Easy Bread and Butter pudding

A Love food hate waste campaign inspired me to enter a competition to find the best recipes for using stale bread. I turned to my mum for help with this and it turns out we have a recipe heirloom. Here’s our story, and the all important recipe…

Back in the 1950’s my Mum’s Aunt Doll lived in Bedworth on the outskirts of Coventry and owned a café on the High Street with her fireman husband George. Food and money was tight so women were creative when it came to using up all the food in the house and even more so in Aunt Doll’s café where she’d cook for her customers.

Bread and Butter pudding was widespread but this is Aunt Doll’s that has been passed down our family, finding its way to me. She didn’t weigh anything out though, she just threw it all together like the pros those women of post WWII were.

Her recipe for Bread and Butter pudding has for generations been a winner, and arguably far better than the layered methods that people tend to use these days. And it’s easier too.

So here you go, and it’s my entry for the competition too. If you make Aunt Dots pudding please let me know, I’d love to see how you get on.

Ingredients

  • 1 loaf stale bread
  • 300ml milk
  • 3oz Light brown sugar
  • 2 beaten eggs
  • 3 and a half oz butter

4oz or a good handful of mixed fruit; apricots, raisins, currants, cherries, 2 apples (peeled, cored & diced), sultanas – almost anything works.

This is ours, ready for the oven:

Optional extra ingredients

  • 3 tbsp Soft dark brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp Jam – strawberry/plum
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp mixed spice
  • Splash of lemon juice

Method

  • Preheat oven to 190 C / Gas mark 5. Lightly grease an ovenproof dish.
  • Put the bread into your mixing bowl and add enough milk to make the bread soft – without making it soggy (300ml)
  • Add butter and sugar and any optional extras.
  • Slowly add the beaten eggs and mix until smooth.
  • Add in the fruit pieces and mix with a wooden spoon. Save some fruit for the end.
  • Pour the mixture into your ovenproof dish and sprinkle the saved pieces of fruit on top along with a sprinkling of brown sugar.
  • Finally bake in the oven for 35 to 45 minutes, until the pudding is set and browned.

Serve with custard, cream or ice cream. Yum.