Bread and Butter Pudding...

I found a recipe for bread and butter pudding last year, in one of those cheap little magazines you find at Safeway. I had no idea what bread and butter pudding tasted like, but it looked delicious, so I decided to give it a go. That first one wasn't so good- the recipe was complicated, the cooking involved sitting the pudding in it's dish into a tray of water in the oven. If you see a recipe that involves that, I wouldn't even bother- the pudding top is much crisper when you don't do it, and it still cooks right through. It was also an extremely bland pudding, and while I know that was the only option during the depression and if you were poor back in the day, it really doesn't have to be that way anymore. So in that way, the first recipe did teach me a lesson- anything can go in a bread and butter pudding. It is the Irish Stew of puddings.

Knowing that, I started experimenting, and here is a recipe for one of the puddings I have made...

Step 1: Grease a casserole dish with butter.

Step 2: Cut the crusts off a lot of white bread, and spread with butter or margarine.

Step 3: Place some of the bread slices in the bottom of the casserole dish, and then sprinkle with brown sugar.

Step 4: At this point, you can begin adding whatever you want. Here I use ginger nut biscuits, crushed up, and in subsequent layers I also use crushed oreo biscuits and torn up croissant.

Step 5: Continue to layer the pudding- using a layer of bread, brown sugar, then the biscuits, fruit or other filling, then more bread and sugar, etc. Some suggestions for fillings other than what I have used here; sponge fingers dipped in coffe or coffee liquer, sponge cake, fruit bread or fruit cake, dried fruit, pieces of chocolate, various sweet biscuits, banana, hot chocolate powder or frozen berries. Anything you can think of will probably work, just make sure that any bread or cake can absorb a lot of the custard.

Step 6: In this layer I have torn up some croissant and put that over the brown sugar. Croissant is a French bread, made with heaps of butter, that is usually eaten for breakfast. I found mine at the local Woolworths, but you can also find them in most bakeries.

Step 7: On the last layer, to make it look pretty, cut the remaining slices of bread into triangle shapes, and layer them sticking out at an angle with whatever other bread or cake you have used. You can sprinkle sugar and cinnamon at this point as well, to make the bread come out of the oven a lovely brown colour. The cinnamon will also make the pudding aromatic.

Step 8: To make the custard, you will need 2 tablespoons of caster sugar,

600ml of thickened cream, and 2 eggs. You can add to this some liqueur, but it is best to use a milk based liqueur such as baileys, and use only a small amount as a large amount of alcohol can prevent the custard from setting properly.

Step 9: Whisk the ingredients together in a large jug. You may need more or less custard, depending on the size of your casserole dish, so make sure you have extra ingredients sitting nearby. Once you have whisked the custard, pour over the pudding, pressing the bread down as you do so to make sure it gets through all the layers. Be sure to wet all of the top layer with custard as well so that it doesn't dry out.

Step 10: Bake for 25-35 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Serve hot, with ice cream. 

Well, I hope you all enjoy your puddings! Remember, go crazy! This pudding format can accommodate for almost anything you throw at it.
helen xx