Vegan Pumpkin Bread Pudding

This delicious Vegan Pumpkin Bread Pudding is awesome for a comforting vegan breakfast, but you can eat it any time of day! It is healthy with whole grain bread, and cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves add a festive touch. The recipe can be made with gluten-free bread.

The days are getting short and cold again and the holidays will be here before you know it. So here's a recipe to get you into the mood for winter and all the festivities that go with it. My Vegan Pumpkin Bread Pudding.

If you love all things pumpkin and pumpkin spice, this is the recipe for you. It has the warmth of a delicious vegan pumpkin cake or a vegan pumpkin bread or a vegan pumpkin pie, only it's even healthier.

It's also utterly delicious with a creamy, maple-sweetened custard sauce that seeps and soaks into the wholegrain bread, making it melt in your mouth as you take bite after bite. But you don't have to wait for dessert to eat it. It's healthy enough to eat for breakfast.

Or, if you're someone who likes eating breakfast for dinner, you wouldn't go wrong with this pudding.

What's not to love here? There's pumpkin here, so we have our veggies. And there's wholegrain bread here, so we have our healthy carbs. Tofu and cashews add lots of protein. In other words, it's a full meal in a baking dish.

I use maple syrup to sweeten my custard sauce and it adds a rich note while keeping the sugary part of this dessert from getting unhealthy. Cloves, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg add a wonderful, deep hint of spice that rounds out the creamy custard beautifully.

This vegan Pumpkin Bread Pudding recipe comes together in minutes. Most of the prep work is done in the food processor and you don't have to leave the uncooked pudding standing overnight for the custard to soak into the bread, like some recipes call for.

The recipe makes for 10-12 generous servings, so it's a great one to cook for a large group. I love serving it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert, or with some vegan whipped cream for breakfast. But you don't even need those bells and whistles. My favorite way to eat it is to just scoop it out of the baking dish with my fingers. Yum.

Expert tips

• Use any winter squash. Pumpkin is great, but butternut or kabocha would work here too.
• You can roast your own squash. Cut into 1-inch cubes after peeling, toss with 1 teaspoon oil, and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 40 minutes or until a fork goes through cleanly and without resistance.
• You don't need to make this pudding the night before, but no one says you can't. If you want to have an easier morning, assemble the pudding the previous night, place in the refrigerator covered tightly with plastic wrap, and bake the next morning (after taking off the cling wrap, of course!)
• If you don't have maple syrup, or don't want to use it, go with another natural sweetener, like turbinado sugar.

More yummy pumpkin recipes