Five-ingredient recipes can be a lifesaver when you want a simple treat. When you keep the shopping list this short, each ingredient really has to hold its own. We used flaky pastry as the base of this croissant bread pudding to create an impressive dessert (or breakfast) that will make it seem like you spent hours in the kitchen.
The key to good bread pudding is starting with stale bread (or croissants). The slightly dry pastry does a better job of absorbing flavor and moisture from the custard. This croissant bread pudding is a great way to use up day-old pastry leftover from breakfast.
To start, all you do is cut your croissants into pieces like the ones you see above. You can also just pull them apart if you don’t want to deal with a cutting board.
In order to give your bread pudding a little bit of a twist, add some lemon juice and lemon zest to the custard mixture of eggs, cream, and brown sugar.
Pour that over your baking dish full of croissant pieces, let the custard mixture sink into the croissants for half an hour, and put the whole thing into the oven. The croissants will puff up and brown on top.
Lemon Croissant Bread Pudding
INGREDIENTS
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups half-and-half
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 4 croissants (stale if possible – stale bread always works better for bread pudding)
- 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Cut or break the croissants into medium-sized pieces and place into an approximately 10-by-7-inch baking dish.
Using a peeler, take the skin off the lemon and mince the zest. Cut the lemon into quarters.
Whisk the eggs, half-and-half, light brown sugar, lemon zest and the juice from 2 lemon wedges (or all 4, if you’d like it to be more lemony), until thoroughly combined.
Add the egg mixture to the baking dish. Let this mixture soak for at least 10 minutes or up to 30 minutes.
Bake the pudding for 1 hour or until the middle is set. Remove and let cool and completely set for about 20 minutes. Serve your croissant bread pudding plain, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or with a dollop of whipped cream.
For more five-ingredient recipe ideas, try these easy brownies.