This is the recipe I’ve been looking for. It’s my mother’s recipe, and she’s been gone for a long time. Sister Penny dug into her recipe box, and produced an index card Sister Jackie claims is in her hand. Regardless, here’s the recipe:
Butter a 2 quart baking dish. Preheat oven to 350F.
6 slices bread
3 C hot milk
1 ounce baking chocolate [1]
2 eggs
2/3 C sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2 t vanilla
Break small pieces of bread into a large bowl.
Heat the milk to almost a scald, add chocolate and stirring occasionally until the chocolate melts completely.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and salt.
Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Add the vanilla and pour the mixture over the bread.
Mix well and allow the bread to soak up the liquid for ten minutes.
Pour the bread mixture into the buttered dish, and dot with butter.
Bake at 350F for about 40 minutes.
While that’s baking, go buy some ice cream…
[1] My Mom’s recipe calls for “2 sq” of chocolate. I remember (I actually do) that Mom always used Hershey chocolate. I looked for Hershey baking chocolate locally, searched for it on line, and could not even find it on Amazon. I emailed Hershey customer support for guidance, and indeed, Hershey no longer make unsweetened baking chocolate. Hershey’s lovely rep Althea informed me that a square of their chocolate was one-half ounce, which is how I derived the one ounce of chocolate. Prior to contacting Hershey, I ran a test batch at double this chocolate level, and, unbelievably, it was too much chocolate, though I could have offset that with more sugar, I suppose.
