Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding Is Peak Fall Baking

Adriana Chavez

Sat, September 20, 2025 at 11:45 AM UTC

4 min read

Nora Ephron's novel Heartburn features a bread pudding recipe described as "the best bread pudding" that is unpretentious and easy to make, perfect for autumn.
Making Nora Ephron's bread pudding results in a dessert with a crispy caramelized top and creamy vanilla flavor, complemented by a boozy hard sauce for a more complex taste.

Few filmmakers have defined the romantic comedy genre like Nora Ephron . Decades after their release, many Ephron classics are still tightly woven into pop culture. For some (myself included!), revisiting When Harry Met Sally and other classics in the Ephron film canon has become a fall tradition, kicking off the moment the first leaf hits the ground.

"Nora Ephron fall" is a real thing. Her films romanticize the season with chunky knit sweaters, bookstores and lush shots of fallen leaves in Central Park. "Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address," Tom Hanks' character Joe Fox says in You've Got Mail .

In addition to writing and directing iconic film s—When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia— Nora Ephron also wrote books. Inspired by Ephron's real life, her novel Heartburn centers around a woman who finds out her husband is having an affair while she's pregnant. (Side note: Heartburn was also adapted into a film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Ever heard of 'em?)

The book is packed with plenty of witty dialogue, of course, but it also has recipes, including one for bread pudding . The cozy dessert is perfect for autumn, so I knew it was a must-make for Nora Ephron fall. Would it be a smash hit or a total dud? Here's what happened when I made the recipe in my kitchen.

Get the recipe: Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding

What's So Great About Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding?

In Heartburn, Nora describes the recipe as "the best bread pudding" and writes that "it tastes like caramelized mush." That description might not appeal to everyone, but it sounded delicious to me. The dessert is unpretentious and takes minutes to prep, two more things to recommend the recipe. "Any bread will do, the worse, the better," Nora writes in the book. She instructs to serve the dessert warm with hard sauce, a creamy sauce made with butter, sugar and liquor.

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Ingredients You Need to Make Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding

To make Nora Ephron's bread pudding, you'll need sugar, butter, milk, evaporated milk, nutmeg and a loaf of bread. If you plan to make the hard sauce, you'll also need powdered sugar and rum, brandy, whiskey or sherry.

How to Make Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding

Nora Ephron's bread pudding comes together with simple pantry staples. Start by beating together sugar and butter until smooth, then stir in both regular and evaporated milk along with warm spices, vanilla, torn bread and raisins. Mix everything together and pour the contents into a buttered baking dish. Bake at 350° for 2 hours until set, stirring halfway through for even texture. It's best enjoyed straight from the oven with a drizzle of hard sauce on top.

Nora doesn't give a recipe for hard sauce, so I used one from The Pioneer Woman . It takes only five minutes to prepare, made by combining softened butter, powdered sugar and whiskey.

My Honest Review of Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding

Let's just say the unbaked bread pudding looked…less than appealing. The recipe also uses a lot of nutmeg. All of that said, I trusted the process and pressed on. I'm happy to report that in the end, everything came together. I loved the crispy caramelized top and creamy vanilla-flavored milk. It's the type of dessert I imagine Kathleen Kelly serving at her Christmas party in You've Got Mail (cue Greg Kinnear's character singing, "The horn, the horn, it sounds so forlorn." )

Because the bread pudding is so simple, the booze in the hard sauce gave everything a more complex, mature taste, cutting the sweetness. I halved both the bread pudding and hard sauce recipes, using an 8x8 square pan for the pudding instead of a casserole dish. If you live in a smaller household like I do, this is a perfect way to enjoy a small batch of Nora's nosh.

My Tips for Making Nora Ephron's Bread Pudding

Use cinnamon or pumpkin spice instead of nutmeg to enhance the autumnal vibe.
Try topping the bread pudding with rum raisin ice cream as an alternative to hard sauce.
For a non-alcoholic option, use Greek yogurt or sour cream. The tartness of the dairy helps to cut the sweetness like the alcohol would.

This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the Food & Drink section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.