Chocolate bread pudding with orange sauce

I love a good bread pudding.  You get lots of servings–or serve a lot of people.  Of course, they can go for dessert of breakfast (yes, this seems to be a big theme of mine). This week, we had this 4 days in a row for breakfast.  And we’re not sick of it–the only complaint is that we’re out.  Although tomorrow, I’m thinking of making another round of what I called the “irish” pancakes...only because I made them for St. Paddy’s Day.  Nothing Irish about them otherwise…they’re green.

I knew I wanted to do something with oranges…and something zesty.  This led to a chocolate base for the recipe, and a yummy orange-y sauce.  Zest is key.  Don’t throw away your zest!  If you’re going to eat an orange, zest it first, and dream up a creative way to use it.  You’ll thank me.

The work can be done the day or night before, just take enough time to preheat the oven, and allow the pyrex to return to room temperature (or close to it) again.  If you’re having leftovers, a slice reheats perfectly in the toaster oven in 7 minutes at 350.  Now, onto the recipe!

Ingredients for the bake:

• 12-16 slices of super healthy bread (get something super grainy, high in fiber, and ideally, from a bakery.  If anyone is going to complain about white bread–they won’t know, because it’s getting covered in cocoa powder)
• 5 eggs (or 10 egg whites, or any variation you like)
• 4 super ripe bananas
• 2 t vanilla
• 1/4 cup + 2T cocoa powder
• a big splash of almond milk
• sweetener or stevia if you need it (I didn’t)

Ingredients for the sauce:

This made sauce for about 4 generous servings.  Feel free to double it to make enough to suit the whole big batch.

• zest of 2 oranges, juice of 1
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 2 T greek yogurt
• 2 T flour (or more, for thicker sauce)

How to for the bake:

1. preheat oven to 375
2. cube your bread, and set aside (1 inch pieces are good)
3. in a large bowl, mash bananas, and whisk in all other ingredients
4. fold in bread, adding handfuls gradually, making sure all bread gets evenly gooey and coated
5. spread mixture in a greased pyrex (I used coconut oil to grease, and my pyrex is 13′ x 9′)
6. bake for approx 40 mins

While the pudding is baking, make your sauce:

1. zest oranges, and mince zest so it’s nice and fine
2. cook zest and maple syrup and juice on low in a saucepan with the lid on
   1. after about 10 minutes, add almond milk, stirring occasionally
   2. after another 5-10 minutes, add greek yogurt, stirring to get it blended and heated
   3. lastly, add flour to thicken, stir
3. serve hot, and ENJOY!
   1. if you’re feeling a little crazy…or if this is dessert, throw some chocolate chips on top when you serve it.

This sauce is really zesty, which is where the flavor comes from. I’m not sure that this zesty sauce is photogenic, but here it is.  I suppose you could immersion blend the sauce to smooth it out a bit. Maybe next time? Trust me, you have to taste it!
So, sadly I ran out of sauce.  But that meant a little sauce improvisation during the week.  We had the orange sauce for 2 days.  The day after, we had salted peanut butter maple syrup…and today we had a maple syrup yogurt mixture that was really good.  Sweet but refreshing.  That’s what I liked about the bread pudding being plain chocolate–the variety in potential toppings.