The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (67 page)

250g staling white bread (you can also use brioche, panettone or any leftover bready thing), sliced

40g butter

If using alcohol, put it in a small pan with the raisins, bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat and allow to soak for a couple of hours. Otherwise, leave the fruit to soak in fruit juice.

To make the custard, put the milk and cream into a pan and bring to simmering point. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl and then gradually pour the milk mixture on to them, whisking all the time so that you don’t get scrambled egg. Set aside.

Butter the bread and cut it into triangles or squares. Arrange a layer of bread butter-side up in a buttered ovenproof dish. Sprinkle on some of the raisins with a little of the alcohol or juice and continue layering the ingredients in this way until you have about 3 layers. Pour over the custard and leave to sit for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Place the dish in a roasting tin containing enough boiling water to come half way up the sides of the dish, then bake for 30–40 minutes; it will be ready when crisp on top and slightly resilient (rather than sloppy) to the touch.

Marmalade
Spread this on the bread and butter before making up the dish.

Other dried fruits
Chopped dried apricots or mango are great substitutes for the raisins.

Nutella and pears
Spread the bread with butter and chocolate spread before making up the dish. Replace the raisins with peeled, cored and sliced pears.

Cold chocolate bread and butter pudding
This is an adaptation of a classic Delia Smith recipe. Use thick white bread slices and omit the raisins. Melt 150g dark chocolate and stir it into the custard. Continue as above and serve chilled.

The trick with this pudding is to pack it full of really juicy fruit and weight it heavily. Then be patient. Leave it for a good day so that the bread can suck up all those amazing juices as the weights pack it down tightly.

If you have a garden full of summer fruits, that’s ideal. I almost always buy a pack of frozen summer fruits from the supermarket and they do have the advantage of loads of juice. I make this pudding with wild blackberries in late September but sometimes find they aren’t quite tart enough to match the blandness of the bread; a squeeze of lemon juice can remedy this.

Serves 6

750g mixed fresh or frozen berries and currants (strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and blackberries are all good
)

140g caster sugar

a little butter

a small white loaf, sliced and with crusts removed (the bread can be stale, but should not be stiff
)

Put the fruit and sugar in a pan over a low heat and cook until the juices just begin to flow. Set to one side to cool.

Lightly butter an 850–900ml glass or ceramic bowl. Cut a disk of bread to fit the base and then line the sides with slices of bread, pressing them in firmly and leaving absolutely no gaps. Overlaps are fine.

Spoon all the fruit into the bowl along with about three-quarters of the juice (reserve the rest of the juice for later). Cover the top with a slice of bread, cut to fit.

Find a plate or saucer that fits just inside the rim of the bowl, put it on top of the pudding and weight it down with a bag of sugar, some cans or the weights from old-fashioned scales. Leave the pudding in the fridge or in a cool pantry, if you have one, all day or overnight.

To serve, remove the weights and the plate. Run a blunt knife carefully around the inside of the bowl.