Bread Crust Bread Pudding

What do you do when you have a ton of bread crusts leftover from making a ton of tea sandwiches?
You can... throw them away... or... feed some ducks... or... make bread crumbs... or... make meatloaf... or ... you can make bread pudding!

Of those options, bread pudding is definitely my top fav!  (sorry ducks!)
You can eat bread pudding for breakfast or enjoy it a la mode for dessert.
Bread pudding is really not that bad for you either.  All it is, is bread, milk, eggs, a little sugar, and cinnamon.  That's it! And because it's baked rather than fried on a griddle (like french toast), there isn't any fat added to it.

When I was making the tea party sandwiches, I made sure to save all the crusts in a ziploc bag.  I ended up giving half of the crusts to my mom, but the remaining half crusts that I had was still a lot!  (we had 5 loaves of bread worth of bread crusts!)
I used half of my half-crust supply to make this batch of bread pudding.  I threw the remaining bread crusts in the freezer, which I will take out and make more bread pudding later.

I have to admit, my bread crusts had some sandwich filling stuck on them since we cut the crusts off *after* we assembled the sandwiches (that's how you get a clean even cut).  I tried my best to pick off the sandwich filling and cut off the parts of the crust that had too much filling stuck on it.
When you eat the bread pudding, you really can't taste any of the sandwich filling, so that's good.  =)

To make the bread pudding, you need:
- A bunch of bread crusts. 
(If you don't have bread crusts, then just use cut up bread).  Enough to fill up an 8x8 baking dish with. (Maybe around 6-8 slices of bread worth?)
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon (I love my bread pudding extra cinnamony!)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Fill up your baking dish with your bread.
2. Mix raisins into your bread.

3. In a bowl, beat together eggs, milk sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla.
4. Pour egg mixture over the bread, and push down the bread to make sure all the bread is soaked in the egg mixture.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until the top springs back when you lightly push it.

It really can't get much easier than that.
The house smelled so good... almost like french toast.
And the taste is better than the smell.  =)