Southern Style Banana Bread Pudding

Bread pudding is a recipe that actually pre dates the civil war era and by some calculations the recipe was around in one form or another prior to the mid 1700's. Like with all simple yet tasty recipes, there is a southern version. This recipe however, is not only tasty, but easily adaptable to a lower carb version as well. That being said, what makes this loaded is the addition of bananas, nuts, apples and coconut,heck it's got it all! This is a great alternative also to the dreaded fruitcake during the holidays. Give it a try!

Things You'll Need:

• 8 slices of any kind of bread you like. (You can use a low carb high fiber bread in place of traditional here.)
• 4 cups of milk   
• 1 and 1/2  cup of sugar (you can get by with 1 cup, especially if you use 4 bananas)
• 8 eggs  
• 1 tbsp. Vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 4 very ripe bananas 
• 1 1/2 cup of  crushed pecans or walnuts your choice
• 1-2  peeled chopped and diced apples
•  1 1/2 cups flaked coconut (optional)
• 9 X 13 inch pan
• 2 large mixing bowls

Instructions: 

Step 1
 Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, tear up by hand all of your slices of bread.

Step 2
In another larger bowl, with a fork or potato masher, mash your four ripe bananas. Add in eggs, and milk and cherries (if you have chosen to use them )and mix together well. Basically you are mixing all wet ingredients together.

Step 3
In your bread bowl, add in all dry ingredients and stir until all the bread is covered in the sugar and spices. You can add raisins, nuts, shredded coconut at this time. Now dump this mixture into your egg/milk bowl.

Step 4
You want to stir by hand all of the ingredients thoroughly and let the mixture sit for about 1/2 hour in your fridge so that the bread fully absorbs your egg/custard mixture.

Step 5
Once you have let the bread pudding mixture soak for a while in the refrigerator (the longer it soaks the better), you can now pour it into your 9 X 13 inch buttered baking dish. Add around 9 pats of margarine or butter to the top. This will melt as the bread pudding cooks. Garnish with Pecan halves.

Step 6
Bake your bread pudding until the pudding is well set, not wiggly when you jiggle the pan. Start checking your bread pudding for done-ness after it has been in the oven around 45 minutes, and every 10 minutes after that, to prevent over cooking.

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