Chocolate-cherry Bread Pudding

Total Time: 1 hr 25 mins Preparation Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 1 hr 15 mins

Ingredients

• Servings: 9
• 1 (6 ounce) jar maraschino cherries
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 cups chocolate milk (can make your own with preferred amount of chocolate)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter or 3 tablespoons margarine, melted
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 6 cups cubed french bread (the size of dice)
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate morsel (6 oz)
• sweetened whipped cream
• maraschino cherry

Recipe

• 1 drain the jar of cherries but reserve 1 tb of the cherry juice. chop the cherries coarsely. the first time i made this i used a food processor and got them too fine. more chunky is definately better.
• 2 in a large bowl, combine 1 tb of cherry juice, eggs and next 4 ingredients and stir will.
• 3 preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• 4 add the bread cubes and let stand for 15 minutes on the counter, stirring occasionally. after 15 minutes, stir in the chocolate chips and cherries.
• 5 spoon this mixture into a greased 9 inch square pan (i used a bread pan with good results) and bake, uncovered for 50-60 minutes or until set.
• 6 garnish, if you want to, with whipped cream and maraschino cherries.
• 7 cook time includes 15 minutes soaking time for french bread cubes.