Recipe: Budín (Delish Clean-Out Your Cupboards Bread Pudding)

Hey kids!

Here is a recipe for Budín, which we ate for breakfasts and snacks on our trip to De Hoop.  I love this recipe – it is delicious and easy and uses up stuff that I might otherwise throw out.  Because – and I am loath to admit it – Aaron and I hate bread butts.

I mean we’ll eat them if we have to, but we really don’t like to.  I know, I know, we're First-World Brats!

But fear not, Lorenita does not throw out her bread butts, she saves them to make Budín. 

Budín is Spanish for Bread Pudding.  It is the only dessert-ish kind of thing I ever remember being made in my home (in El Salvador – and most of Latin America I think – you go to the corner bakery for your baked goods).

It is great way to use up odds and ends in your cupboards and can turn things like black bananas, that last half cup of raisins, and wrinkly bread butts into fantastically spiced, moist treats!

The recipe varies with whatever you’ve got in the cupboard, so think of this as a base recipe.  You can add all kinds of dried fruit, substitute the nutmeg for cinnamon, add nuts – or chocolate chips – whatever you'd like!

Here’s what I used:

- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 can evaporated milk (low-fat OK)
- 500ml/appx. 2 cups low-fat milk
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 4 egg whites (or 2 whole eggs), beaten
- Nutmeg - approximately ¼ of a whole nutmeg – really, you have to do fresh-grated with nutmeg, the pre-ground stuff is always terrible and the fresh stuff is always amazing.  (You can also do cinnamon instead of the nutmeg.)
- Dried mango (chopped into small cubes) and raisins (To taste, or whatever you’re trying to get rid of … here is where you get creative – shredded coconut, chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, etc, etc…)
- 1 loaf of bread, torn up and crumbled (Again, I use bread butts for this, I just freeze them and then make the recipe once I’ve amassed one loaf’s worth.)

Mix all the ingredients together and pour it over the bread.  Then mix it together REALLY well –  I mean squelch it with your hands.  Leave it to soak together for at least an hour (or up to overnight in the fridge) – this is an important step to avoid dry bits of bread with no flavor.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F/175C for 30-40 minutes in a 9X13” pan until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let it cool and cut into squares. 

This budín is not dessert-sweet, it’s more like a mildly sweet breakfast bread or tea snack.  You could frost/ice it as you wish, but I DETEST frosting (along with parboiled rice – which turns rice into rubbery tasteless pips – I think it is the devil’s handiwork, but I digress.)  I prefer to have my budín with a little unsalted butter or topped with cream cheese, like so:

DELISH!

Buen Provecho!