Are you ready for another recipe straight from Disneyland to your kitchen?! This one comes to us from Cafe Orleans in New Orleans Square and it is delish! When you tell someone you are making Bananas Foster Bread Pudding you will get a lot of oohs and aahs – it’s a very fancy sounding dessert and once it’s all plated it looks pretty darn special too (admittedly, in the pan it’s not much of a looker). Is your mouth watering yet? Well here you go! This recipe came straight from City Hall on Main Street:

Bananas Foster Bread Pudding

Recipe from Cafe Orleans in Disneyland Park

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf Egg Bread
• 6 oz. egg yolks
• 14 oz. sugar
• 44 oz. half and half
• 2 oz. Meyer’s Dark Rum
• 1 oz. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 bananas – smashed
• 8 oz. egg whites
• 2 bananas – sliced

Directions: (makes 1-2 pans, see baking notes)

• One day ahead, cut the egg bread into 1 inch squares and store in a lexan tub.
• Mix egg yolks with sugar and beat until light yellow. Add milk, rum, vanilla, cinnamon, and mashed bananas – mixing well.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form and then fold them into the egg yolk mixture. Be careful not to deflate the egg whites.
• Place the stale bread squares into an extra large mixing bowl, then pour half of the egg mixture over and mix well. Let soak for 10 minutes, then add the other half and the sliced bananas and soak another 10 minutes.
• Coat a 1/2 200 pan with pan coat spray. Pour the bread mixture into the dish, then cover with foil. (Don’t have a “200 pan?” Don’t worry. See the Baking Notes below.)
• In a convection oven, place the pan inside of a 200 hotel pan and fill with hot water until it covers 2/3 of the baking pan.
• Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour, or until an internal temp of 165 degrees is reached
• Carefully remove the pans for the oven. Remove the 1/2 pan, uncover the foil, and place in the walk in to cool.

Baking Notes:

• In case you can’t find egg bread, try looking for challah or braided bread – they are the same. It might be a popular item in your bakery or grocery store, but I had looked at three stores before finding it at Whole Foods.
• Because I didn’t know the amount of bread in “1 loaf” for Disneyland I bought two loaves and ended up using one and a half to match the ratio of the amount of liquids. It made a pan and a half of dessert. If I were to do this again, I would just use one loaf and not quite use all of the liquids. (I wouldn’t try to halve the liquid ingredients though, I think it wouldn’t be enough for one loaf. You want the bread to be very saturated with some liquid still pooled at the bottom – not too soupy.)
• I used a full dozen extra large eggs to get 6 oz. of yolks and 8 oz. of whites.
• 14 oz. of sugar converts to 2 cups.
• Don’t worry about the lexan tub or 200 pan instructions. I just stored the cut bread in a plastic bowl overnight and cooked the bread pudding in a glass casserole dish – and it came out perfect. Also, I didn’t worry about the water bath, I think if I had tried to cook this in a metal pan I would’ve needed to.
• I did not cook this in a convection oven, I just have regular old conventional oven, and it did not seem to have an affect on how evenly the dessert was cooked.

Outcome and Opinion:

If you’ve never made or even had bread pudding, imagine a much denser, sweeter, french toast – so thoroughly soaked in egg, sugar, etc. that it becomes a fairly smooth pudding-like texture when cooked. It’s one of my husband’s very favorite desserts, and made the perfect special birthday surprise for him! When I first looked at this recipe and saw 8 ingredients I thought this recipe was going to be a breeze. Then I read the directions and started to panic just a bit, I worried about not using a hotel pan and a water bath and a convection oven – but I went ahead to see if a regular home cook like me (and maybe you) could make this with typical home cooking tools. And it worked! It worked perfectly, actually! I do wish Disneyland had specified how many bread “one loaf” is so I could share more exact measurements with you, but in the end it worked out fine. I am by no means a professional chef, so if I can do it, so can you! My husband was verrry happy with his birthday treat (he decided it also made good breakfast for the next day!), and the kids – who had never had bread pudding before totally ate it up – I’d say it was a success!

Next time the only thing I would change is to make some fresh sweet whipped cream to top it all off! Yum!

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