Elevate Bread Pudding With A Sweet Bourbon Sauce

At its core, the comforting dessert known as bread pudding consists of stale bread and custard made with eggs and cream. Of course, there are many ingredients to easily upgrade your bread pudding recipe, like cocoa powder and even orange zest for a fruity essence in each bite. In addition to those easy ingredients to mix into bread pudding, a sweet bourbon sauce will give the dessert a boozy and sugary touch that will certainly make it stand out with elevated flavors.

In general, bourbon works so well in desserts because it provides smoky and sweet notes similar to vanilla. In fact, it's historically been used as an alternative to vanilla extract in baked goods and desserts for that flavor factor and alcohol content. Bourbon will still add varying levels of booziness, but the alcohol content will partially cook off during the time in the oven, so it won't overpower the bread pudding. When you combine the booze with ingredients like brown sugar, butter, and even maple syrup to create a sauce, it also adds a sticky texture and moisture to the bread pudding. Sounds like it's now a necessary component of the dessert, right?

To keep it simple, make this easy two-ingredient whiskey dessert sauce and swap the whiskey with equal parts bourbon and brown sugar. It can easily be poured on top of the bread pudding to soak into the bread just before serving. Add browned butter to your sweet bourbon sauce to amp up the rich, nutty, and toffee-like flavors in the dessert. Another option to take it further is to whip up a bourbon glaze or icing to spread on top of the bread pudding after it's cooked. All you'll need is a handful of ingredients like bourbon, brown sugar, confectioners sugar, butter, and vanilla extract.

There are many bourbons out there, so check out Tasting Table's ranking of the best bourbons for baking including brands like Buffalo Trace and Four Roses if you don't typically sip on the brown liquor. Test out your sweet bourbon sauce skills with our rich bread pudding recipe that contains raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Or if that bourbon icing is more appealing, add it to the top of this cinnamon roll bread pudding recipe.