Sweet Plantain Bread Pudding Recipe

Bread pudding is such a classic and comforting dessert: Who doesn't love a soft sweet dish of custardy bread that gets a little buttery and crispy on top? Bread pudding has origins dating back to the 11th century, and like its close cousin French Toast, it was invented as a way to use up old, stale bread that would have been thrown out otherwise. But it has come a long way since then. Now you can find many varieties of this endlessly adaptable dish, including cinnamon roll bread pudding and bread pudding in squares you can cut up and eat like brownies. 

This recipe for sweet plantain bread pudding from developer Jessica Morone is another twist on the classic, in which Morone combines the nostalgic simplicity of bread pudding with the more unusual tropical flavor of plantains. The plantains themselves take on a caramelly flavor when fried, and when you top this whole bread pudding with a rich caramel sauce you end up with a ton of warm caramel flavor. The result is a bread pudding that is moist and silky, and sweet but not overly sweet. If you like both bread pudding and plantains, you might want to give this recipe a try. 

This bread pudding has two parts, the actual bread pudding and then a caramel sauce for the top. For the bread pudding, you will need to get ripe plantains, vegetable or canola oil, stale bread, milk, eggs, sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, salt, and cinnamon. For the caramel sauce, you will need brown sugar, butter, heavy cream, and salt.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Set aside.

Add the oil to a large skillet and when hot add the plantains and cook until golden brown on both sides. Split the plantains into batches as necessary so your pan doesn't get overcrowded.

Remove the fried plantains from the skillet to a paper towel-lined plate. Set aside.

Place half the cubed bread in a layer in the prepared baking dish. Top with half of the plantains. Add the remaining bread and plantains on top. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl whisk together the milk, eggs, sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, salt and ground cinnamon until combined.

Pour the mixture evenly over the bread mixture in the pan making sure everything is coated. Let sit for 15-30 minutes so the mixture soaks in.

Cover the baking pan with foil and bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes.

Remove the foil and continue cooking for an additional 15-20 minutes until the top is golden and set.

While the bread pudding bakes, add the butter and brown sugar to a medium saucepan over medium heat.

Cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring often, until the sugar is melted and the mixture is bubbly.

Stir in the heavy cream and salt until fully combined, then remove the sauce from the heat.

Once the bread pudding has cooled for about 10 minutes, top it with an even layer of caramel.

Slice and serve the bread pudding with extra caramel sauce as desired.

Plantains are part of the banana family, but they tend to be larger and starchier and they have a thicker skin. Because of their starchiness, in many cuisines they are often cooked like vegetables. While plantains can technically be cooked and eaten at any stage of ripeness, like most fruits they get sweeter as they ripen. As this bread pudding is a dessert dish, you will want sweet ripe plantains for it. Like bananas, plantains go from being very green when they are unripe, to eventually turning yellow and then black, but unlike bananas, you want to wait until they're fairly dark to eat them. When you are looking for plantains for this recipe you will want to find ones that are mostly black with just some yellow left. 

You could also buy them when they are still yellow and wait for them to ripen further before using them. If you are in a hurry and want to ripen your plantains faster, there are a few ways to accomplish this. Placing plantains in a paper bag kept in a warm dry place can naturally speed the ripening process by a few days. You can accelerate this process even more by baking them in the oven at 300 F for 15 to 20 minutes until they are black and softened. 

There are plenty of types of bread out there, and realistically you can use any kind you want in this recipe. But some are better than others for bread pudding. A few types of bread that will elevate your bread pudding are dinner rolls, baguettes, and Pullman bread. Leftover dinner rolls have a mild flavor and a great texture for bread pudding — they'll stay soft but won't get soggy. Baguettes tend to go stale quickly, which is a positive in this case, and the crusty edges will give you extra texture in the bread pudding and extra crispiness on top. Pullman bread is a great option because due to its tender crumb, you can skip the soaking step completely and bake the bread pudding once the custard is poured over it. 

Whatever kind of bread you use, it's important that it be stale. Stale bread soaks up custard better than fresh bread, which will keep your bread pudding from getting mushy. If you don't have time to wait a few days for your bread to get stale, you can dry the bread out in the oven and use it almost right away. Just cut the bread into cubes, and bake them on a baking sheet for 15 minutes at 350 F.