H&M military jacket, Forever21 creme lace skirt, Steve Madden Raven booties, Michael Kors watch

Mixing my two favorite current trends – Military & Lace. I’ve had this skirt for years but when I bought this H&M jacket at the Beverly Center a few weeks ago, I instantly knew I wanted to pair them together and found myself digging this skirt out of the deep dark abyss of my closet to satisfy my “fashion vision” lol. The booties were an awesome find from Nordstrom Rack by the Beverly Center from the same trip. Thanksgiving was just the perfect excuse to wear the outfit I’d envisioned ;p

Since my husband and I first met, we’ve spent every Thanksgiving at his sister’s in-laws. It’s guaranteed to be fun-filled and stomach filling. The food is usually a delicious mix of American Thanksgiving favorites and Filipino feast staples. This year I decided to make something to bring instead of buying =) …a week or so ago, I was craving bread pudding, found a few recipes and decided to give it a whirl. Normally when a recipe says anything complicated, like in this case – an oven water bath, I’ll steer clear of it but since I was having such a major craving, I went for it. It was unbelievably successful so I wanted to make it for Thanksgiving as well. I’m hoping it was as good as the first time I tried it and judging by the almost empty Pyrex casserole we took home after, I’d say it was! Recipe below… enjoy <3

An's Homemade Bread Pudding

Bread Pudding Ingredients

• Loaf of bread (French/Italian etc)
• 3 cups milk
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Tear apart your bread – I like to slice off the crust but it all depends on how tough/hard yours is. Place the bread chunks into an oven safe casserole (8×8 worked well for me). Wisk together the milk, sugar, salt, eggs, vanilla & cinnamon. Drizzle the melted butter over the bread pieces (I put the butter into a ramekin and microwaved it for 30 seconds to melt it) and then pour your mixture over the bread making sure to get everything drenched and soaked in it. You can flip pieces of bread over with tongs to make sure everything is covered. Put the casserole platter into a deep baking sheet and place it on the center rack. For the water bath, pour a cup or two of water into the baking sheet outside of the casserole but not too high up the baking sheet sides or else you’ll spend most of the baking time listening to water sizzle as it boils over; I did this, not fun and more scary than anything else. Bake for 50 minutes. Remove the casserole from the oven and place on a cooling rack to cool. You can leave the baking sheet filled with water in the oven so it all cools and makes removing easier later. Don’t burn yourself with that hot water! Some online recipes say the bread pudding will be fine without the water bath but I didn’t want to take any chances.

Bread Pudding Sauce Ingredients

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

While the bread pudding cools; combine all the sauce ingredients in a saucepan. Stir while bringing it to a boil, reduce the heat to low and continue stirring for about 3 minutes more. Drizzle over your warm bread pudding and serve!