Bread and Butter Pudding

So a little while ago my husband and I were going to go on a diet. It devolved quickly into a promise from me that I would stop baking cakes for awhile. Technically, this is not breaking the deal, because it’s a pudding, not a cake.




For the flavored butter:
100g/3.5oz unsalted butter
large pinch of ground nutmeg
large pinch of ground cinnamon
zest of 1 large orange


8 x 1cm/1/2inch slices of bread
9 large eggs
140g/5oz sugar
500ml/ 17.5oz whole milk
565ml/ 1 pint double cream
1 vanilla pod scored lengthwise and seeds removed
4tbsp good quality fine-cut marmalade

preheat to 180c/350f

Mix together the butter ingredients, and use some of the flavored butter to grease your baking dish. Use the rest to butter each slice of bread, and then put the slices into the buttered dish
Separate the eggs using all nine yolks, but only one white, and whisk that with the sugar. Gently heat the milk and cream with the vanilla pod and seeds, and then pour into the eggs, stirring all the time. Remove the vanilla pod and pour the mixture into the bread leaving to soak for 20 min.
Put your baking dish into a roasting tray and pour enough boiling water into the tray to come halfway up the baking dish. Bake for 45 min until the custard has just set. Meanwhile, gently warm the marmalade in a saucepan. Remove the dish from the oven, and brush the warm marmalade over the top, then return to the oven for 5 or 10 min. Allow it to cool some, so the custard can set.

I had a bad day yesterday, and I decided that I needed a dessert. I also decided that if I was going to abandon the last vestiges of the concept of dieting, it was going to be for something special. I turned to Jamie Oliver, as I do in times like these…

I forgot to get a vanilla pod, but I had some vanilla sugar, so I used about a quarter or a third vanilla sugar, with the plain sugar. It worked nicely. I also used a pan that was slightly too small. I had to get rid of some of the custard mixture that just wouldn’t fit. Luckily, over the coarse of the 20 minutes of soaking, the bread absorbed enough that I could pour a little more in every few minutes. You want a pan small enough that the tops will stick up and out, but it has to be big enough to accommodate around two pints of liquid.

This was soooo good! It had all the consistencies that you want in your dessert. There is the silky custard all around the bread, there is the smushy part of the bread that is all warm and soaked with custard, and then the crusts are all crispy and chewy from the marmalade. Totally satisfying, I forgot my whole bad day.