Bread and butter pudding

This recipe used to be the way to use up stale bread so it didn’t go to waste.  Sometimes it was dressed up for a special occasion with raspberry jam and a meringue topping and called “Queen pudding.”

Ingredients

4 slices of stale bread (preferably toast sliced)
2 cups milk 
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla essence

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
2. Cut the bread into 2cm squares and put into an ovenproof dish
3. Beat the egg and mix in the milk  – this forms the custard
4. Pour the custard over the bread
5. Allow to stand for 10 minutes so the custard soaks into the bread
6. Put the dish into the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the custard is set.

Serves 4-6

 Variations

1. Add ½ cup sultanas to the custard mixture before pouring it over the bread.

Queen Pudding

Use the recipe above with the following changes:

Additional ingredients

2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons raspberry jam  
2 egg whites
¼ cup sugar

Method

1. Separate the egg yolks and whites
2. Beat the egg yolks and milk and proceed as for bread and butter pudding
3. Spread the raspberry jam gently over the cooked pudding
4. Beat the egg whites until foamy
5. Add the sugar and beat until peaks form – this is the meringue
6. Pile this meringue mixture on to the pudding and bake for a further 10 minutes at 190°C