Turn stale bread into something truly scrumptious! Bread pudding muffins are quick and easy, and individual portions make them perfect for dessert, snacks, or packing in picnics or lunches.
Why You Will Love this Recipe
When you find yourself with a lot of stale bread to use, the answer is easy - make a big dish of bread pudding! But what do you do when you only have a few slices of stale bread?
Our answer is, make Bread Pudding Muffins!
Here are just a few things we love about these sweet little bread pudding cupcakes:
- They take much less time to make and bake than regular bread pudding.
- You only need about half a pound of stale bread to make 6 jumbo or 12 standard muffins
- The recipe is flexible and forgiving: the ingredient measurements are offered as a guide, not a directive.
- They are a great way to use up those random handfuls of raisins and nuts you might have sitting around.
- They can be served warm, cold, or the next day.
- Individual portions make them perfect for dessert, snacks, or packing in picnics or lunches.
What Goes into this Recipe
Ingredient Notes & Substitutions
★ Bread: You need the equivalent of about half a loaf of bread for this recipe; 4-5 slices, 3-5 dinner rolls, 4 hamburger buns, etc.
Use stale yeast or sourdough bread. Sweet breads (like old cinnamon rolls) work very well; just keep in mind you may need to adjust the amount of sugar so the muffins don't turn out too sweet.
Because this is a sweet desert, avoid using savory breads for this recipe.
★ Dried fruit and/or nuts: Use raisins, Craisins, dried apricots, almonds, walnuts, or whatever you like in your bread pudding.
★ Milk: We most often use almond milk when making bread pudding muffins, but the recipe works (i.e., we have tested it) using whole milk, 2%, and hemp milk as well.
★ Sugar: We like to use a combination of brown and white sugar, but you can use all of one or the other. Reduce the amount of sugar if you are using sweeter bread in the pudding mixture.
How to Make this Recipe
Make & Bake
Preheat the oven to 350°F | 177°C.
Generously grease a 6-cup jumbo muffin tin with butter, or spray with cooking spray. (Butter will give your muffins a more golden finish. Also, you can use a standard muffin tin, but we like the jumbo size better.)
In a medium bowl, combine bread cubes and dried fruit and/or nuts, and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, brown sugar, salt, and spices. Add milk and vanilla, and whisk thoroughly to make the custard.
Pour the bread cubes and fruit into the egg mixture and toss to combine.
Gently press the bread mixture down into the custard mixture until it covers the top of the bread cubes. Cover the mixing bowl and allow the custard mixture to sit for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, the bread should have absorbed most, but not all of the custard mixture. If there is little or no liquid left, add a little more milk to the mixture.
Spoon bread and custard mixture into muffin cups.
Bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. (The internal temperature should be at least 160°F | 72°C.)
Remove the muffins from the oven and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from the tins.
Finish & Serve
Muffins can served as is; or dusted with powdered sugar, glazed, or frosted. Or drizzled with honey. Do whatever sounds good to you. They're your muffins - give them a personal touch!
Simple Icing
Mix together 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 tablespoon milk. Thicken with additional powdered sugar, or thin with a little more milk as desired.
Use prepared icing to frost, drizzle, or ice muffins as desired.
Serve muffins warm or cold. Refrigerate any leftovers.
FAQs & Expert Tips
Beyond Scrumptious
If you want to make something beyond scrumptious try topping your bread pudding muffins with our amazing Cinnamon-Whiskey Bread Pudding Sauce! You only need half a recipe (or less) for one batch of muffins.
Yes. Due to the large percentage of milk and eggs used in making bread pudding, it will go bad within hours if left out unrefrigerated.
Properly refrigerated, bread pudding muffins will last up to 4 days.
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Bread Pudding Muffins
Equipment
- 1 jumbo muffin tin standard muffin tin
Ingredients
Muffins
- ½ pound stale bread cut into ½-inch to ¾-inch cubes
- ⅓ cup chopped raisins or Craisins and/or chopped nuts
- 3 large eggs
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ⅛ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1½ cups milk or almond milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Glaze (Optional)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons butter melted
- 1 tablespoon milk or almond milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F | 177°C.Generously grease a 6-cup jumbo muffin tin with butter, or spray with cooking spray. You can use a standard muffin tin, but we like the jumbo size better.
- In a medium bowl, combine bread cubes and dried fruit and/or nuts, and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, brown sugar, salt, and spices. Add milk and vanilla, and whisk thoroughly to make the custard.
- Pour the bread cubes and fruit into the egg mixture and toss to combine.Gently press the bread mixture down into the custard mixture until it covers the top of the bread cubes. Cover the mixing bowl and allow the custard mixture to sit for 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes, the bread should have absorbed most, but not all of the custard mixture. If there is little or no liquid left, add a little more milk (¼-¾ cup) to the mixture.
- Spoon bread and custard mixture into muffin cups.
- Bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. The internal temperature should be at least 160°F | 72°C.Remove the muffins from the oven and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from the tins.
- Serve as is, or dusted with powdered sugar, glazed, or frosted. Serve muffins warm or cold. Refrigerate any leftovers.
Simple Icing
- Mix together 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 tablespoon milk. Thicken with additional powdered sugar, or thin with more milk as needed.Frost, drizzle, or ice muffins as desired.
Notes
Want to make something beyond scrumptious?! Try our amazing Cinnamon-Whiskey Bread Pudding Sauce! You only need half a recipe (or less) for one batch of muffins.
Refrigerate leftovers. Due to the large percentage of milk and eggs used in making bread pudding, it will go bad within hours if left out unrefrigerated. Properly refrigerated, bread pudding muffins will last up to 4 days.
Nutrition
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. You are solely responsible for ensuring that any nutritional information provided is accurate, complete, and useful.
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Originally published October 21, 2013. Post has been updated with new content, images, and recipe instructions for improved reader experience.
nancy says
tasty bread pudding when we can't eat through the loaves of bread at home. It seems to disappear when we make this recipe.
Dana says
Love these single serve bread pudding muffins! Very reminiscent of the bread pudding my grandmother used to make when I was a kid. Love that they're already portioned.
Tara says
Oooh, such a delicious and fun use for leftover bread! These muffins look fantastic. I love that glaze too.
kushigalu says
What a brilliant twist. Sounds better than traditional pudding. Pinned to try this soon.
Carrie Robinson says
What a fun twist on traditional bread pudding! 🙂 They look delicious.
Renée says
They are!
Dieter says
Thank you for this good idea! In Bavaria, we have a lot of recipes for spicy or sweet bread soups, but I did not know about this great Dessert.
Renée ♥ says
You are welcome! Bread pudding is one of my favorite things - I will likely post again about it sometime in the future. (I love to make it out of leftover homemade cinnamon rolls, which is tricky to do, because I so rarely have the ingredients!) I usually make a big pan of bread pudding, but the muffins work so well when you only have a little leftover bread.
I'm intrigued with the "bread soups" you mentioned - the only one I am familiar with is French Onion Soup, which isn't so much a bread soup as it is a soup with bread. Tell me more!!