Bread Pudding

I go through phases of thinking I don’t have a certain spice and buying it when I do my shopping four weeks in a row. This means I then have a glut of a particular spice and think of ways to use it. Smoked paprika is currently in abundance and once I managed to use cumin seeds (mainly toasted and then ground down) in every meal for two weeks. I don’t seem to do this for dried herbs as I’m always scrabbling about and using thyme instead of oregano or something else.  

As it’s coming up to Christmas I decided to check what spices I had to aid me in Christmas style baking. Along with the usual – cinnamon, ginger – I discovered that I had two unopened refill packets of mixed spice and a small glass jar of it. I have no idea when I bought these but mixed spice just smells instantly of Christmas to me so I looked into how I could use it. A recipe that calls for tablespoons of spice and not ½ teaspoons. I wasn’t doing well until I remembered I was seeing a friend soon and that she likes bread pudding. I’ve never made it before but looking at recipes I soon discovered a lot of mixed spice was needed. I did a mini trial run last weekend and then went for it last night. 

This tastes good to me but I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten it before! However the test batch went down well at work (although what doesn’t?!) and I’m sure this is what other pictures of it looks like. It’s a good way to use up excess bread you may have and can make use of any dried fruit you have lying around. It’s basically making a bit of a custard style gloop using squished up bread. And if that doesn’t tempt you …. 

Ingredients

500g bread (I used white but I’ve been assured wholemeal will do)

500g dried fruit (sultanas and raisins went in mine but I guess anything dried would do – maybe not apple and pineapple but cranberries, apricots)

75g mixed peel (I know people can be funny about this but you need it)

2 tbsp mixed spice

Good grating of nutmeg (and I mean a good one)

600ml milk

3 large eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture)

Zest of a lemon (optional)

120g melted butter 

1.    Bread the bread up into pieces and put into a bowl. Add the fruit, peel and spices. Then pour in the milk and get your hand in there. Squish up the bread so it absorbs the milk and makes a batter that takes in the fruit. This doesn’t look attractive but is good fun.

2.    Add the eggs, sugar and zest, stir and leave for 15 minutes.

3.    Preheat the oven the GM4/180°C and line a large tray. Mine was about 35cm x 20cm. You could use something smaller, the final result will just be deeper.

4.    Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir well. Pour into the tin (you can sprinkle with sugar to form a crust if you like) and bake for 1 ½ hours. Check it’s done but it’s meant to be stodgy so don’t worry too much about it.

5.    You can either serve warm with custard or cream, or wait until its cold and cut into chunks.

N.B. Now having 500g of stale/left over bread is quite a lot. This recipe will happily be adapted for the weight of bread you have. I did a trial run with 160g of bread and just did about a third of everything. It worked. Bake for about 40 minutes and check.