- Hey everyone.

Today we are making caramel apple bread pudding.

Look at this baby.

It is beautiful and it is delicious and I'm excited to show you how it's done.

So let's get started.

(soft, bright music) The first thing we need to do for our caramel apple bread pudding is to make the caramel.

Let me show you how.

(soft, bright music) Here are the ingredients that we need.

We are going to use two cups of sugar, a cup of cream, two tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of vanilla, and some sea salt.

The way we're gonna get started with this is in our two cups of sugar, we're just going to start with a half a cup and we're gonna melt it down.

We're not using any liquid or fluid in here and so we're just gonna keep stirring our sugar until it gets to be like a golden brown color.

And this way we brown it slightly, it will caramelize but we don't have to worry about if we add water to it and sometimes you get those crystals in it.

So this is a relatively easy way to make caramel, but full disclosure, I've had some failures but you do have to be really, really careful.

You have to watch it because it can burn on you in an instant.

So stick with me here.

We're just gonna do a half a cup of sugar at a time.

And as this starts to get a golden brown color, then we'll add another half cup and we'll continue the process until we're really like a deep golden color.

And I'm just gonna be really watchful and stir it a lot as we go along.

(soft music) It looks like I'm doing a lot of nothing, but trust me when it does start to melt, we're gonna see it.

(soft music) You can begin to see some of the sugar is making little clumps, that's exactly what we want to happen.

Those little clumps are the sugar starting to melt.

See how this is getting nice and a light golden color?

Don't worry about these clumps because they will melt into the rest of our caramel.

So here's another half cup or so.

(soft music) And again, just gonna stir, just keep stirring, otherwise you're gonna have a burned clumpy mess and be really careful because caramel is hot, hot, hot, so we don't want any caramel injuries.

(laughs) (soft music) Get my next.

(soft music) More in.

(soft music) I can only imagine what some of you are thinking right now like, oh my God, I'm just going to the store and buying some of this, but which is perfectly okay but you should at least try it once.

(soft music) Let's put our last batch of up sugar in.

(soft music) And now we are just gonna keep stirring this until it's all nicely melted and a deeper golden color.

(soft music) I don't know if there's really any sort of technique to what I'm doing here, but I'm kind of trying to flip the melted sugar on top of the clumpy sugar so that it kind of evenly distributes.

And what I'm ultimately trying to do is make sure that this doesn't burn.

So I think this is looking like a really good color for us.

It's darkened, but it's not too darkened yet.

And so what we're going to do next is we're going to lower the heat and we're going to add our one cup of cream.

And remember, this is really hot stuff and sometimes it can bubble up like that.

So we definitely wanna keep stirring, carefully.

(soft music) It's kind of cool looking actually.

(soft music) We just keep stirring, keep stirring, (soft music) and once it starts to settle down a little bit, then we'll add our vanilla and our sea salt and our butter.

Isn't that, it's already such a pretty color.

(soft music) And so here we're bubbling, which is exactly what we want.

I can feel underneath my spatula, that the sugar is not all clumped up, that it's combined nicely with the cream.

So I'm gonna still keep it on low, stop for a second.

Add my one tablespoon vanilla, (soft music) add my two tablespoons of butter.

And I'm just gonna be careful.

(soft music) And here we have a teaspoon of sea salt, in it goes.

And now let's keep stirring.

We want our butter to melt in here and we wanna try to stir as much of this foaminess out.

You can see it's all kind of settling down, doing its thing, starting to look like yummy caramel.

(soft music) Okay, turn the heat off.

Just keep stirring a little bit more.

I can feel just a few like little lumps in here that I'm gonna try to get that all incorporated in.

(soft music) So here you have it guys, (soft music) wonderful salted caramel that is going to be very yummy for any recipe that you choose.

You can bottle it up, you can give it as a gift.

You can do a bazillion different things with it.

And see, it wasn't really too bad, but I have to say, phew, I'm relieved, I'm relieved that it all worked out.

So I hope you guys give it a try.

I understand if you don't but I really hope that if you do, you enjoy it.

(soft music) So the next thing we need to do for our caramel apple bread pudding is make the apple filling.

And for that we have six apples that have been sliced and cut into reasonable size pieces.

We have a third of a cup of maple syrup, a half a cup of brown sugar, and two tablespoons of butter.

So all we're gonna do to get this going is put our apples in the pot.

And I do wanna tell you that these apples, I cut them up last night and put them in a solution of one tablespoon of honey to a cup of water.

Let them soak for five minutes, rinse them off real well, stuck 'em in a Ziploc bag and put 'em in the refrigerator.

And I mean, they look like I just prepared them 10 minutes ago, so that is a really good tip.

And then here goes our brown sugar to the mix.

(soft music) Our delicious maple syrup goes in (soft music) and the two tablespoons of butter, come on, there we go.

Okay, so now I'm going to cover this up.

We're gonna put it on the burner for about 10 minutes under a low heat, we just wanna get the flavors mixed together and get the apples just a little bit soft.

So I'm gonna do that and then we'll come back and we'll start working on the custard.

(soft music) So while our apples are getting soft, it's time to make our custard.

And what we have for our custard is one and two thirds cups of whole milk, one in two thirds cups of heavy cream, we have seven egg yolks, yes, count them, seven.

We have a half a cup of brown sugar.

We have a fourth of teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Oh, and we can't forget our vanilla.

Two teaspoons of vanilla over there.

So all we're gonna do is combine them all together (soft music) and let's get our milk and cream in.

(soft music) Sorry about that guys.

(soft music) I'm so excited for my bread pudding, I'm knocking things around.

Here goes our brown sugar, (soft music) cinnamon, see?

Salt and vanilla.

(soft music) And now give it a really good whisk.

Wanna make sure you break up all of those beautiful egg yolks that we put in there.

(soft music) Smells really good.

(soft music) Okay, I think that's it.

We're gonna set it aside and we're going to now move on to our croissant bread that we're using and then we're gonna put it all together.

(soft music) So now we get to put it all together.

And the first thing we need is as big a bowl as you can possibly find in your house.

Because what we have over here are 10, yes count them, 10 croissants that I've chopped up into one to two inch pieces.

So first things first we're going to take our apple mixture that we softened on the stove top and just pour that into our big bowl.

Ooh, let's get all of these apples, because they are delicious and we don't want to miss one of them.

And plus I'm building arm strength by doing this.

Okay, so our apples are in, to that we are adding one cup of chopped pecans.

You can leave them out if you're not a fan, but I think they add a lovely little extra crunch and texture to our bread pudding.

So let's just kind of stir that up, get that mixed in.

And now to this loveliness, we are going to put all of our croissants in.

And I don't know if you're thinking did she make those croissants?

No, I did not.

I just purchased them.

And honestly they're best if they're day old croissants anyway, it helps to absorb the custard that we're going to pour over them.

And in fact, I was reading about bread pudding not too long ago and I learned that the original bread pudding was made so that they weren't wasting the bread, that the bread had, you know was a day or two old, was going maybe on the stale side.

And so they came up with this delicious dessert combination.

So I'm really glad someone was resourceful there.

So, all right, we just want to get this mixed up.

Get our croissant pieces with the apples and there's a little bit of, you know remember we put maple syrup in with the apples and so there's a little bit of kind of that apple-y sweet sauce on the bottom, so I'm just trying to get that evenly distributed here.

It's not gonna be perfect, but we'll try and do the best we can.

And see why you need a super big bowl because if you didn't, I think there'd be bread and apples and a big mess on your counter.

And trust me, I've done it.

(soft music) So, okay, that's looking good.

I'm just going to clear the decks here a second to make room for putting our bread pudding in the pan.

So let me just move that over a little bit.

I am using, this is about a three quart just round iron, you know, nice heavy duty enameled baking pan.

You can use, you know, if you have a nine by 13 square if you have little ramekins, which I do have, because I do know from past experience that the bread will fill this nicely, but then there's always a little bit extra.

So you know, this is for the baker, right?

So let's go ahead and take our bread mixture and fill it up and you can really, you know, kind of pack it in there.

It's quite all right.

So I'm just gonna try and get as much of our bread and apple mixture into the pan as possible.

Let me just take a little break here and get that nicely patted down here.

(soft music) I think it can maybe hold a little bit more, but before, there's a runaway, before I finish filling I'm gonna put some in my little ramekin 'cause that's gonna be for me.

(soft music) Just put that in there.

I know I'm making a mess, but I'll clean it, you guys.

Get that in there, get the rest of this in here.

And I know you don't really wanna see the back of the bowl but there we go.

Looking good.

(soft music) Okay, we're just kind of compressing our bread in.

(soft music) And my little baby here.

Get all of this goodness in the ramekin.

(soft music) All right, excellent.

Now to this, let's start with our big one.

We are just going to now pour over our custard and we want that custard to kind of do its thing and mingle with the apples and the bread and get it all nice and custardy.

(soft music) So remember, here's the custard that we made earlier and it's helpful if you do put it into something that has a pourable spout, 'cause it just makes it so much easier to get our custard in the pan.

(soft music) And you wanna fill it, I mean it's quite alright if you see it coming up the sides, that's what you want because it's going to absorb into the bread, into the croissants and then when we bake it, it's gonna puff up and they will end up looking fabulous and tasting fabulous.

So let me get my little baby.

There's my baby and I'm gonna put the rest of it in here.

And while you're doing this, preheat your oven to 300 degrees and before we put it in the oven, we're just gonna let it sit out here and kind of get the custard to know the bread and the apples a little bit, but only about five, 10 minutes at the most.

And then we're going to put it in the oven.

We're going to cover it with some foil before we do that.

The big guy needs to be in the oven for about 45 minutes.

Little guy can be in the oven for 25.

Remove the foil and then let it get nice and brown, another 10 minutes or so.

And we will then show you what it looks like when it comes outta the oven.

(soft music) So here it is, right out of the oven.

Look at how nice and brown, If you could smell it, it smells fabulous.

The cinnamon, ugh, the butter croissants.

So to that, to even make it more fabulous of course, remember we have our caramel sauce so we're just going to, look at that beautifulness, all over the top.

(soft music) Isn't that a pretty sight to behold?

And we'll come back, we'll scoop it out, put it on a plate and give it a taste.

(soft music) So now let's get some of this beautiful bread pudding into our bowl and give it a taste.

Just gonna scoop some out.

(soft music) I'm gonna very carefully move that over.

Here we go, you guys, isn't that pretty?

I'm gonna add a little bit more caramel sauce just because, hey, why not?

If you had some vanilla ice cream that would be lovely on top as well or some whipped cream or whatever combination of topping your heart desires I think would be excellent.

But let's go in here.

(soft music) Wanna get a little bit of that caramel sauce.

(soft music) Oh my gosh, you guys, the contrast of the salted caramel, which is just a little bit of sweet and bitter with the yummy apples and the croissants in here with the butter and maple syrup, it is delicious.

You have got to try this and I think you will be very pleased.

This will be an awesome dish for any fall get together, really any time of the year, but I think you will love it.

Enjoy.

(soft music)