Choly challah!

OK, so we thought that making bread pudding with eggnog was the best idea ever. Then I thought, ooh, we should make it with challah bread! That is also a great idea, but both those ideas were superseded when we added a meringue topping to the challah eggnog bread pudding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yow.

1 loaf challah bread, cubed
6 egg yolks
eggnog (mmm, about 32 ounces?)
meringue (look in the recipe for explanation)

Put the cubed challah bread in a 9 x 13 baking pan and put in the oven set at 250 until it's a bit dried out. Whisk the egg yolks with the eggnog (add some sugar if you want it sweeter, and maybe some vanilla if you like), and pour over the bread in the pan. Using your hands, squish the bread down into the liquid, pressing it until it flattens a little. Pop it back in the oven with a cover for about 30-45 minutes.

While it bakes, set out to make the toffee meringue cookies (previous recipe), but accidentally get some egg yolk into the whites. Then decide that it will probably be fine and all that information about how egg whites won't beat to stiff peaks if there is even a tiny bit of yolk in them is a bunch of hooey. Follow the recipe exactly, and start getting a little worried when the whites aren't quite beating to stiff peaks. Add the sugar and vanilla anyway. Watch as the egg whites dissolve back into almost a liquid form.

Walk away and think about this for a minute (or keep reading this and discover a world of wonder!).

Realize that maybe you should go ahead and pour the meringuey stuff over the bread pudding (which is almost completely set at this point) and see what happens. Leave the lid off and let it bake for awhile longer.

After you put the kids to bed and remember that you left the bread pudding in the oven, go back and find out that the meringue has puffed up into a beautiful brown wonder! Call in the older kids and show them. Hear the accolades, take a bow, and try the bread pudding, which ends up tasting like the world's best french toast.

But you have to let it cool and put it in the fridge for the morning, because everyone it too full to eat it now.