(Vegan) Recipe Swap: Bread Pudding

As promised, we’re back with a vegan dessert recipe for you to whip up along with the Mushroom Carpaccio we shared earlier this week! For this recipe, we’re thrilled to have Tania from Birch Bark Eatery in Queensbury share her Bread Pudding recipe, and we can attest - it’s delish! And so are her bbq cauli bites, but that’s a story for another day ;)

Can’t wait to see what they’ll have at the Roots Vegan Fest tomorrow! Check out the details and the other vendors here. But first, the recipe!

Tell us about yourself and Birch Bark Eatery!

Birch Bark Eatery was born out my desire to align my morals with my environment. I spent years working in a quick service food restaurant where the finished product was egg, milk, meat reliant. After I committed to a vegan lifestyle, it no longer felt like my career matched my moral compass and I began looking for a way to transition into something that did. 

You mention your commitment to a vegan lifestyle - why is that important to you?  

Eating a plant based diet is important to me because I know I am doing the most I can to mitigate harm to animals. Being vegan is about more than just food though, as animal products are added to so many finished products or they are tested on animals, so I check all the products I purchase for cruelty free labels and do a lot of research on ingedients. 

What has the reaction to Birch Bark been locally?

Most of our guests are so grateful to have a restaurant where they can come in and eat anything on the menu. An evening of dining out without awkward questions about ingredients or fear that food will be cross-contaminated is paramount to the bulk of our guest base. We have definitely seen more interest in plant based eating with many guests just learning about how cruel animal agriculture is, or how unhealthy eating animal flesh is. At the very least many people are interested in cutting down on their meat consumption.

You have so many fantastic options on the menu - where do you get your inspiration? 

I get most of my inspiration online. Sometimes its a visual from Instagram, other times it is something I come across in foodie groups. I hate following recipes and usually just add a dash of this or pinch of that, but when I find a winning idea I tweak it until my palate says its amazing and that recipe gets recorded. 

So, tell us about the Bread Pudding recipe!

I decided to share our Birch Bark recipe for bread pudding because it’s a classic comfort food that can easily be converted to a plant based recipe.

The Ingredients + Recipe

5 cinnabuns from Birch Bark or elsewhere (We save and upcycle pastries from the previous day usually using cinnabuns and maple glazed yeast donuts)

Cut these up into smallish cubes and place in a big bowl.

In a seperate bowl, mix together:

1 can coconut milk 

1 can cream de coco (the sweetened type)

1 tbs cinnamon 

1 tsp pumpkin pie seasoning

1 tbs enerG egg replacer

Whisk all this together and pour over cut bread

Press bread down to soak thoroughly

Optional to add 1/2 cup of raisins.

Grease a large baking pan

Bake in a convection oven at 350 for 30 minutes, turning pan half way through.

Once allowed to cool, this will cut like a cake and is amazing served with a cinnamon drizzle sauce. 

Thanks, Tania! Can’t wait to try this at home.

P.S. Check out more from our Recipe Swap series here.