Holiday Desserts Using Up Leftover Pumpkin Puree and Cranberries

Whenever I ask my husband to pick up ingredients at the market, he almost certainly will bring home two of everything or EXTRA large portions.  I'm always challenged to make something from the leftovers and so I spend hours pouring over recipes and tweaking them.  The top photo shows a tart that was supposed to be made from sweet potato puree but I decided to use the pumpkin puree leftover from the LARGE can of pumpkin that hubby got for our traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.  (The leftover puree can be stored in the refrigerator until you are ready to repurpose it.)  We decided that this tart tastes better than our regular delicious pumpkin pie because it has a tasty, easy-to-make graham cracker crust and mini marshmallows melted on top.

 I had half a GIGANTIC bag of fresh cranberries leftover from our Thanksgiving feast so I decided to add some of them to my usual chocolate bread pudding.  It made a delicious bread pudding into a WINNER dessert! I don't have a regular recipe but I just do a ratio of eggs to milk to panettone bread to produce how much I want to make.  I can tell you the basics though if you want to try to make your own bread pudding creation....just send me a comment with your email address and I'll email you the simple directions.  Also if you want the recipe that I started with for the pumpkin tart; you can ask for it too.  Well, Happy Holiday eating (of repurposed leftover ingredients)!