>>I love a good bread pudding, but I particularly love it with chocolate and with nuts.

So today I'm gonna make a beautiful bread pudding for you with a very dark chocolate and a delicious toasted pecan.

So we're gonna start off in our pan with a half stick of butter, and then I'm gonna put in a cup and a half of milk, and a cup and a half of heavy cream.

And I just wanna put that on the cooktop to warm up so that while I'm making the rest of the bread pudding, you can see exactly what happens.

Now while that's coming to a nice simmer, we don't want it to boil, just simmer.

I'm going to take a bowl and put some eggs, vanilla, and sugar in it.

It's almost like starting a cake.

It's absolutely easy to do and delicious.

So we're gonna take four eggs.

Now we're serving this with a port style wine.

Now we can only call it port style because we're not in Portugal.

So it's a port style wine, it's very rich in flavor, it's a little higher in alcohol usually, and it's just a wonderful dessert wine.

So four eggs.

Break each one separately.

Now I have four eggs, and then a third cup sugar.

There we go.

Just a little humid in here today, so it was sticking to the bottom.

And then I have a teaspoon of vanilla.

Now let's just whisk that up a little bit.

Yes, and make sure that all of your egg yolks are completely broken in here.

And it's important that we're going to temper back and forth between the egg yolk mixture and the milk mixture so we don't have curdling and scrambled eggs in our bread pudding.

So just whisk those really, really well.

Now my pan is starting to get nice and hot, and as it gets to a simmer, I just want to hold it at a simmer for about two minutes, and then I'm gonna add some chocolate.

Now for this particular bread pudding, because I didn't want it to be overly sweet, I'm using an 85% cocoa.

So as soon as I see a little bubbling in my pan, I'm going to add my chocolate, and then just let the chocolate sit there for about a minute to start to melt.

All right, so my chocolate has been in my pan about a minute and now what I wanna do is just start whisking through.

You can see that it's melted in that nice hot milk and you just wanna make almost a hot chocolate out of it at this point.

So just whisk until it's all blended through.

Now, don't worry if you've got a few little chunks of chocolate that just makes your bread pudding a little richer in spots, but you wanna get in as much as you can.

Mm, it looks wonderful.

Now, it's really important that we temper this well because if you don't temper it correctly, your eggs will scramble.

So what you wanna do is take a little bit of your hot milk and you're going to put that into your egg mixture.

So as you do it, make sure that you're whisking the whole time.

So we'll just dip a little bit of that milk and start drizzling it slowly, but surely, into the egg mixture.

Just like this.

You can see if you do it like that, the eggs aren't going to scramble.

They just start to blend.

And then, we want to dip this into our chocolate.

So let's take a little bit of that egg mixture and we'll start whisking into the chocolate.

Whisk very quickly, because remember that chocolate is hot, and as those cold eggs hit, if they're not tempered properly with that little bit of the chocolate, then you're just going to end up with a mixture of scrambled chocolate eggs.

Not very tasty.

Now let's just pour the remaining in and whisk as we go.

At this point, it's tempered pretty well, so you're not going to end up with those chunks, but you just wanna make sure that you get it whipped and smooth.

In my big mixing bowl, I have some croissants that I've just cut.

This is six very large croissants, like a big box store kind of croissant.

If you get them from the grocery store, you're going to need eight or nine smaller croissants.

So you'll kind of know as you add your mixture, if it's too wet, but you also don't want it to be too dry.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're going to take this beautiful chocolate mixture and just pour right over top.

Mm.

It almost looks like pudding coming out of there, it's so beautiful.

Let's scrape through and get all that we can because you don't wanna miss any of that chocolatey goodness.

And then I wanna let it sit for just a minute.

What I'm doing here as I let it sit is I'm letting that custard mixture just kind of go through all of those little holes in the croissants and it makes them nice and moist and beautiful.

Now I wanna take about a cup of chopped toasted pecans and just sprinkle on the top.

And then let's start through.

You want everything really well coated.

Now the great thing about this is that you can make it in one large pan or you can make it in smaller individual dishes.

And either way, it bakes up beautifully.

So as you're baking it, what you'll notice is that this tends to puff up before it tends to come down a little bit.

And that's because of all the eggs in it.

You're really making a custard, and oh wow, it's so good.

So for this particular one, I'm going to put it in a large pan, about a nine by 13 pan, three quarts really is what it needs.

But you can also put it in 10 to 12, six ounce ramekins, depending on how high you want them to go.

And you'll see that in my finished product because I wanted you to see how it bakes in both.

So let's just pour that all in.

Mm.

It is so good.

And then you just wanna spread it out evenly in the pan.

Now it's important that for the first 25 minutes of baking, and you'll bake this at 350 degrees, for the first 25 minutes, cover this with aluminum foil.

That will allow the custard to really bake evenly without burning the top.

So we're gonna bake this covered for 25 minutes.

Then I'm going to uncover it and bake it an additional 25 minutes.

Then I'm gonna let it rest for about 15 minutes before I serve it, because I wanna still serve it nice and warm with our ice cream.

So don't these look gorgeous?

They're still hot.

And I'm gonna top them with a little bit of vanilla ice cream.

Just finish them with a little garnish of mint.

Oh, just beautiful.

Now just a little mint.

You could do a little fresh berry if you wanted.

Oh, so good.

But aren't those just really cute in the nice little individual servings?

Make it so easy if you're doing a dinner party.

Now, let's give it a taste.

Mm.

Wow, crispy top, really moist center.

Oh, beautiful.

Mm.

And with this port style, ooh, delicious.

Oh yeah.

Another winner.

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