Quick Prep Bread & Butter Pudding

A wonderfully warming, childhood favourite bread & butter pudding, all ready for the oven after just a few short minutes of preparation. Fantastic!

Ultimate Comfort Food

Is there anything more wonderful that a bowl full of warming deliciousness that takes you right back to your childhood?? Surely not! Bread & butter pudding is a quintessential British dessert that uses relatively few ingredients that are mostly cheap and easily available in stores. Which makes it perfect in my books!

The main ingredient – sliced white bread is a staple in most people’s pantries. In fact, for this quick prep bread and butter pudding, you can use bread that’s even gone a bit stale. This means it’s the ideal recipe for using up leftovers, something that many of us are keen to do in these financially tough times.

I’m certainly no stranger to warm, sweet comfort foods that can be prepared super quickly then bunged into the oven! Check out my Quick Puff Pastry Cinnamon & Raisin Twists for example. So moreish and crowd pleasing.

Oldie but Goodie

Bread & butter pudding has really ancient origins. Originally just dubbed ‘bread pudding’, it is thought to have originated in the 11th century in Europe as an economical way of using up old, stale bread. It later transformed in the 18th century into the bread & butter pudding that is much more recognisable in the modern day. This was traditionally considered a dish of frugality – a meal created by poorer people to use up scraps in a filling and palatable way.

This certainly isn’t true any longer! Today, bread and butter pudding can be found in even the finest of restaurants, rubbing shoulders with traditionally much fancier desserts. Whether created by a highly regarded chef in a Michelin starred kitchen, or just whipped up quickly in a home kitchen, I think the fond memories of childhood that this dessert evokes just cannot be beaten. A bowlful of warming bread & butter pudding with lashing of hot custard on a chilly, winter’s evening is divine!

Brilliant Bread

So of course, you can’t make bread-and-butter pudding without the all-important bread! I really love that you can create something so comforting and delicious out of something so simple as bread. I recommend using a medium sliced soft white bread loaf. Usually, these loaves can be bought for less than £1, making this a wonderfully cost-effective dessert.

Of course, you can slice your own loaf up if you’d prefer, but make sure the slices are no thicker than about 1 cm or they may not soak up that creamy custard as well as they should do. Although you don’t want to be using mouldy bread, you can use bread that’s gone a bit stale and tough as this won’t affect the final dish at all. Also bear in mind that slicing up your own bread will take up extra time, and I’m all about the time-saving of course! So using pre-sliced bread is preferable where possible.

Better Butter

Without wishing to overstate the obvious, bread-and-butter pudding requires – well, butter! Now, I have a confession here, I did try to make this dish without bothering to butter the bread before pouring the custard on top. (I always try time-saving measures whenever possible!) Instead, I melted the butter quickly in the microwave and mixed it into the custard before pouring it onto the bread.

Now when I did this, the finished dessert was still really delicious, but the bread ended up a little flabby and soggy in texture. Obviously, my blog It’s all about the quick cooking so I aim to avoid unnecessary steps wherever possible, but I’ve discovered that not buttering the bread is just not a corner that’s worth cutting. The butter on the bread kind of ‘seals’ it from absorbing too much of the vanilla custard too quickly as it cooks.

Sure, you want the creamy, sweet custard spread all throughout the dish, but there’s a fine line between deliciously soft and unpleasingly soggy. Turns out, buttering the bread is that line! Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long to butter both sides of the bread so this step won’t use up too much of your precious time.

Custard Creaminess!

So, in this quick prep bread and butter pudding, the bread and the butter forms the backbone for sure. However, tying it all together and elevating the taste into the stratosphere is the creamy, vanilla custard!

Made from the classic combination of cream, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla, these ingredients can be whisked together in a matter of mere seconds then poured over the bread. Not only does it taste great, it binds everything together beautifully and creates a lovely, fluffy texture that will have your family and friends asking for more!

Many bread and butter pudding recipes don’t add anything extra in terms of flavouring, however I find that a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg really enhances the overall final taste of the pudding and gives it that gorgeous warming, wintery flavour and fragrance that we all know and love. Which is why you’ll see these two fantastic spices featuring in this recipe!

TIME SAVING TIPS

So although this quick prep bread and butter pudding takes around half an hour in the oven – there’s no getting round this – my recipe is carefully designed to mean you can create your pudding, all ready to pop in the oven, in only about 5 minutes! Once it’s in the oven, you don’t have to do anything further, meaning you can get on with other important tasks whilst it merrily cooks.

One of the most important things to ensure your bread and butter pudding is super-quick to make is not faffing about with the bread slices. Other recipes will recommend you cut them into little triangles and/or laboriously slice off every little crust. I just don’t think that’s necessary! In fact, the bread crusts add a lovely extra crispy element to I reckon leaving them on actually enhances the dish.

So in this quick prep version, all you need to do is remove the bread from the pack, butter each side and pop it straight into the baking tray. So simple!

The other super-important time saving bit to this recipe is the making of the custard. Now, traditional bread and butter pudding recipes will tell you to make a custard slowly on the hob, heating it gently and stirring constantly whilst adding each ingredient in turn. This takes a while! You then are supposed to pour it over the buttered bread and let the whole thing ‘rest’ before baking. Very time consuming!

In my recipe, all you need to do is quickly whisk together the raw custard ingredients in a bowl then pour it over the bread before popping the baking dish immediately into the oven. That’s it! No faffing about with whisks and pans or other kit. The oven does all that work for you as it happily cooks the custard.

I find the finished bread and butter pudding is every bit as delicious when you make the custard quickly this way as when you make it the more traditional, time consuming way. Saving precious time like this is surely a no-brainer?!

Now, lets take a peak at a step by step guide to making the perfect quick prep bread and butter pudding, with some handy photos along the way….

Quick Prep Bread & Butter Pudding – Step By Step Method

Makes 6-8 servings

STEP BY STEP

Step 1

Start by pre-heating your oven to 180°C / 160 C fan (400 F / 350 F fan)

Grab yourself a large, rectangular roasting tin or casserole dish. The one I use is 33cm x 23cm (13 inch x 9 inch) however yours doesn’t have to be exactly this size – as long as its about this, it’ll work fine!

Step 2

Take 8 medium thickness slices of white bread. No need to cut off crusts or slice them – keep them just as they are. Spread both sides of each slice of bread generously with butter or margarine. You’ll need about 4 tbsp. of butter / margarine in total for this.

Step 3

Place two slices of buttered bread down flat at the top of the roasting tin, side by side. Scatter 1/2 tbsp mixed dried fruit evenly over each piece of bread. Any dried fruit is delicious, but I like to use a mix of raisins, currants, mixed peel and cherries, yum!

Continue to place the bread slices flat down in the tin, one at a time and overlapping a bit til they all fit snugly together. Keep scattering 1/2 a tbsp of dried mixed fruit over the top of each piece of bread as you layer it up.

Step 4

Now it’s time to create some deliciously creamy, quick custard! Take a medium sized bowl and into it put 300mls double (heavy) cream, 200mls of milk (can be skimmed, semi-skimmed or whole), 2 tsp vanilla extract (don’t use vanilla flavouring as this won’t give a powerful enough flavour), 6 tbsp caster sugar, 3 eggs, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and finally, 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg.

Grab a whisk and whisk it all together briskly for around 20-30 seconds, until well combined. You can do this by hand or with an electric mixer if preferred- this would save you a few seconds of time.

Step 5

Pour the custard evenly all over the buttered bread. Lift up each slice of bread a little bit as you do, to ensure the custard touches every slice nice and evenly.

Step 6

Place immediately in the preheated oven and cook for around 30 minutes, until golden and fluffy. Now remove from the oven, cool slightly and dish it out into individual bowls. Makes 6 generous servings, or 8 more modest ones. Delicious with lashings of warm custard or some cool cream poured over the top!