Banana Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

Unless you are on a low-carb diet, this dessert is completely guilt free!!
It is very soft, warm & flavorful. Success! It was my first bread pudding, and I pulled the recipe from one of my new fave cookbooks, Veganomicon. Now that I am confident in bread puddings and realize how simple they can be I will start trying out some of my own recipes, some savory, some sweet.
Veganomicon's Banana Choc Chip Bread Pudding
6c (1in cubed) stake bread (about 1 lb)
2 ¼ c rice/soy/almond milk
3 T arrowroot powder
½ c pure maple syrup
1t vanilla extract (I used ½ a fresh vanilla bean)
½ t ground cinnamon (I doubled it in my recipe)
¼ t ground nutmeg (doubled this too)
1 c chocolate chips
3 large, ripe bananas, sliced ½ in thick

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9x5 loaf pan. I couldn’t wait for stale bread, so I diced fresh bread, and baked it in the oven for 5 minutes. Perfection. Place bread in a large bowl.
In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2c milk with arrowroot powder until no lumps remain. Add the remaining milk, plus vanilla, cinnamon & nutmeg & whisk to combine. Pour this mixture over the bread & stir to coat every piece.
Allow the bread to sit for 15min to soak up the liquid. Add more liquid if necessary, it should look mushy and they should be a little bit of liquid in the bottom of the bowl.
Fold in the chocolate chips & bananas, mashing the bananas slightly. Pour the mixture into a loaf pan, patting down to make an even top. Bake 30-35minutes until top if puffed, slightly browned & feels firm.
No sugar, no dairy, no eggs.. just yummy yummy bread pudding. We ate this every night for a week.

Then I made this variation:

peanut butter chips instead of chocolate
and a row of homemade jam in the middle (homemade jam is the same recipe as the "berry topping" in my post for mini-vegan cheesecakes)
& I stuck to her original measurements of cinnamon & nutmeg.
(Adding more worked really well for the choco chip bread, but I didn’t think it would go over as well with the jam.)

So it is like a peanut butter & jelly banana bread pudding. I recommend eating the chocolate chip bread pudding warm, but I think this one is better cold. I gave some to friends of mine, and they thought it was very yummy. yay!