About Me

Welcome to my recipe blog. I'm not a trained chef but then that's  not stopped Heston Blumenthal making something of a name for himself. I don't claim to be in his league though and I'm certainly not obsessed with the chemistry of cooking in the way he appears to be. I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years now so all the recipes on this site will be suitable for vegetarians. I can't guarantee that they'll be suitable for vegans for the simple reason that I discovered, when I went vegetarian, that I just couldn't hack the vegan diet. It's probably about time I tried again though as there are almost certainly vegan cheeses around these days which taste better than the plastic they're wrapped in, for example. This wasn't the case back in the late 1980's when I tried them.

Bread and Butter Pudding

My first recipe takes me back to my childhood in that it's one Mum used to make to use up any bread that was going a bit stale:

This recipe is based on my memory of Mum's bread and butter pudding but she never taught me to make it and I've never seen her recipe so I think it's only fair that I take full blame for this version. Note the lack of quantities for anything but the custard. This is because I just add slices of bread and handfuls of fruit as required. If it comes to that, I suppose one could even use fruit other than currants, raisins and sultanas although I've never tried.

Serves:               8
Prepare:            20 mins
Cook:                 60 mins

Ingredients:

                          2        eggs, beaten
                          50g    butter, melted
                          2 tbs  vanilla extract
                          1 pt    milk
                          4 tbs  caster sugar
                                     bread
                                     currants
                                     sultanas
                                     raisins
                                     demerara sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 C / Gas mark 3. Lightly grease a 23x33cm dish.

In a large bowl, stir together the eggs, butter, vanilla and milk.
Gradually add the sugar and mix thoroughly until the sugar is dissolved.

Place a layer of bread slices in the bottom of the prepared dish.
Cover with a thin layer of currants, raisins and sultanas.
Pour the liquid over the bread, fully saturating all the bread.
Add another layer of bread followed by another layer of fruit.
Continue in this way, adding the liquid to soak the bread as you go until the dish is nearly full.

Top off with a layer of bread and sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top.

Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes, until golden.