Donut Bread Pudding

We recently had a function at church wherein we had tons and tons of donut-holes.  There were plenty left over, so I thought I'd take them home and see what I could do with them.  I am one of those very rare people (it seems) that does not really care for donuts.  I know, it is weird.  I just think there are so many other better pastries out there, why should I eat a donut?  Plus donuts tend to be too sweet for me.  Anyway, home I came with a bunch of regular glazed donut-holes and glazed chocolate donut-holes.

My idea was to make a bread pudding and I found a good recipe to try at Leite's Culinaria.  I had enough donut-holes to make 2 batches of bread pudding, so since the recipe called for dark rum, I made one batch WITH rum and one WITHOUT, just in case.  I say just in case because my intention was to bring these back to church and I wanted to be certain that those who prefer to not ingest alcohol had an option. 

Donut Bread Pudding
adapted from Leite's Culinaria
For the pudding:
6 cups day-old raised donuts, cut into 1-inch pieces (or 6 cups donut-holes)
4 large eggs
2 TB dark rum or 1/2 teaspoon rum extract (optional) 
1/2  teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
For the icing:
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 TB hot water

Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan.

Place the donuts in the loaf pan.  In a bowl, whisk the eggs, rum (if using), cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla until well blended.  Whisk in the milk and cream.  Pour over the donuts, turning the top pieces over and pressing down gently so all of the donuts become soaked in the mixture.

Bake until firm and browned on top, approximately 50 minutes.  Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes.

While the pudding cools, whisk the icing ingredients together in a small bowl.  Serve pudding in thick slices, warm, drizzled with icing. 
Printable Recipe

While the recipe claims that this makes 6 servings, I cut a LOT more than that.  I think 6 servings would be ginormous and way more than I could handle, personally.  So figure that you'll get however many servings as you want to slice in your loaf pan. 

Oh, and you may be wondering how this went over at church?

A picture is worth 1000 words!  I realized I hadn't photographed the plates so I ran out to take a picture and this is what was left!  They were devoured!