Today, I came home from work to the smell of something burning in the oven, and a platter of burned blueberry muffins cooling on the kitchen counter. Uh oh, there goes dessert for tonight's small dinner gathering we had planned with friends.  My wife, daughter,  and her friend made the muffins, and went downstairs to play, but did not hear the timer ring when the muffins were ready.  It was not until my wife caught a whiff of something burning that she realized that they had lost track of the time. Hey, it even happens to the best.

So what to do, I was not fond of the idea of tossing a dozen burned muffins into the garbage.  They were not burned all that bad, they were still edible, but just not that good tasting.  So, I decided to try a bread pudding that incorporated the muffins...

 
I never made bread pudding.  Actually, never even tasted it.  It looked easy to make from the various times I have seen it made on the cooking shows, and since there was nothing to lose, we gave it a try. I conglomerated several recipes from the web into the one below.  Scrounging around the kitchen, I found that I had just about everything needed.  Most of the recipes I found called for a dash of rum or whiskey, but I did not have any liquor on hand. It may not be "real" bread pudding, but it better than wasting food. Here is the recipe I came up with, but read below for some remarks on how it turned out and changes I would make in the future.

Recipe for Bread Pudding
12 "burned" blueberry muffins
4 tablespoons melted butter
4 eggs
2 cups milk
3/4 to 1 cup sugar (more for really burned muffins)
A generous dash of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (or more)
a dash of nutmeg.

Preheat oven to 350 F.
First, break up the muffins.   and place in a 9x10 or 9x13 pan. I used them, burned part and all. Drizzle the melted butter over the top of the muffins. Combine the eggs, milk, cinnamon,  sugar, nutmeg, and mix well. Pour the mixture over the muffins in the pan. I pushed the muffins to ensure that they all got coated with the mixture and soaked up some of the liquid.  It was sort of like a giant french toast.
Place the pan in the oven at 350F for about 40 to 45 minutes.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the result.  It sort of came out like a giant cinnamon bun/french toast.  It seemed a tad on the dry side, so maybe a little more milk and an extra egg would produce a better result.  I definitely would have like to have added a shot or two of rum. This turned out to be a great dessert once you topped it with a little whipped cream.

Much better than tossing the whole mess into the garbage!