TWD: Apple-Apple Bread Pudding

I'm a bit behind today so we haven't tested this yet, but I figured I'd just put up a teaser post tonight and then plan on enjoying this immensely for breakfast tomorrow (I'm hopeful!!). This post will also feature a couple of my favorite kitchen items that I got to use tonight. The pictures are all bad since I started working on all this after 9:30 or so, but I least I do have a window in my kitchen (most of the bigger homes in our housing area actually don't have kitchen windows).

I have never made bread pudding, and I don't recall ever eating it when someone made it from scratch. So we'll see what I think of this come breakfast-time au matin. But here are a few items of business.

1. I love my apple peeler. If you don't have one and you cringe whenever you need to spend precious moments peeling apples with a paring knife, get one of these puppies and use it. As a side note, you'll notice I did the dishes before I baked this time. :)

2. I also love this nifty cookbook stand that Jeff's parents got for me a few years ago when they went to Indonesia. It folds up nicely to store flat and I think it's so pretty. I don't use it all the time but it is nice for holding up bigger cookbooks, like Baking. And I just reminded myself I need to put the freezer jam I made last night into the freezer now.

3. I loved Dorie's instructions for giving the bread the "back-of-the-spoon treatment" periodically in a 30 minute period before baking. But here's the bread pudding shortly before I baked it. I halved the recipe because I felt like it (and I don't have a larger roasting pan!) and omitted the cream and subbed in more whole milk and it looks scrumptious. I think it will need cinnamon so I'll mix some with the powdered sugar when I dust it before consumption.

Please visit Cake or Death for the recipe and click on the TWD button to see many more takes on this week's recipe. I'll add to this post tomorrow after breakfast.

**Alright, I'm adding DURING breakfast. This is great! I am eating it cold right now and will probably heat up the rest of my piece before finishing it off. I put a powdered sugar/apple pie spice mix on top and it turned out delicious. I'm thinking I'll experiment with a peach version this summer!