banana bread pudding with caramel sauce

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

Ohhh yeah … you’re seeing that right. Today’s recipe, just in time for the holidays, is a banana bread pudding with caramel sauce. Start letting those bananas over-ripen now, folks. This is not a drill.

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

I mean, look at that oozy, glossy sauce just drizzled into every nook and cranny of this golden-crusted banana bread pudding. Care to get some oohs and aahs at the dinner table? Save the sauce pouring for the dining table. Folks really like a show, and this caramel sauce poured over a piping hot banana bread pudding doesn’t disappoint.

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

I dreamt up this idea to make a banana bread pudding because we always have overripe bananas in the house. I feel like banana consumption in our family is, like the stock market, impossible to predict. Every week I start out with ten bananas in our grocery cart. Sometimes those ten bananas are gone by the next morning. Other times I can’t give these guys away with a used car.

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

As a result of all these errant bananas, I bake banana bread pretty regularly. Sure, I could stop including bananas in our weekly shop, but bananas are so crazy cheap that I feel like it’s a no-brainer to have them on hand. I need them just in case a child starts melting down in front of the kitchen at 5:00 pm claiming that I’m “starving” him or her to death. Not that it ever happens, of course.

I finally settled on this great recipe from Genius Kitchen as a starting point for my banana bread pudding with caramel sauce. Our kitchen happened to be stuffed to the gills with leftover baguettes due to a gross miscalculation in how many carbs 40 ravenous seven-year-olds would actually eat at a birthday party. Here’s a pro tip: they don’t. They gobble sugar.

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

Anyway, French baguette doesn’t make the best bread pudding necessarily — it’s very crusty and devoid of that delicious food we call fat. Softer, yet stale, breads usually yield more custardy bread puddings, but I got around this issue by soaking the French baguette in milk and egg for an hour and a half. The milk mixture softened the bread enough to turn the bread into almost a custard, which baked up beautifully.

This banana bread pudding with caramel sauce is ohh so yummy for dessert. It's easy to bake for a crowd!

The caramel sauce I made is a slightly salted version from Jamie Oliver. It’s easy to make and yields enough that I had plenty of caramel sauce for not one, but two banana bread puddings. Because why make one bread pudding when you can have two?

banana bread pudding with caramel sauce

Time2 15

CourseDessert

CuisineAmerican

Servings8

Ingredients

For the bread pudding:
1 large stale baguette or French bread (cubed,with crust on)
1 quart milk
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas (mashed)
1 cup raisins
1 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated,if possible)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
For the salted caramel sauce:
1/3 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon butter
Pinch kosher salt

Instructions

Put the cued bread in a large mixing bowl and pour the milk over it. Lightly cover the bowl and let the bowl stand for at least 1 hour until the milk is mostly absorbed into the bread.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla. Fold the mixture into the bread, then add the mashed bananas, spices and raisins and stir until just incorporated.
Pour the mixture into a 9×13 baking dish and bake for around an hour until the top of the bread pudding is golden brown.
While the banana bread pudding is baking, make the caramel sauce. Put a medium-sized saucepan over medium-high heat and add the water. Pour the sugar in and bring the mixture to a boil until the sugar starts to turn golden brown.
Once the sugar is fully dissolved, remove the pan from heat and let stand for a few minutes. Stir in the vanilla and heavy whipping cream, then whisk in the butter or salt. Pour the sauce into sterilized jars if keeping for awhile (up to 1 month) or into a Tupperware container once completely cool.
To serve, pour the caramel sauce over the banana bread pudding just before serving.

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