Irish Soda Bread Pudding with Guinness Custard Sauce

Irish Soda Bread. Bread Pudding. Two quintessential Irish foods. So why not bring them together this St. Patrick's Day to make Irish Soda Bread Pudding?

What exactly is soda bread? It's a type of quick bread that uses baking soda as the leavening agent instead of yeast. This means no kneading and it bakes quickly. The baking soda reacts almost immediately with the buttermilk or other acidic liquid within your ingredients, so as soon as everything gets mixed together, you want to stick it in the oven pronto.

You can use this recipe for the soda bread alongside any sort of stews or roasts. It works well for breakfast as well, with plenty of jam and butter.

Today, though, we're turning our soda bread into bread pudding, because we LOVE dessert here at RSVP.

Irish Soda Bread Pudding with Guinness Custard Sauce

As a fair bit of warning, this recipe takes a lot of eggs. A LOT. And a lot of egg yolks. So save the egg whites for the day after St. Paddy's when you need to eat an egg white omelette. Or make a meringue pie. We're not here to judge folks!

We used multiple tools from our Endurance® line to create this recipe: Endurance® Bench Scraper, and the Endurance® Spring Whisk. We also used our gorgeous Silicone Pastry Mat to keep the dough from sticking and avoiding a messy countertop.

Just to be upfront, this recipe has a lot of steps. If you want to bypass making the soda bread from scratch, that is totally okay. Most stores will carry soda bread during St. Patrick's Day. But for a real homemade feel, making the soda bread will give a better depth of flavor for this Irish soda bread pudding. It might seem like a lot of work, but it really comes together quickly once you get going.

First, bake the soda bread and let it cool. While your bread is baking, you can make the Guinness custard sauce. The Guinness adds a gorgeous depth to this Irish soda bread pudding. Honestly, we've never made anything more delicious in our kitchen than this custard sauce. And that is saying a lot.

 

Once this is all cooked down into a thick custard, you'll have a golden sweet and slightly caramelly topping for your bread pudding.

For the actual bread pudding, make the egg batter (custard) while your Guinness custard sauce is cooking down and your soda bread is cooling. Once your bread has cooled, cube it up and add it to your egg batter. Bake and voila! You have Irish Soda Bread Pudding ready to serve for St. Patrick's Day.

There are many recipes out there to celebrate the holiday of St. Patrick. But for something that is quintessentially Irish with a little bit of flair, this Irish Soda Bread Pudding takes the pudding.

IRISH SODA BREAD PUDDING WITH GUINNESS CUSTARD SAUCE

Celebrate the luck of the Irish with our recipe for an Irish Soda Bread Pudding, made from a traditional dense brown soda bread and topped with a thick Guinness vanilla custard. 

INGREDIENTS

For the Soda Bread

  • 1 3/4Cups Whole wheat flour
  • 1 3/4Cups All-purpose flour
  • 1 Tsp Salt
  • 1 Tsp Baking soda
  • 2 Tbsp Butter
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 2/3Cups Buttermilk
  • 1 Tbsp Oats

For the Guinness Custard

  • 3/4 Cup Guinness no foam
  • 8 Egg yolks
  • 1 Cup Packed brown sugar
  • 1/3 Cup Heavy cream
  • 2 Tsp Vanilla

For the Bread Pudding

  • 1 Loaf Irish soda bread cubed 1"x1"
  • 6 Eggs
  • 2 1/2Cups Half & half
  • 2 Tsp Vanilla
  • 4 Tbsp Melted butter
  • 1/2 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Jameson Irish Whiskey
  • 1 Tsp Cinnamon
  • Cooking Spray
  • 1 Tbsp Sugar to sprinkle on top

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Irish Soda Bread

  1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
  2. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub into flour mixture until it resembles sand. 
  3. In separate bowl, whisk egg and buttermilk together.
  4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour liquid into flour mixture. Mix together into a loose dough that is soft, but not too sticky. 
  5. Turn onto floured pastry slab and bring dough together into an 8x8x1-1/2 inch round. Place on baking sheet dusted with flour. 
  6. Score top of the bread with an X and poke a small hole into each corner. Glaze bread with buttermilk and dust top with oat. 
  7. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn oven down to 400°F. Bake an additional 30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool on rack. 

For the Guinness Custard

  1. Bring beer to slight boil in small saucepan and remove from heat. 
  2. Whisk together yolks, brown sugar, and pinch of salt in medium bowl. Whisk in heavy cream and vanilla, then slowly add hot beer in steady small stream, whisking constantly. Transfer back to saucepan and cook over medium low heat until custard is thickened. 
  3. Pour custard through fine-mesh sieve into small metal bowl. Cool completely in ice bath, then refrigerate covered at least 1 hour. 

For the Bread Pudding

  1. Whisk eggs, half & half, whiskey, butter, and vanilla together in a large bowl. Add sugar and cinnamon. Mix well. 
  2. Cut soda bread into 1 inch pieces. Stir bread into egg mix and let stand for 15 minutes. 
  3. Preheat oven to 350°F while bread soaks with egg mixture. 
  4. Coat 8x8 inch baking dish with cooking spray. Pour pudding mixture into dish and top with sugar. 
  5. Bake for 45-50 minutes until knife inserted into middle comes out clean. Serve warm with custard sauce. 
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