Blueberry Bread Pudding (Dad's Bread Pudding)

One of my Dad's favorite desserts is bread pudding. It goes back to his days as a child growing up on a family farm. His Aunt was the cook in the family and bread pudding was one of her signature dishes.

This week of vacation has had me thinking about how hard my Dad works to provide for our family. He is the hardest worker I know and an extremely generous Father. As a thank you to my Dad I decided to bake something in his honor. Enter: bread pudding. To top off the luscious treat I decided to add blueberries, my Dad's favorite fruit. This dessert creation truly earns the name, "Dad's Bread Pudding."

For the recipe I turned again to the Bing machine which led me to Allrecipes and Bread Pudding II (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bread-Pudding-II/?scale=6&ismetric=0). 

Here's what I did with the recipe:

First of all I cut the recipe in half. At least I'm trying to work on portion control for my parental diners!

Secondly, I didn't have day old bread so I went to the store and bought cinnamon swirl bread (definitely would recommend for this recipe). I then removed five pieces (more than half but these pieces were small!), placed them on a cookie sheet and heated them for about five minus at 350 to remove some of the moisture from the bread. This is a good little trick if you need stale bread but don't have any on hand. 

The third change I made was the raisins. I didn't use them. Instead I used blueberries as I mentioned earlier. 

My last change was the amount of sugar used. I used about a 1/4 cup. When I cut the recipe in half it called for a big more sugar but it felt like overkill so I just stuck with the 1/4 cup. 

The result of my blueberry, cinnamon, bread creation with my slight alternations was a treat for the noise as well as the taste buds. The whole condo smelled like a cinnamon bun. The top bubbled and caramelized to a perfect golden brown. 

The picture below does not do this dessert justice. The dessert was impressive. This picture is anything but. You'll just have to take my word for it, bake this bread pudding and your guests (parents, friends, hungry neighbors) will love it. If they're anything like my two diners this evening, they'll have no trouble cleaning their plates. They might even ask for seconds!