So, things didn’t work out as smoothly in my kitchen this past weekend as I would’ve liked. I have to remind myself that the description of this blog includes “Recipes and Experiments…” I nearly started a grease fire in the dutch oven and had to get creative with cookware in order to finish beef short-ribs. And then my zucchini bread turned out dry.

I was literally drafting a blog entitled “The Best Zucchini Bread Ever,” bragging about how moist it is. Ever since Papa Bird has grown summer squash, I have made many, many loaves. I even asked my husband if it would be cocky to reference Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” from his book Outliers which is the theory that merely practicing for at least 10,000 hours, such as the Beatles performing 8 hours/day in Hamburg or Bill Gates playing around with programming as a teen, contributes to genius. My husband said yes, it would sound cocky.

Serves me right that the zucchini bread turned out dry. I still don’t know why. But I will certainly be revamping the recipe before I share it here. What I can share is my practice of seeing opportunity in failure. Dry bread is in fact the best for making bread pudding. A simple pudding, served with Cinnamon and Vanilla Bean Cajeta syrup, alongside super sweet, ripe, organic strawberries made a delicious brunch. (Cajeta is a traditional Mexican caramel syrup, made from goat’s milk. Think of dulce de leche crossed with sweetened condensed milk.)

Zucchini Bread Pudding Recipe

• 2-3 thick slices of zucchini bread, at least a day old is great
• 4-5 eggs
• approx. half a cup of milk

Preheat the oven to 350°. Toast the zucchini bread, unless it is already very stale. Roughly chop it. Place in an oven safe baking dish. (It might be nice to grease it, but I didn’t.) In a medium sized mixing bowl, beat the eggs. Add roughly the same volume of milk. Pour the egg/milk mixture over the bread. Bake until set, approximately 25 minutes.

Since the bread is sweet and spiced, and the cajeta is made with cinnamon stick and vanilla bean, I left the batter plain. But you could certainly add a little sugar, vanilla extract and cinnamon to the batter. If you have individual sized ramekins, that could be classy, too.