What a week! The Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos, 43-8, on Sunday to win their first National Football League championship in franchise history- and entire Seattle was in Seahawks trance. This must have been the least productive week in Seattle’s history.

On Monday everybody was hung over from the Sunday celebration (including myself), on Tuesday the first fans camped out downtown to get a good seat/stand for the Victory Parade the city put on Wednesday. Wednesday was pure chaos in the city and surrounding area with 700,000 people watching the parade life downtown in freezing temperatures with Lynch throwing his favorite Skittles candy into the crowd and Thursday most folks were hung-over and/or tired from the Victory parade.

While I do like football and already begin to wonder what to obsess about now that the season is over, I am not a die hard fan to stand hours in 23 degree weather to get a glimpse of the players, instead I was wondering what to do with all that left over cornbread I had from Sunday. I just hate throwing away perfectly good food and though I can eat crepes every day all day, I can not eat corn bread every day. The first thing that came to mind was to make myself some bread pudding. I’ve never tried to make it out of corn bread and was pleasantly surprised how delicious it tasted.

I also made a New Orleans style whiskey sauce to go along with the bread pudding which tasted very well together. The recipe is adapted from Emeril Lagasse and he uses 3/4 cup of whiskey. Yikes I like my booze but that was too much for me in this dessert sauce, I found a 1/4 cup was just right. Alternatively you can also serve it with ice cream, some whipped cream and maple syrup, or some warm vanilla sauce and ice cream might also go well with this bread pudding. In the photo above you see the bread pudding served on cherry yoghurt, I know that’s odd but I felt like yoghurt and bread pudding.

Here the recipe:

Ingredients for the bread pudding:  

• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup pur maple syrup, plus more for serving
• 2 – 2,5  cups half-and-half (depending how much bread you have)
• 1 1/2 pounds homemade or store-bought cornbread, cut into 1-inch cubes (doesn’t have to be perfect, can also be a little bit bigger)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Ingredients for the Whiskey Sauce:

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 cup bourbon or other whiskey
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Process for making the bread pudding:

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, maple syrup, and salt. Stir in the cornbread; and let it sit for 5 minutes. Don’t stir it too much or the bread falls apart.
2. Then pour the mixture into an 8-inch square baking dish and bake until a toothpick inserted in center of pudding comes out clean, 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes. and serve with more maple syrup and ice cream or heavy cream or the below New Orleans style Whiskey sauce.

How to make the New Orleans style Whiskey sauce:

1. In a 1-quart saucepan set over medium heat, combine the cream, milk, and sugar.
2. Place the cornstarch and 1/4 cup of the bourbon in a small mixing bowl and whisk to blend and make a slurry.
3. Pour the slurry into the cream mixture and bring to a boil.
4. Once the sauce begins to boil, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.
5. Remove the sauce from the heat, add the salt and stir in the butter. Serve warm.

Guten Appetit!