I tried a new recipe yesterday. It was a knock-off recipe for Kneader's Raspberry Bread Pudding. It was yummy. I used the recipe from The Sisters' Cafe blog here. You can tell I cooked the vanilla cream sauce too long. It doesn't resemble cream like it is supposed to--- it looks more like frosting (or toothpaste!).
So, a word of advice.... when making the vanilla cream sauce, when it says cook until thick, it doesn't really mean it. I cooked it until it was about as thick as country gravy, so not all that thick. It was the perfect consistency while still hot. It was like pudding after it cooled down. After being refrigerated, it resembled a really thick frosting. Since it is pretty much made of cream and butter, it doesn't warm up well. The butter separated after putting it in the microwave for 5 seconds on 20% power. Even after trying to stir it back in, the good vanilla flavor was lost, and it tasted more like, well, butter. So, I would say to just cook it until it barely begins to thicken up, say, when the cream is warmed up. When the cream sauce is made properly, it tastes a lot like a good vanilla pudding, although thin and liquidy (I'm making up my own words again), and goes nicely with the warmed bread pudding.
Another note--- I didn't have any stale bread, so I used fresh. I didn't have apple juice, so I used Kodiak raspberry syrup in place of the sugar and apple juice that you stir into the raspberries for the filling. After cooking, it was more like a raspberry cobbler than a bread pudding.
Which was perfectly fine with me. :)
