Best Bets: Lazy Woman’s Bread Pudding

Michael Donahue

Lazy Woman’s Bread Pudding

I tried Peggy Brown’s no-cook banana pudding, which is super delicious. So, when she told me also makes her own bread pudding, I had to try that, too.

What made it more enticing was the name: “Lazy Woman’s Bread Pudding.”

“To me, it’s just a shortcut from cooking it the way my grandma did,” says Brown, chef/owner of Peggy’s Healthy Home Cooking. “I didn’t want to do a whole lot of work, so I just decided to do it that way.”


The ingredients in Brown’s unconventional bread pudding include instant vanilla pudding. She uses day-old bread, but she also uses day-old cinnamon rolls and honey buns.

“My grandma, she beat all the eggs and she did it step by step. I just use the vanilla pudding. I don’t use the cornstarch. I don’t use the eggs. I don’t use a lot of the stuff they use.

“My grandma made bread pudding all the time. Back in the day, people didn’t throw anything away. We had biscuits every day. My grandma would keep all the old biscuits. When she had enough, she’d crumble them all up and make a bread pudding.”

Brown began making her Lazy Woman’s Bread Pudding eight or nine years ago. “It tastes about like the ones she made.”

When Brown poured that custard over the bread, I knew it was going to taste fabulous.

If you’re lucky, you’ll hit a day when she serves her bread pudding at her restaurant. “Every once in a while we serve bread pudding. We don’t serve it a whole lot, but we serve it.”

Peggy’s Healthy Home Cooking is at 326 South Cleveland; (901)-474-4938.