apple juice
• 5 cups packed bread/cookie crumbs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp honey
• 6 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger
• 4 large eggs, separated
• pinch of salt
  

---

Preparation:

1. In a small bowl, soak the raisins in the apple juice for one hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter and flour a 10" round pan.
3. Combine the bread and milk in a large sauce pan and let it sit for 10 minutes.
   
4. Add the raisins and the juice, the sugar, honey, butter, cinnamon and ginger. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. The mix will become homogenous and smooth and should be thick.
5. Off the heat, stir in the yolks, one at a time.
6. Beat the egg whites with the salt to soft peaks and fold gently in the mixture.
7. Pour the mixture in the pan and bake 35-40 minutes (until knife comes out clean). Let cool completely.
8. I added an icing made with lemon juice and powdered sugar. It is quite tart but goes well with the pudding.

RESULT: It tastes quite good. It is not too sweet but balances the icing really well. I wish I had used a smaller pan (I used a 12") for a thicker cake but then it might have been too much.

Notes:

• I did not have 5 full cups of bread crumbs, so I "adapted" the quantities (which might or might not have been a good idea)... I mean, the taste was good but I don't know if it's due to luck or if I did well in eyeballing different quantities.