Old fashioned bread pudding

Ingredients

Having been somewhat exuberant lately with my sourdough bread making, I had rather a lot left over this week. Numerous odd bread ends also languished in the freezer and so I decided in a flash of inspiration to make my mother’s favourite recipe for bread pudding.

It’s been ages since I made this and it’s good sometimes to revisit old ‘classics’.  The recipe, or indeed the look, may not readily appeal to today’s sophisticated palates but this was a staple of British home cooking in years past – leftovers then were always reinvented and used another day.  And now, when I remember to make it, it is still eagerly consumed by my family either warm with custard or I think, better still, sliced when completely cold and consumed with a large cup of tea or coffee.

Cooled and sliced

My lighter version recipe – I don’t know where it originated – uses butter instead of lard together with mostly store-cupboard ingredients. 

225g bread – it doesn’t matter whether this is brown or white but cut off the crusts

275ml milk

50g butter (melted)

75g soft brown sugar – if you don’t have any brown, you can use white caster sugar

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 egg, beaten

175g mixed dried fruit

Grated rind of an orange

Freshly grated nutmeg

A small quantity of granulated sugar for sprinkling over when out of the oven

Preheat oven to 180c – gas mark 4

Butter a 2pt baking dish

Cube the bread and place into a bowl. Pour over the milk, then give the mixture a thorough stir and leave for about 30 minutes so that the bread becomes well soaked.

Now add the melted butter, the sugar, mixed spice and beaten egg. Beat the mixture until it is virtually lump free, then stir in the mixed fruit and orange rind.

Next spread the mixture into the prepared dish and sprinkle over the nutmeg.

Bake in a pre-heated oven for about 1 ¼ hours.

Once out of the oven, sprinkle over some granulated sugar. Enjoy!