Recipe #8 Doughnut Bread Pudding

Of course this recipe is inspired by traditional bread pudding.  I made one of these in the past with cake doughnuts and was wondering how it would turn out with yeast doughnuts.  It came out so good, my husband almost didn't let me give any of it out to my other taste testers (my in-laws).  I used fresh doughnuts because my local grocery store didn't have any day-old stock.

Ingredients:
18 yeast doughnuts 
4 cups (2 pints or 1 quart) Half & Half cream
6 eggs
2 Tablespoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly spray a 9x13 inch baking pan with vegetable spray.  Tear doughnuts into 4-6 pieces and place pieces into baking pan.  In a large bowl, beat eggs well.  Add cream, vanilla and cinnamon to eggs.  Pour cream mixture over doughnuts.  using a fork, spoon or even your fingers, press doughnuts down into cream.  Allow to soak for about one hour, pressing down a few times during the soaking time so that the cream has time to moisten all of the doughnuts.  Cover pan with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour.  Remove foil and allow to brown for about 20 minutes or until center is set and the top is golden brown.  The center is set when it no longer jiggles when moved or when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Serve warm with ice cream or with rum sauce.

Rum Sauce:  Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a small bowl.  Add 1 tablespoon of rum (Captain Morgan spiced rum is my favorite).  Add in 2 cups of powdered sugar and stir.  Add 1 tablespoon of milk at a time until sauce is at desired consistancy.  I like my sauce pretty thin, so I usually have to add about 4 tablespoons of milk to mine. If you don't mind the taste of raw rum, you can always spike it a little more by adding another tablespoon if you dare.

What I learned from this recipe:
- this recipe was sweet enough with all the glaze from the doughnuts, that I didn't have to add any sugar to the custard.  It's so much easier to find glazed doughnuts than it is to find them unglazed.
-Pretty much any yeast doughnut could be used for this recipe, so if you like apples, you might want to try this recipe with apple fritters.  You may only need 5 or 6 fritters depending on their size.  You could always get 10 and then eat whatever doesn't fit in the pan ;-)   (or freeze the leftovers for the next bread pudding).