Milk Chocolate + Blueberry Bread Pudding

It's starting to feel like fall is going to be here soon -- excited that finally we can sit outside at night now without melting! Another benefit of summer ending is that it's reasonable to make a decidedly non-light, better-in-cool-weather dessert like bread pudding again. Thanks goodness for that. This one has a subtle milk chocolate flavor; we used regular old classic Hershey bars, one melted, one chopped. The blueberries add tartness and promote the fleeting and incorrect thought that this might actually be a virtuous dessert.

Milk Chocolate + Blueberry Bread Pudding

1 baguette
2 milk chocolate bars
3 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon butter
4 eggs
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup 2% milk (like Whole Foods 365 brand)
1 tablespoon rum
1/4 cup cane sugar (like Whole Foods 365 brand)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 pint fresh blueberries

Simple Hard Sauce (to garnish; recipe follows)
Maldon sea salt flakes (optional; to garnish)

Roughly chop bread into 1-inch cubes (about 2 1/2 cups) and set aside. Melt 1 chocolate bar and 3 tablespoons of the butter together and set aside to cool. Whisk eggs. Add cream and milk and whisk again. Add rum, sugar, cinnamon, and sea salt and whisk. Add chocolate-and-butter mixture a spoonful at a time, whisking after each addition. Add bread to wet mixture and stir to coat well. Roughly chop the remaining chocolate bar and stir it into the mixture along with blueberries. Brush a shallow baking pan with remaining 1 tablespoon butter (melted). Pour bread pudding into pan and sprinkle remaining sugar on top. Bake for 45 minutes (or until top of pudding puffs and is crisp and golden brown; placing the pan on the bottom rack for the first 30 minutes and the top rack for the last 15 minutes helps). Let pudding cool and then top each serving with a pinch of sea salt and Simple Hard Sauce.

Simple Hard Sauce

1 cup powdered sugar (like Whole Foods 365 brand)
2 teaspoons whiskey
1 tablespoon 2% milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of sea salt

Whisk all ingredients together to form a thick sauce. (Add a little more milk if needed.)