Diet Killers: Recipes for Readers and Writers – Bread Pudding with Chocolate and Ginger

 

Welcome back to Diet Killers. This month is a special edition because it’s more about writing than reading. But without writers, there can’t be readers, so maybe I have everyone covered. My subject is something I like to do while writing and cooking—rustle around in my kitchen or computer files to see what I have on hand, shop for any of the essentials I don’t have, and along the way add a bit of this, a dab of that, and maybe a touch of something unexpected. In other words, I tinker.

For example, when I started work on All Shell Breaks Loose, book 3 in my Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, I went to my writing cupboard. It’s really a computer file labeled “compost” but that doesn’t sound as appetizing as “cupboard.” Inside I found three fun items. The first is an article I saved in 2008 about a haunted sword for sale in Texas. The article debunks the idea that the sword in question is actually haunted (no big surprise) but it includes a picture of a tiny, frazzled-looking older woman holding up an immense sword. She apparently wanted to sell the thing because its aura upset the members of her knitting circle. I love that article and a supposedly haunted sword is now the main ingredient in All Shell Breaks Loose.

The second ingredient from my writing cupboard is information about mudlarking gleaned from several sources over a number of years. Here’s an article on mudlarking from the London Museum. According to the article: “In the 18th and 19th centuries, poor Londoners sold scraps they found on the foreshore to earn any money they could. They became known as mudlarks.” Today mudlarking is a hobby, one I could see enjoying. When we were kids, my brothers and I found cool stuff washed up along our shore on Washington Island in Lake Michigan. Each piece of flotsam and jetsam told its own story—or gave us the chance to make up our own. Mudlarking appears like a dash of nutmeg in All Shell Breaks Loose.

The third ingredient in the cupboard is a snippet of conversation with a friend that I wrote down ten or twelve years ago. My friend hadn’t been able to get her doctor to take her hip pain seriously. Her husband told her that was because she didn’t tell the doctor the right story well enough. She went back to the doctor and told him, in graphic detail, how that hip felt and how that pain affected and diminished every part of her life. Telling the right story well enough is an important ingredient for solving the crime in All Shell Breaks Loose. (I won’t leave you in suspense over the outcome of my friend’s revised hip story—the doctor ordered an MRI, saw that her hip joint was in the process of disintegrating, she got the replacement, and today she walks, hikes, and plays with her grandchildren like a champ.)

While writing All Shell Breaks Loose, I picked up a few more ingredients about the history of Ocracoke Island where the book takes place. These tidbits add bright notes and depth to the story. There’s Loop Shack Hill, a relic from World War Two. There are also the Navy Beach Jumpers memorial and the Beach Jumpers’ motto: “Turbo Vestri Hostilis.” Translated from the Latin, the motto reads “a whirlwind to your enemy” and it's an excellent example of serendipity. It fits into the story perfectly.

Chocolate chips and crystalized ginger fit into this month’s recipe perfectly, too. Bread pudding is a dish made for tinkering. If you don’t like chocolate, add raisins or another dried fruit. Toss in some nuts. Add a bit of pumpkin to the milk mixture. Make a boozy bourbon sauce to pour over your pudding. Or leave out the extras and stick to a great, tried-and-true comfort food dessert. 

Bread Pudding with Chocolate and Ginger

Ingredients:

1/2 cup chocolate chips (semisweet or darker)

1/4 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

4-6 slices old bread or leftover rolls or buns. If using rolls or buns, slice them horizontally into pieces 1/2 inch thick. You want enough bread to make 2 layers in an 8” x 8” x 2” baking dish. White bread is fine, whole wheat is great, rye a little strange. If you don’t have old bread, lightly toast fresh bread.

2 cups milk (dry nonfat, 2%, whole, or half-and-half – however indulgent you feel)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

Butter – enough to spread on one side of each piece of bread

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Butter one side of each piece of bread. Put half the bread, buttered side up, in a greased 8” x 8” x 2” baking dish. Sprinkle half the chocolate chips over the bread. Top with the rest of the bread, buttered side up. Sprinkle with the remaining chocolate chips and the chopped ginger.

Heat the milk and sugar until just steaming. Stir in the vanilla.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, then gradually whisk them into the milk. Pour this mixture over the bread.

Bake, uncovered 30-40 minutes, or until the top is beginning to brown and a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

Serve warm, cold, or reheated.

All Shell Breaks Loose comes out June 30, 2026 and is available for pre-order now. 

Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.