White Chocolate Bread Pudding

I have a ladies meeting tomorrow and was asked to prepare my White Chocolate Bread pudding.  I normally make this dessert whenever we have a dinner party to attend because it is such a crowd pleasing dish.
I can remember the first time I had bread pudding without raisins when I was a little girl; it was heavenly!  Do you know how tedious it was to have to go through and pick out all those raisins before you could enjoy dessert?  Way too much trouble! That first bite of non-raisin bread pudding started a revolution inside of me - never would I order bread pudding that had raisins again, and I will certainly never make my own bread pudding with raisins! Of course, fill free to add them to yours (1/2 cup should do it)...just don't invite me over that night.

Ignore the small bite taken out of the corner of the bread pudding -
so yummy that I couldn't wait til after the picture was taken!

Ingredients:
serves 8

1 french bread loaf (about 8 oz)
3 cups plus 1/2 cups of whipping cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 -11 oz packages of high quality white chocolate chips (such as Ghirardelli)
7 large egg yolks
2 large eggs


Preheat oven to 275 degrees F

Cut french bread into once inch bite sized cubes  - enough pieces to lay in a 9x13 inch pan
Lay piece out on a baking pan and bake until golden and dry (about 10 min) Set aside to cool then place in your 9x13 inch pan
Increase oven temperature to 350 degrees F

In a large sauce pan, combine 3 cups of heavy cream (reserve the 1/2 cup for later) and 1/2 cup of milk and sugar and bring to a simmer. Stir until sugar is dissolved.  Turn heat off and add 1 pkg of white chocolate chips.  Stir until chocolate is melted.

Whisk egg yolks and eggs together in a large mixing bowl and gradually whisk in your white chocolate mixture.  Pour 1/2 of this mixture into your 9x13 pan over the bread cubes and let stand for 15 minutes.  Gently mix in remaining chocolate, cover with foil and bake for 45 min.  Uncover and back an additional 15 minutes or until golden brown.

At this point, you can let it cool, cover it and put in the fridge if you are baking this a head of time (up to a day ahead).  Just let your pan come to room temp from the fridge and then heat up the bread pudding for 30 min. on 350 before serving.

White Chocolate topping:
Bring remaining 1/2 cup of whipping cream to a simmer in a medium sauce pan. Remove from heat and add other bag of white chocolate chips.  Stir until melted and smooth.  Drizzle white chocolate over each individual serving of bread pudding.

Enjoy this Chewly Awesome! dessert :)