Caramel Bread Pudding - Carla-Anne Ferguson

The French bread was soft and fluffy in my hands as I grabbed it. Oooh… this was good bread. Sliced fresh French bread. Exactly as I’d ordered it. The click-n-collect shoppers had done well today.

I let the bread sit on the counter overnight.

After breakfast was cleared away, I took out the cutting board and my very sharp bread knife. After opening the bag, I grabbed the first third of the slices and stacked them on my cutting board. Slicing them lengthwise into long fingers almost felt like a shame. The slices had been so perfectly even. It had been such a beautiful loaf.

I turned the stack of finger-length bread slices 90 degrees and sliced them again. Now the bread was in cubes. Oddly misshapen cubes. Some small. Some medium. Some hardly cubes at all.

Quickly they were wiped off the cutting board into the largest stainless steel bowl I own. And I kept cutting. Lengthwise first. Then crazy cubes. 

Within minutes my perfect French bread loaves were literally in pieces. I spread three loaves worth of bread cubes over three cookie sheets and left them on my counter.

For three days.

I turned them over once. But other than that, I just left them alone.

To dry out. To dehydrate. To get old and stale.

I did it on purpose.

As I watched myself perform this process for the umpteenth time in my life, for the first time the Lord had something to show me about this very procedure.

There was no way the bread could “know” what I was doing to it. No way for it to understand why I had mutilated the perfectly made, fluffy, soft, fresh bread.

To do further damage, I was leaving it alone. Walking away for days. Watching it get older. Staler. And so very dried out.

I have felt like this bread. Unfortunately, I’m not a mute or unfeeling loaf of bread! I’m a living, speaking, and sometimes raging human being who has shaken my fists at the heavens and demanded an explanation.

“God, WHY did you not leave my beautiful life alone!?”

“Why did you cut my life apart into this messy, crumbly, misshapen, and bumpy existence?”

“Why are you leaving me here alone?? Don’t you see me drying out, getting stale and old and way past my prime?”

There was no way for that crumbly mess to know my purpose was grander, more special than simple French bread.

It could not know I watched every cube-like piece of bread for mold or uneven drying.

It could not know that in three short days, the bread cubes would be perfectly dry. So dry that a little pressure between my fingers might crush it.

But I wouldn’t crush it. I wanted dry cubes. Not crumbs. Just like God wouldn’t crush me. As He holds me carefully and tenderly, I’m safe, even if I’m fragile.

The bread could not know that in three days I’d beat eggs, add cream, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and melted butter to make a sweet, delicious custard-type mixture.

There was no way those dried out bread cubes would know it was precisely their complete dehydration that would allow the custard to be soaked up as I poured the batter over them and stirred.

They’d get drenched, soaked, and saturated in sweetness. I’d drop it into a pan with caramel sauce covering the bottom. No discernible rhyme or reason, just a plop here and a plop there. No obvious plan for where, but a definite plan for why!

Those gaps between the cubes would allow the caramel to cook through, lacing every bite with that gooey goodness.

But the French bread didn’t — couldn’t — know that.

I’d put that now fully soaked, caramel laced mush into a hot, hot oven and bake it.

Forty-five minutes later what comes out of the oven is nothing like what went in. Absolutely nothing like the French bread it had once been.

There’s no way it could have known the people around my table would be blessed with their favourite dessert, topped with more caramel sweetness and ice cream.

In order for this incredible treat to be served to accolades, loud squeals of glee, and utter delight, the creator had to cut, chisel, dry out, mix, mash, and heat it, to design an even more intricate masterpiece.

This is my life.

This is your life.

The cutting. The dry spells. The mashing and mixing. It’s all painful.

Betrayal of a friend or spouse. Tragedy of divorce. Grief of loss. Loving those you can’t hold onto. Watching those you love damage themselves. Health struggles. Bankruptcy. Each one so devastating to your beautiful life.

The cutting up of a beautiful life.

The truth is I often make this recipe. But the next truth is most of the time, I don’t even use fresh bread.

I use the old bread. The almost moldy. The freezer-burned. The leftovers from barbecues and from the bag the kids forgot to close. I use the throw-aways.

There’s no way, as a guest at my table, you’d ever guess that it was the throw-aways. Because as the creator of caramel bread pudding, I know I can make beauty and bring joy out of what others would throw away.

Is your life feeling like a throw-away? Does it feel like your beautiful life has been damaged beyond repair? Dreams never fulfilled. Pain after pain after painful pain. Losses higher than you can count. Failures time and again.

Then rest. Rest in the One who creates beauty from rubble.

It might feel like you are being brutalized by the Almighty. It might feel as though He’s far away and has forgotten about you.

It’s not true. He’s creating the perfect environment for His perfect plan to bring all things to good for those who are called according to His purpose. You might not know the final product of the ‘recipe’. But trust His promise. It will be a good one.

Truths based on 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 and Romans 8:28.