Bread & butter pudding

Since the oven has had a new lease of life, I have made using it a priority ( just so we get our $80 worth). Tonight I am making bread & butter pudding to use up some left-over bread... and to feed the boys!

The recipe is simple.

Grease a baking dish, butter some bread, spread with jam (strawberry is the go tonight), cut the crusts off( feed them to Gloria & the choox)& put in dish jam side up. I use whatever bread is available. Tonight's pudding is a mix of white & raisin toast.

Next make up a mix of eggs & milk. Here is where you learn to live dangerously. The theory is one egg will set one cup of milk... so... I use 3 eggs and 3 cups of milk. You can be extravagant and use a mix of milk & cream or just plain milk, both work.

You will need approximately half a cup of sugar, depending on taste preferences of course, and vanilla. Now here is where you mustn't skimp. Use vanilla extract or vanilla beans but NEVER use imitation vanilla. I put in about a half teaspoon ( well actually I just pour what looks like the right amount in).
 Beat this together and gently pour over the bread in the dish. Slow steady pouring is best, we want the bread to soak up the mix.

Now leave it for 30 mins, go away and do something else. Check the mix every now and then ( like you know what you are doing) and press the bread down a little with the back of a spoon to make sure every little bit of custard mixture is soaked in.

For tonight's one I realised the bread was a little dry so I went back and mixed another egg with... that's right one cup of milk... and poured it in.

I have just checked it and time is up & it is in the oven, which by the way has a beautiful new element and is set at 350 deg F or 180 deg Celsius ( while the oven has a new element it is still an OLD thing so we cook in Farenheit). It needs to bake for about 50-55mins and then rest for 15 mins before you attempt to eat it... so we will be eating dessert quite late tonight.

If I was organised enough I would have taken a photo but you will just have to imagine what it is like. The idea is to be creative, not to copy my recipe but make your own. This is one of the most forgiving desserts to make, everyone will be impressed, serve it with vanilla ice-cream and cream and repent later in the week for all the kilojoules! It tastes great the next day too.

If this kind of free-fall cooking still scares you, ask Aunty Google for a recipe, she has millions to share. Some will tell you to put the baking dish in a waterbath but I never have and the pudding is always delicious.

much love
mammabeck

Four months without an oven...

My oven element died at the most inopportune time... had just finished getting ready for Miss Izzy's birthday party (4 y.o. granddaughter) and was going to cook some pizzas for the kids while the adults cooked their own in the wood-fired oven, when the element decided to call it a day, pack up it's toys & go home!

To replace it would have been a simple thing but I desired a shiny new replacement oven so hatched a plan to purchase a bigger better oven( I do a lot of baking so could convince myself that I needed one). The only problem was that it would require a total kitchen makeover to fit the new oven in... oh well... 4 months later we replaced the element and I have been baking ever since. The shiny new oven will come, one day...