Old Fashioned Bread Pudding with Apples & Cinnamon Sauce

     For this month's Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned Gloria's blog: Canela Kitchen. I looked up canela and it means "cinnamon." I love cinnamon, so I knew right away that I was going to have a hard time deciding which recipe to pick. There were so many good recipes, especially dessert recipes! After I looked through the archives, and reading through most of the blog, I decided on a bread pudding. I had some old bread that I wanted to use up, and my grandpa always made bread pudding when he had old bread, so it held a bit of nostalgia for me.
     I mentioned in some earlier posts that we visited the local apple orchard and ended up with 24 pounds of apples. I thought I could use a couple up by adding some chopped apples to the bread pudding, and what goes better with apples than cinnamon? Not much I think. So, I changed the vanilla sauce to a cinnamon sauce. I think maybe Gloria would like this change since she likes cinnamon enough to put it in her blog title. Another change I made was to reduce the liquids in the recipe, thus taking away the need to bake with a water bath.

3 cups bread in 1 inch pieces (or use enough to fill up your 9x13 pan)
2 chopped apples
2 cups hot milk
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbl butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Sauce:
1 cup sugar
2 Tbl butter
3/4 cup water
1-1/4 Tbl cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 - 1 tsp cinnamon (to taste)

• Put bread and apples into 9x13 baking dish. (Use an 8x8 dish if you like a thick pudding)
• Mix eggs, milk, butter, sugar, honey, vanilla, and nutmeg.
• Pour egg mixture over the bread and apples. 
• Bake @ 350* for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.
• For the sauce: Mix sugar, butter, water, and cornstarch in a heavy saucepan. Heat and stir until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and cinnamon. 
• Cool before pouring over pudding.

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