It’s a great year for apples here in New York!  We managed to avoid the late frost that killed off all the blossoms this year, and everywhere I look trees are laden with apples.  So I guess it’s just natural for me to have apples on my mind.  I’ve had apple cider pressed, canned apple slices, dried apple slices, made apple juice and canned apple butter.  It’s all apples all the time around here!

Walmart is thinking about apples too–right now we are in the middle of their annual “Applefest”, and since I’m one of the Walmart Moms they asked me to share an apple recipe with you all.  That’s right, it’s Applefest!  Time for all things fall and apple at Walmart.  Not only are there tons of apples for eating and baking, this is the time of year when the caramel apple dip and candy apple decorating kits are out as well.

See, there I am, in store!  It was nice to find so many different types of apples available, and I was thrilled to see that we had bags of locally grown apples from NY available in store as well!

This time of year you see tons of apple pies, apple dumplings, and apple tarts–so for my recipe I decided to try some thing different–bread pudding, but with a twist.  That’s right, APPLE bread pudding!

Bread pudding is one of the original frugal deserts.  Today’s modern preservatives and baking methods have given us bread that stays soft and fresh for long periods of time–but back in the old days bread had to be used up fairly quickly before it either went hard and/or stale.  Not wanting to waste anything, the frugal housekeeper had multiple recipes and methods to use up old bread.  Stuffing.  Bread crumbs.  Croutons.  Bread Pudding.  All these were invented to use up stale bread.

While this bread pudding recipe would be lovely made with a more substantial homemade bread, for the purpose of this post I just used plain old white sandwich bread–and it came out fine!  If I were to use homemade or store bought “rustic” style bread, I’d probably drop my bread amount down to about 8 slices.

Make sure you use apples that are good for baking and cooking in this recipe.  All apples are NOT created alike when it comes to baking. Your Red and Yellow Delicious are going to loose all their flavor–I prefer a Honey Crisp, Cortland, Gala, Granny Smith or similar type for cooking.  Not sure what apples to use?  About.com has a nice apple comparison chart to help you out!

Apple Bread Pudding

12 Slices Bread
2 Apples
3 C Milk
4 TBS Butter
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 C Sugar
3 Eggs

-Preheat oven to 350 and grease your 8X8 pan
-Warm milk, butter, cinnamon, and sugar until the butter melts.
-Cut bread into small pieces (approx 1 inch)
-Put bread into your pan and pour the milk mixture over.  Let sit for about 3 minutes.
-Peel, core and roughly chop your apples.
-Lightly beat 3 eggs.
-Mix eggs and apples into the bread/milk mixture gently but thoroughly.
-Bake in a 350 oven for 1 hr or until a knife comes out clean.

Serve with Boiled Cider, Bourbon Sauce or Whipped Cream.

What’s Boiled Cider?  Well I’m glad you asked!  I’ll be posting my Boiled Cider (Apple Molasses) recipe tomorrow!  Let’s just say it’s the taste of fall in a jar 🙂

****This is a sponsored post****

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.