A little bread pudding for breakfast? Why not! I know, I seem to have a fixation with puddings this season. But there is something deeply satisfying about tucking into a warm meal, entirely self-contained, laden with eggs, vanilla, and a bit of dried fruit. (See, dried fruit makes it healthy.)

For a Sunday morning Brunch, with neither a savory egg dish nor a batch of fried-up pancakes sounding very appealing, I decided on a bread pudding utilizing a left-over Pandorro from the holidays. The Pandorro was subtly sweet, and sinfully rich, all on its own; so I made a simple, milk-based custard to complete the pudding. The custard was made with a few egg yolks, a few whole eggs, then tempered with a few cups of simmered low-fat milk, and fragranced with tiny flecks of real vanilla bean seeds to bind it together.

Dried apricots and Ranier cherries were roughly chopped and then added to the largely torn pieces of sweetened Italian bread. Mixed with the unsweetened custard and baked for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees, the pudding was puffed and golden brown. When I cut into the pudding, steam wafted upwards, bringing with it the fragrance of vanilla, and dried fruit. The pudding was actually light, due to the eggs in both the custard and the Pandorro, and the apricots, which reconstituted just a bit during the baking process, offered a sweet-tart bite of fruit in this brunch time treat.

It’s true this pudding may have been a bit unorthodox, a sort of dessert for breakfast, but it was gobbled up by hungry guests waiting to get their Sundays off to a good start.