Brioche bread pudding french toast

Put me in a dunce cap and call me a "silly-poo", I'm afraid I've become a bit cocky in my baking abilities.

Thinking that my passion for making breads gave me the power to generate delicious eats with any ingredients and worse, with minimal thought processing, I dove right into my go-to brioche recipe.

"Let's substitute this ingredient, it should make it more fluffy and cakey.... and let's just remove this ingredient, I don't even know what it does" said my mind to my hands, who naturally, followed what her mind usually says.

"And let's ramp up the temperature, give it a nice crust" said mind.

"OK!" said ever-obedient hands, eager to please.

So naturally, the brioche turned out a flop. With a crust too dark and a crumb so-so, the only remedy was the compost or the usual bread-pudding-for-breads-that-turn-out-a-flop.

"No problem. We've got this bread pudding DOWN, girl, no worries." said mind.

"OK!" said hands, just a tiny bit skeptical.

So naturally, the bread pudding turned out a flop. A little too dry and crunchy on the surface, and a soggy pudding mess below, mind said:

"No problem. Let's fry up this bad-boy and see what kind of french toast it'll become." She's not dejected at all.

"OK!" said hands, not believing a word mind is saying now.

But to her surprise, the briochebreadpuddingfrenchtoast turned out quite decent.... tasty even. It retained it's form, a nice golden crust on the outside, and soft not-quite-pudding on the inside. Flavours of cinnamon and vanilla and plump raisins had hands a little excited.

And so, hands and mind devoured half the briochebreadpuddingfrenchtoast and satisfied, developing full trust in each other, walked hand-in-mind or mind-in-hand,... er.... toward the sunset.

(Haha. I'm still developing my story-telling abilities but hope that wasn't too cheesy. And why toward the sunset, it's briochebreadpuddingfrenchtoast, it should be a breakfast-like thing, so perhaps they walked toward the sunrise.... But who walks toward a sunrise anyway, so maybe they ate it for dessert....)

Ingredients:

1 lbs loaf of brioche, torn into bits and stuffed tightly into large ceramic baking dish
125g butter, melted
4 eggs, room temperature
400mL whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp brown sugar
150g Thomson raisins soaking in 100mL whole milk, to allow them to plump up.

Pour melted butter over brioche bits. Set aside.

Mix together eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar until homogeneous. Add in milk soaked raisins + milk it was soaking in.

Pour over brioche bits and let sit in fridge for at least 8 hrs.

Preheat oven to 300 F and bake for 25- 30mins, or until light golden crust forms on top.

At this point, the bread pudding can be eaten as is (taste and texture is still very nice if you start with a soft, spongy brioche - top with a big ol' scoop of ice cream)

Or let it rest for a few hours until cooled (or in the fridge), then butter a skillet and ladle a scoop of bread pudding into the pan and fry about 1-2 minutes on both sides.