Pineapple Bread Pudding

This Pineapple Bread Pudding is the ultimate quick dessert… using only pantry staples.

My mom has been nice enough to watch our new baby Ruby on Mondays and Tuesdays while I’m in the office with Brian. It’s a huge help to us, but she’s even taken it a step further. Every Monday we can count on dinner being ready for our entire family when we walked through the door! It’s amazingly sweet, thoughtful, and delicious!

One side effect of these helpful and tasty nights is an overabundance of Hawaiian rolls. Our entire family loves them, so we seem to pair them with tons of different meals. From meatball sliders to chicken and dressing to BBQ pork, these sweet little rolls find their way onto our plates every Monday. Not so long ago, we discovered that we had ended up with one full and two half-full packages of leftover Hawaiian rolls. I realized that mom had been opening up new packs of rolls every week instead of using the older ones. Sorry for throwing you under the bus mom, but after a decade of working in a grocery store I just can’t look the other way!

So I decided to solve this leftover bread problem with my absolute favorite solution of all time… Bread Pudding!

I love bread pudding so much that I’ve been known to actually leave my house with the sole purpose of buying bread in order to make it. With that in mind, I was delighted to finally have a legitimate excuse for a decadent custardy dessert. What was even cooler was the fact that I made this only using things that I already had in my pantry! I happened to have lite coconut milk and fat-free sweetened condensed milk, but you could definitely use the full fat versions (I’m sure it would only make it richer). This was great with vanilla ice cream, but I just kept thinking of other ways to serve it. Top it with caramel sauce, whipped cream, chopped macadamia nuts… you name it! It’s totally easy, cheap, and yummy!

Pineapple Bread Pudding Recipe

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Ingredients

• 18 Hawaiian Rolls (one and a half packages)
• 1 can pineapple chunks (20 ounces... drain and reserve the juice)
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 can coconut milk (13.5 ounces)
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 ounces)
• 3/4 cups reserved pineapple juice
• 1/2 cup egg beaters (or 2 eggs slightly beatened)

Directions

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grab a large bowl.

Step 2

Tear your Hawaiian rolls into pieces in the bowl. If you are working with fresh rolls I suggest doing this earlier in the day so the pieces have a chance to catch some air and dry out a bit.

Step 3

Melt the butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan over high heat.

Step 4

Once the sugar and butter is really bubbling, add the drained pineapple. Add the pinch of salt and let it continue to bubble around 5 minutes.

Step 5

While the pineapples enjoy their caramel jacuzzi, whisk together the coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk, egg beaters, and pineapple juice.

Step 6

Pour the sweet milk mixture all over the bread, taking care to saturate everybody.

Step 7

Press the moistened bread into a buttered 13x9 pan. Dot the top with the caramelized pineapple chunks, and drizzle over the brown sugar sauce.

Step 8

Bake in your preheated oven around an hour, or until center is no longer jiggly. Let it cool as long as you can stand it, and serve with vanilla or pineapple ice cream!

Step 9

I think coconut, raisins, chopped nuts, or of course fresh pineapple would be wonderful additions to this. Please let me know if you have any truly inspired ideas for extra ingredients! Of course nothing is wrong with this simple combination of pantry staples. You're gonna love it!