Panettone Bread & Butter Pudding
When I was little, I would often spend the weekend at my English grandmother’s house. She was a ‘sweet tooth’ who loved chocolate and dessert in general. One of the regular desserts she would make though was a dessert to avoid throwing away stale bread. (She didn’t waste much at all and would even wash & recycle her plastic bags and plastic kitchen wrap! Way ahead of her time).
Bread and Butter pudding is a British dessert, traditionally made with layering buttered slices of bread, scattered with sultanas in an oven dish, and pouring an egg custard over the top before baking in the oven with sugar sprinkled on top. My nanna used to put butter and jam on the slices of bread. Wikipedia tells me “The earliest bread and butter puddings were called whitepot and used either bone marrow or butter. Whitepots could also be made using rice instead of bread, giving rise to the rice pudding in British cuisine. One of the earliest published recipes for a bread and butter pudding is found in John Nott’s Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary of 1723″.
Using panettone makes this dessert more decadent, but it also means you don’t have to butter the slices as you would do with bread, and although you can add extra sultanas, often it isn’t necessary. You can also use croissants or pan brioche. You can put this into one baking dish, or make individual portions like I did. (The quantities for this recipe made enough for 10 individual puddings.)
Panettone Bread & Butter Pudding
- 1 Panettone
- 60g butter
- 750ml milk
- 300ml cream
- 110g caster sugar
- vanilla bean (split lengthwise)
- 3 eggs + 2 egg yolks
- jam of choice (I prefer marmalade or fig jam)
- Grease baking dish (or dishes) with butter.
- Slice panettone and cut into pieces. I used a round cutter for these dishes the first time I made it, but then I just broke it by hand and placed pieces into bowls. Spread marmalade or jam over each slice.
- In a bowl, whisk together the milk, cream, sugar and eggs. Add seeds from split vanilla bean.
- Pour egg custard mixture carefully over bowls. You will need to repeat this as the mixture is absorbed by the panettone. Continue until custard is visible and almost at top of bowls. Let sit for at least 15minutes.
- Sprinkle tops of panettone puddings with brown sugar. Place bowls into a large baking dish (roasting pan) and fill with boiling water, until it comes halfway up the sides of the bowls. Put in a preheated oven at 180°C, and bake for 30-40min, until golden brown and custard has set. Serve dusted with icing sugar.
