Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Bread & butter pudding

When it's June in Australia, it's warm pudding time again! And a great way to use up stale bread is in a bread and butter pudding. I like this particular recipe because it makes a warm custard you pour over the bread, and it even has a custard flavour once baked. Simple yet delicious!


INGREDIENTS:

6 or more silces white bread
50g softened butter
1 cup sultanas
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

~ custard ~
2 1/2 cups milk
1 cup cream
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
4 medium to large eggs



I like to keep my crusts on, but feel free to remove them if you prefer. Then spread butter on each slice and cut into quartered triangles Place a layer of bread (butter side down) in a large rectangular dish. Sprinkle all the sultanas and then add another layer of bread as above.

Set aside and then make your custard by combining all but the eggs, into a medium saucepan. Bring to the boil but do not allow to boil - remove from heat as soon as it does. Now whisk your eggs in a large bowl, and gradually add hot mixture to the eggs. Because this process requires constant whisking, I like to wrangle a helper to do the pouring for me. Or use a mechanical mixer.

Once custard is made, pour the warm mixture over the bread and sprinkle with nutmeg.

To cook the pudding, requires a water bath which can be made by placing the pudding dish inside a larger one, and gradually adding boiling water to it, until it comes halfway up the sides of the pudding dish.

Bake about 45-50 minutes at 160 degrees celcius in a fan-forced oven (180 conventional). Be sure to remove pudding from the water bath - take care not to burn yourself and let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Very yummilliscious! Tastes great cold too.

By the way, the picture above was taken after we ate half the pudding between the three of us.