Apple Bread and Butter Pudding

We managed to pick up a decent bag of cooking apples from the Dartmouth Community Orchard in October and froze most of them after processing. Processing in this case meant peeling, coring and cutting into decent sized pieces. We also had the view that butter would prevent the apples going brown and so we melted butter and mixed it with the apples. We have since learned that this was actually pointless for this purpose. However it gave a nice base to a cooking mix.

Anyway, we thought. Why not make a bread and butter pudding with some of these apples as a base? This was good quality comfort food fit for any menu entry (except perhaps in this tavern).

Ingredients:

• 4 or 5 large slices of stale white bread.

• 50g softened butter( for spreading)

• 200 - 250g peeled, cored and cut apples (see method)

• 2 tbps sugar

• 500ml milk (full fat preferably)

• 4 standard or 3 large eggs

• 1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon

Method:

Allow the apples to thaw. Ours had a coating of butter and so this version is a little rich in calories and fats but you don't have to eat all of it in one go!

Butter one side of the bread and cut into triangles ( see image).

In a bowl make the custard by mixing the eggs, milk, cinnamon and sugar together, whisking thoroughly ( by hand is good enough).

Butter a medium sized oven dish ( about 1 litre)

Place the thawed apple mix in the base of the dish and then layer up the bread butter side up.

Pour over the custard mix and leave to soak for about 30 minutes. You want the bread to absorb the liquid and softened but it doesn't have to be evenly textured. A little crunch will add texture.

Bake in the centre of an oven at 170C (fan) for about 35 - 40 minutes until it has puffed up and turned golden. It should be set in the middle.

Ready to serve...

Observations:

You could add vanilla or vanilla essence to the custard - we didn't have any.

You could grate nutmeg on the top before baking - again we didn't have any.

Another option might be to caramelise the apples before adding to the pudding.

You could sprinkle brown sugar over the top before baking but we kept to a failry low sugar content for taste.