Brioche bread and butter pudding

Puddings made with bread and butter are just the easiest things on the planet!  If there is one sweet dessert recipe that should be included in your repertoire, it should be the humble bread and butter pudding.    It is a simple baked dessert or morning/afternoon tea treat.  It is easy.  The ingredients are almost always, staples in your everyday pantry.  Easy, simple and yet quite impressive when served.  

This Brioche Bread and Butter Pudding was one of the 2 dessert tasks last week in Kitchen 11.  Supposedly simple, but Chef A had other plans.  He insisted that with the time we had in class, we could make brioche from scratch – Plan B.  And try I did.  First attempt failed. – dough thrown out.  Second attempt 50/50 – dough looked wet but we still went ahead and baked them.  The turn out?  Nice looking brioche loaf and muffins, but hard as rock.  Great for practicing tennis, as what Chef A jokingly said.  So after wasting about 5 egg yolks, it was time to go back to Plan A – use the dry store ready-to-use brioche and prep for dessert.  

This recipe is from the Prepare Cook and Serve Food for Service, TAFE NSI Booklet.

1 loaf brioche bread

7 eggs

450ml milk

450 ml cream

230g caster sugar

50g sultanas

1 tsp vanilla extract / essence

apricot jam, for spreading

butter, for spreading

icing sugar

 Preheat oven to 160*C.

Grease baking dish or ramekins (use either a medium-sized oval or rectangular dish or individual oval ramekins)  with butter. 

Slice the brioche bread thinly, retaining the crusts.

Spread with butter and jam.

Layer into a greased baking dish or ramekins.

Sprinkle sultanas and orange rind over the bread.

In a large bowl, with a balloon whisk, mix the eggs with the sugar.  Add the vanilla, then the milk and cream and gently mix together.

Pour the custard over the bread and ensure it is well soaked in prior to baking.

Bake at 160*C for 40 minutes and almost set in the centre.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve warm with Sauce Anglaise and a sprig of mint.

*Sauce anglaise is one of the greatest creation there is in the dessert world!  A tricky recipe learned in Kitchen 10 which shall be for a future post or you can have a look at David Lebovitz post).

 

And to make up for all the egg yolks lost and egg whites gained, a corner of Kitchen 11 was concocting some other sweet dessert - a practice attempt at the classic Aussie Pavlova with dramatic results (see photo).  Which paved the way to the Cherry Pavlova Mess, which hopped its way into the first ever Australian Pavlova Bloghop which made its way into our tummies, which made everyone smiled and my heart melted. Amen.

 

Make some brioche bread and butter pudding today!  It's easy!  You don't even have to use brioche.  Any bread would do!  In fact, we've got so much mini croissant that might just end up being pudding later on in the week!