Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.
~Ernestine Ulmer
Bread and Butter Pudding is such an old fashioned classic dessert! Those little crunchy brown bits on top followed by custard soaked soft bread, so soft and yummy...I love every bite of it.
Traditionally, bread and butter pudding has always been made using day old plain breads like sandwich loaf, Victorian Milk Bread, Baguette etc. But in the modern times, people have started experimenting with rich and flavored breads like Panettone, Brioche, Cinnamon and Raisin Bread (I can't imagine how wonderful that would taste). You can make this dessert with any bread really, I'm sure it would taste fantastic!
When I had made the Chocolate and Prune Bread for the Twelve Loaves challenge a couple of weeks back, there were some left over slices that I had frozen to be used for this pudding later. Since I never let go of an opportunity to bake with chocolate and I was anyways planning to make a chocolate based bread and butter pudding, I thought using this bread for such a classic dessert would be a perfect treat. And indeed it was!
The dark chocolate bits and slightly sour prunes combined with the eggy sweet custard...absolutely DELICIOUS!
Adapted slightly from Bread by Ursula Ferrigno and Eric Treuille
Serves Four
Ingredients
8 slices of Dark Chocolate and Prune Bread
30 grams / 1 ounce soft unsalted butter plus extra to grease the baking dish
zest of 1 orange
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 large eggs beaten at room temperature
100 grams / 3.5 ounces caster or superfine sugar, divided
500 ml / 17fl ounces / 2 cups milk
125 ml / 3.5fl ounces heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Icing sugar to dust
Method
Grease a 1 litre (1+3/4 pint) baking dish with butter. Cut each slice of bread in half diagonally. Butter each slice and layer the buttered bread in the dish (I got three layers), sprinkling the cinnamon and orange zest between each layer. The top layer should be placed with the buttered side up.
Put the eggs and 75 grams / 2.5 ounces sugar in a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine the milk, cream and vanilla extract. Heat this milk mixture on medium heat until just boiling. Whisking continuously, pour this hot milk mixture into the eggs and sugar mixture to make a custard.
Pour this custard over the bread slices. Lightly press down the bread slices to completely submerge them in the custard.
Sprinkle the remaining 25 grams / 1 ounce caster sugar over the bread. Cover the dish with aluminium foil. Leave to soak for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220 degrees C / 425 degrees F.
Bake in the preheated oven covered for about 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake further for 20 to 25 minutes until the custard has just set and the bread slices have turned crispy brown around the edges.
Once warm, dust with icing sugar and serve! :)
Happy Baking!!!
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