This Pumpkin Spice Bread Pudding is so delicious and perfect for any fall gathering. I use my family’s favorite, Pumpkin Spice Bread to make this fabulous dessert. I finish it off with a Cinnamon Cream Sauce that is so good! This dessert is perfect for any holiday gathering, especially Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Spice Bread Pudding with a Cinnamon Vanilla Cream

Prepping for Pumpkin Spice Bread Pudding

The first step is making your pumpkin spice bread and then you need to cut up a loaf of bread into 1-inch chunks and get them dried out. If you want to short-cut this process you could buy a loaf of pumpkin spice bread, but I promise my recipe is an absolute favorite with great pumpkin spice flavor. If you have time you can cut your loaf into the small pieces and put them on a cookie sheet and let it dry out for a day until you have stale bread. I baked up my bread in the morning, so to speed up the drying I put the chunks of bread into the oven to help the drying out process.

I placed them in a preheated oven to 375 degrees for about 25 minutes. My bread was super moist though since it was just baked that day. I would check the bread crumbs at about 15 minutes and every 5 minutes after that. You want the edges to be dried.

Pumpkin Custard for Bread Pudding

In a saucepan heat the heavy cream, milk and vanilla bean over medium-low heat. If you can’t get a vanilla bean you can use vanilla extract, but the vanilla bean does make a difference. You want to slice open the vanilla bean and scoop out the glorious insides.

You want to put the insides in the pot, but also the whole beans. The cream and milk mixture will help draw out any little remains. You want to heat the cream mixture until it’s just starting to simmer, stirring frequently.

While the cream mixture is coming up to temp, in a bowl add your egg yolks to a large bowl.

Then you’ll add the pumpkin puree and cinnamon.

Egg yolks, sugar, pumpkin puree, and cinnamon for pumpkin custard.

Whisk it together until it’s smooth and creamy.

After the cream mixture is just starting simmer, remove from the heat. Now it’s time to temper the egg and cream mixture together… this is a slow process. If you pour the hot cream mixture into the eggs quickly, you’re going to get scrambled eggs… no good!

Tempering the egg mixture and cream mixture for pumpkin custard.

SLOWLY drizzle in the hot cream mixture as you quickly whisk it into the egg mixture. Once half the cream mixture is added you can pour a little quicker.

Getting Pumpkin Bread Pudding Ready to Bake

This bread pudding is almost ready for baking! Generously butter a 9×13 baking pan and dump in the dried pumpkin bread chunks.

Then you drizzle that luscious pumpkin custard over the bread crumbs.

Pouring the pumpkin custard mixture on top of the pumpkin bread chunks.

Let the bread crumbs soak up the pumpkin custard for about 10 minutes as you preheat the oven.

Then it’s time to bake!

You will create a water bath for baking your bread pudding. Basically you need a bigger pan that can fit the bread pudding baking dish inside. I like to place the pans together and put them in the oven and then pour the water into the outer dish (less likely to spill that way). You just need some hot tap water and fill it half-way up the side of the bread pudding pan.

Bake until the center has just a little jiggle left.