Blueberry Bread Pudding Breakfast Cake with Vanilla-Hemp Crème Anglaise

This vegan blueberry bread pudding breakfast cake with vanilla-hemp crème anglaise makes the ideal centerpiece at a sweet weekend brunch. Gooey blueberry bread pudding is tucked into a bundt pan and baked to golden perfection. The warm bread pudding is served with a plant-based vanilla-hemp anglaise sauce that takes this brunch treat from delightful to dreamy.

This post is sponsored by one of my long-time favorites: Manitoba Harvest. All thoughts, opinions, and love for their products are 100 percent my own.

If ever there was a good reason to welcome cake to your breakfast table, Mother's Day would have to be it. And this Blueberry Bread Pudding Breakfast Cake is completely worthy of the occasion.

I spent this past Saturday morning and much of Monday evening testing and retesting this recipe until it was just right. My mom has always loved bread pudding—and cardamom and chocolate and rice pudding too—so I wanted to make sure this vegan version really shined.

At first, this was going to be a classic bread pudding baked in a square dish, but while I was reaching for that trusty 9x9, I spotted a neglected bundt pan tucked away in the back of the cabinet. I'd classify myself as a novice bundt baker, but I do know that the pan is great for baking two things in particular: angel food cake and dense, moist cakes. Bread pudding most definitely fits into that latter category, so I gave it a whirl.

Well, bundt-ers beware: the first version was spot on in terms of flavor and texture, but the baking time was just way too long—1 hour, 50 minutes (and that's using a small, 6-cup bundt pan). Sharing a brunch recipe with that lengthy of a baking time felt all too fussy, so I played around with the amount of liquid until the baking time was reasonable (i.e., 50 minutes to 1 hour) and that moist, gooey, delectable bread pudding quality was still fully intact.

And I should probably mention that it's topped with a creamy, custard-like Vanilla-Hemp Anglaise. I'm not sure if I'm making my mom's brunch dreams come true or my own, but I'm smitten with how this recipe came together. Gimme A Beat Bundt! Too much?

To make it, you'll start by adding a small mountain of cubed sandwich bread into a mixing bowl. I used sprouted, seeded bread, but gluten-free should work just fine in here too. You'll need about 8 to 10 slices depending on the size of each, which, in total, is typically about half a loaf.

Then, you'll prepare a sweet, creamy liquid made with almond milk, coconut milk, maple syrup, a bit of coconut oil, vanilla, cinnamon, and sea salt, and pour it over the bread. The bread soaks in that delicious bath of sweetness for a solid 15 minutes, slurping up every last drop.

Next, you'll scoop half of the bread pudding mixture into a small (6-cup) bundt pan, sprinkle on a layer of blueberries, top with the remaining bread pudding mixture, and bake for 50 minutes to one hour.

While the bread pudding cake bakes, you'll whip up a batch of smooth, custard-like Vanilla-Hemp Crème Anglaise, which is made with just two simple steps:

1| Add the ingredients (i.e., coconut milk, Hemp Hearts, pure maple syrup, coconut oil, fresh lemon juice, arrowroot starch, and sea salt) to a high-speed blender, and blend until smooth. Add a generous scrape of fresh vanilla bean seeds and pulse to weave them throughout the sweet mixture. Note: the bottom right photo in the collage above is what the sauce looks like prior to thickening.

2| Heat the sauce over medium-low heat and whisk constantly for 3 to 5 minutes or until it thickens into a luxuriously thick yet silky and pourable sauce.

Invert the bundt cake on a serving plate or cake stand, slice it, and serve each slice with a drizzle of that sweet sauce. Or go the carefree route by pouring heaping spoonfuls of the sauce onto the cake prior to slicing...

I hope you enjoy this sweet and brunch-y treat as much as I do. Sending lots of love and gratitude to those of you who are mothers and to the mom/s in your life. ♥

And before I leave you with this special recipe, I want to point you in the direction of another special something: Manitoba Harvest's annual Mom Love Contest where you can enter to win a variety of goodies for you and your mom by sharing a little mom love.

On a somewhat related note and in an effort to be completely transparent, you might have noticed that I've been partnering with Manitoba Harvest for seasonal posts over the last year and a half. Their Hemp Hearts were the first product I fell in love with when I was transitioning to a vegan lifestyle and there's rarely been a day since early 2014 that I haven't had a bag tucked away in my fridge. From dressings to smoothies to soups to vegan cheese pizza, hemp seeds are one of the most versatile ingredients I've come across, and MH's have the best flavor and texture of any kind I've tried. So in an act of love (and maybe a bit of obsession), I approached them about working together in September of 2014 and to my surprise, they took me up on it.

I didn't originally plan to share this brief backstory but felt compelled to add it as I was editing. I think it's because I want you to know that (minus one exception/lapse in judgment that I still feel icky about), I have only and will only recommend goodies that I use regularly myself and that align with my values and that's the bottom line. No dollar amount or bag o' swag is ever worth compromising trust, integrity, etc. I could go on and on about this (and the opportunities I've politely declined/refused -- for instance, a mention of a brand of men's underwear, a review of a cookbook spin on fifty shades of grey...). For now, I'll end the chatter here, but maybe it will resurface in a post somewhere down the line, because it's a conversation worth having/delving into a bit more.

Alright, enough rambling, time for dreamy breakfast cake.

📖 Recipe

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4.67 from 3 votes

Vegan Blueberry Bread Pudding Breakfast Cake with Vanilla-Hemp Crème Anglaise

Gooey blueberry bread pudding is tucked into a bundt pan and baked to golden perfection. The warm bread pudding is served with a plant-based vanilla-hemp anglaise sauce that takes this brunch treat from delightful to dreamy.

Course Breakfast, Brunch, Cake

Cuisine plant-based, Vegan

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 55 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 25 minutes minutes

Servings 8 servings

Ingredients

Blueberry Bread Pudding Breakfast Cake

• 6 cups cubed sprouted or gluten-free fresh sandwich bread (8-10 slices cut into 1-inch cubes)
• ¾ cup unsweetened almond milk or other unsweetened plant-based milk, at room temperature
• ¾ cup full-fat coconut milk, can shaken or mixed well before measuring
• ½ cup , at room temperaturepure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil, melted, plus more for greasing
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 1 cup fresh blueberries or thawed frozen blueberries, juices strained off (about 8 ounces before thawing)*

Vanilla-Hemp Creme Anglaise

• ½ cup full-fat coconut milk, can shaken or mixed well before measuring, plus more if needed
• ¼ cup Manitoba Harvest Hemp Hearts
• 3 ½ tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil, melted
• 1 to 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (I use 2 teaspoons for a subtle but tangy brightness)
• 1 teaspoon arrowroot starch
• ¼ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and seeds scraped/collected or ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Optional Toppings

• Fresh berries
• Fresh mint

Instructions

For the Blueberry Bread Pudding Breakfast Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350F. Generously grease a small, 8-inch (i.e., 6-cup) bundt pan with coconut oil, and fill a large casserole dish with 1 inch of water; set aside.
• Add the bread cubes to a large mixing bowl. Add the unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, vanilla, cinnamon (if using), and sea salt to a high-speed blender; blend on high for one minute or until smooth. Pour the mixture over the bread cubes and toss to coat. Let the bread mixture stand for 15 minutes to soak, stirring every few minutes to ensure each bit of bread has access to that sweet, creamy liquid. (Note: the bread cubes will mush and break down a bit as they soak, and that's exactly what you want).
• Scoop half of the bread pudding mixture into the bundt pan and smooth out the surface. Ensure that the any excess juices are strained off the blueberries; then, spoon them evenly over the bread mixture. Gently spoon the remaining bread pudding mixture over the layer of blueberries, and use the back of a spoon to compact and smooth the top layer.
• Place the filled bundt pan, open-side-up, in the casserole dish with the water. Transfer to the middle rack of the oven and bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until the top of the bread pudding is deep golden-brown, it feels well set but slightly springy and custardy, and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
• Remove from the oven and transfer the bundt pan to an oven-safe cooling rack. Let the cake cool for at least 15 minutes. Then, wearing oven mitts, grasp the bundt pan and gently shake it back and forth to loosen the cake from the walls of the pan. Place a cake platter or large dinner plate, face-side-down, over the bundt pan and flip to invert the cake. Carefully lift the bundt pan off of the bread pudding cake, and allow it to cool for another 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

For the Vanilla-Hemp Creme Anglaise

• While the bread pudding cake is baking, add the coconut milk, Hemp Hearts, maple syrup, coconut oil, lemon juice, arrowroot, and sea salt to a high-speed blender. Blend on high for 3 minutes or until completely smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides if needed. Add the scraped vanilla bean seeds or vanilla, and blend for another 10 seconds to disperse the seeds throughout the sauce.
• Pour the mixture into a medium saucepan and heat over medium-low for 5 minutes or until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, whisking constantly. Do not overheat. Serve warm. For leftovers: transfer the sauce to an airtight jar and refrigerate. If the sauce is to thick after refrigerating, reheat over low heat and whisk in more coconut milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, as needed to thin.

To Assemble

• Slice and plate the bundt cake. Generously drizzle each piece with Vanilla-Hemp Creme Anglaise and top with fresh berries and mint (if using). Serve warm.

Notes

*I used thawed frozen blueberries.