I always look forward to fall because I love apples more accurately I love to spend a warm fall afternoon picking apples a recent overzealous apple-picking expedition left me with more than 50 pounds of Macintosh apples and that's about par for the course my family is constantly looking for ways to use apples in the fall and bread pudding has become one of my favorite ways to try to put a dent in our seemingly endless supply this rest was originally given to me by the staff of the MVC lion I've made several modifications like most good things in life bread pudding begins as a custard made of five eggs and two and a half cups of cream you may season the custard however you like I love cinnamon so I put a lot of cinnamon in in the end you want it to smell good to you my version is seasoned with a half cup of sugar 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract 2 tablespoons of cinnamon a teaspoon of nutmeg a teaspoon of allspice and three quarters of a teaspoon of salt you can also throw in some cloves if you'd like you can use almost any kind of bread for bread pudding you can use frozen bread you can use almost stale bread you could probably even use bread that actually is stale the two things that I always avoid our mold and freezer burn in an event you'll need 8 ounces slice the bread into cubes that are roughly 1 inch on each side add the bread to the custard and mixed a coat you'll want to let this sit for about 20 minutes so the bread can absorb the custard while the pudding is resting you have time to slice your apples I use three medium apples but you could certainly adjust this to your taste this is a good time to light your oven you'll want to preheat it to 375 degrees stir the sliced apples into the rest of the pudding you want to put all of this into a 13 by 9-inch pan that's been sprayed with a nonstick cooking spray then cover it with foil bake the bread pudding at 375 degrees until the custard is set and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean this usually takes about an hour and 20 minutes for me though I usually start testing after an hour and there you have it delicious bread pudding slice and enjoy if you really want to be fancy you can add some vanilla or cinnamon ice cream bread pudding is fairly forgiving if you're concerned about the fat content you can use milk instead of cream I haven't yet tried to make it with egg whites but I'm almost certain that substitution would work as well my chocoholic family usually thinks that fruit and baked goods is a waste of space so I have been known to replace the apples with a bag of ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips needless to say the warm cinnamon bread pudding in the melted chocolate go to get quite well regardless of what you choose to put in your bread pudding I think you'll find it's a great treat on a crisp autumn day