Bread and Butter Pudding Recipe

Posted by Darby on April 5, 2009 under Dessert, Orange Muscat |

This recipe is adapted from one provided by Maggie Beer in her wonderful ‘Cook and the Chef’ TV show.
Maggie’s recipe used prunes and candied grapefruit, but I rather like the the combination of marmalade and the apricots. You can flavour your custard with a vanilla bean, but I usually don’t bother, but I like to serve my pudding with a good vanilla ice cream.

Panettone is a rich festive bread made from flour, yeast, butter, eggs, dried raisins and candied lemon and orange peel. It originates from Northern Italy, particularly around Milan. It is available in supermarkets and Italian delicatessens, especially in the months leading up to Christmas. If you can’t find some and haven’t got time to make your own, then you could use raisin bread.

Ingredients

• 60 g melted butter
• 2 Tablespoons of good orange marmalade
• 4 x 1 cm thick slices Panettone, or raisin bread
• 100 g dried apricots, chopped
• 300 ml milk
• 300 ml cream
• 4 eggs
• 125 g castor sugar – add more if you’re not using a sweet bread

 

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Remove the crusts from the panettone, butter it and then grill it on both sides in a griddle pan until golden. Butter a 22 cm ovenproof dish and arrange the slices of panettone over the base. Spread with marmalade. And sprinkle with the apricots. You might do a couple of layers of panettone or overlap them to fit in the pan.

Bring the milk and cream to a simmer in a saucepan. In a separate larger bowl mix the eggs and castor sugar. Stir the hot milk and cream into the egg mixture, and then pour this carefully over the bread. Stand the dish in a water bath, making sure the hot water is ¾ of the way up the sides. Bake for about 25-30 minutes until set; allow to cool a little before serving so that the custard can finish setting.

Alternatively, you could cook without a water bath at 160 C for 45 minutes, after firstly letting the pudding mixture stand for ten minutes so the custard can set.

Serve with cream or good vanilla ice cream.

Wine Suggestion

This dish would go well any dessert wine, but I think it is ideally suited to chilled dry Orange Muscat wine.