Chocolate Bread Pudding perfect addition to Valentine's Day dinner

Looking for a recipe that is personally created yet extraordinary to charm your Valentine?

Lori Burgman, business logistics manager at Northern Tier Library, allows you access to her rich, chocolate bread pudding.

She and her husband of 32 years, John, took a favorite bread pudding and over the years refined it until the final product resulted in a successful chocolate bread pudding cake that has replaced their original birthday cakes.

The homemade whipped topping further enhances the flavor of the cake.

Lori and John love to seek new adventures.

Speaking of adventure, look for Lori’s upcoming classes at the Northern Tier Library Garden/Food program.

Chocolate Pudding Cake

(serves 10 to 12)

2 cups whole milk

¾ cup sugar

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 eggs

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon vanilla

6 slices Texas toast (or stale bread) crust removed, cut into cubes

Topping

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Set oven to 300 degrees.

Coat an 8-inch-by-8-inch casserole dish with butter. In a saucepan, scald 2 cups whole milk and ¾ cups sugar.

Mix in 3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder.

In a separate bowl, mix 2 eggs, ¼ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon vanilla. Temper egg mixture into milk mixture.

Add bread cubes to the casserole dish.

Pour the egg mixture over the bread mixture to coat.

Take a larger pan, place the casserole dish into that pan and fill the larger pan with warm water until it is about half way up the casserole pan.

Bake for 45-60 minutes.

For the whipped cream topping, take 1 cup of the cold, heavy, whipping cream and mix with hand mixer.

Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Mix until firm, but do not over mix or else you will get butter.

Note: Temper is when you are adding two liquids of different temperatures together.

Always add hot to the cold.

Using ¼ to ½ cup increments. In this recipe, slowly add hot milk to the eggs, bringing the temperature up to lukewarm.

Then you can add the rest to complete the mixture of eggs and milk.

To contact Sherry to share how you learned your favorite recipe, call 412-559-0409 or email sherrye@consolidated.net.