Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding with Chocolate Sauce

It was a lazy Thursday afternoon. I was lying in front of the TV in my parent's bedroom watching Nigella Kitchen. For that particular episode, the dessert was Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding.

I am no fan of bread pudding. My uncle would host a Raya open house every year and my cousin would make her signature bread pudding. I never touched or even tasted those. It doesn't have the appeal to me, ya know?

But from the way Nigella make the pudding.........I was mesmerized and it looked SO GOOD and effortless. So I HAD to try and make those. Besides, there's chocolate, how can that be not tasty? And the recipe is easy to memorize. I didn't copy down what she said. When I've found my recipe book I recalled the episode and write down the recipe. As easy as 1, 2, 3!

To make it more appealing to me, I make together chocolate sauce. Divine!

So now, I'm not a bread pudding lover just yet, but I won't turn down 'em either if offered/served.

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Adapted from Nigella Kitchen (forgot which episode but I'm sure you can easily find it)

Ingredients:

• 250 grams bread - Nigella uses stale bread but I just couldn't bother so I used the whole 400 grams of Massimo bread
• 100 grams chocolate chips
• 500 ml fresh milk
• 125 ml whipping cream
• 3 eggs
• 40 grams brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar, for sprinkling

Chocolate Sauce

• 4 oz (113 grams) chocolate
• 1/2 cup fresh milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Methods:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C. Grease a 23 cm baking dish and set aside.
2. Cut the bread into cubes and put them in the baking dish. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on, in and under the bread cubes.
3. In another bowl or jug, whisk together milk, cream, eggs, brown sugar and vanilla. Pour the mixture over the bread in the baking dish.
4. Press the bread lightly so that all bread has been soaked with the custard.
5. Sprinkle the brown sugar on top of the bread. If you'd like more chocolate, sprinkle more chocolate chips.
6. Bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes.
7. To make the chocolate sauce, heat milk in a small saucepan until boil. When it boils, pour the milk on the chocolate. Whisk until they turn smooth and glossy.

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownie

My first post for 2012! To be honest, there's nothing to be excited about. I'm the kind of person who don't believe in celebrating new years. Every year when people were excited to come up with their new year resolution I never bother because 1) I probably won't give extra effort to make it work, and 2) if I want to change, I can change anytime I want.

Enough of the rambling. Moving on......

This 'monster' was born as I was leafing through my recipe book. The recipe was among the oldest that I've copied when I first started baking. I had no courtesy of jotting down the link from where I got it from. So yea, I can call this my recipe but the truth is it's not. I'm honest like that.

It did not dissapoint me at all! I actually had to read the recipe twice to make sure I copied it correctly. The recipe calls for 6 ingredients. The great part was it uses melted butter! I love baking with oils and melted butter. Saves up some of my time and energy.

This brownie is altogether an easy task. Preparing was easy, making was easy, and the most important part.....EATING was easy. You can taste the chocolate and the cheesecake in one bite. Heaven!

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownie

Adapted from somewhere over the rainbow.....

Ingredients:

Brownie

• 185 gram butter, melted
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup plain flour

Cheesecake

• 250 gram cream cheese, softened
• 4 1/2 tablespoon castor sugar
• 2 eggs

Methods:

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees C.
2. Place butter, cocoa powder, sugar, eggs and flour in a bowl and mix them all together until smooth.
3. Spoon into an 8" square pan lined with baking paper. - I used Pyrex pan and never bother to line it coz I'm lazy
4. Mix cream cheese, sugar and eggs until smooth.
5. Place large spoonful of cheesecake mixture on top of chocolate mixture and swirl it.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until set. Mine was baked around 40 minutes.