Hot cross bun bread pudding

Some bread pudding, yesterday

If you bought too many hot cross buns at Easter, don’t throw them away – freeze them and save your stale bread to make a tasty bread pudding, crusty on top and soft and moist in the middle. Makes bleeding tons.

Ingredients

• 8 stale hot cross buns. For every bun you haven’t got, substitute two slices of stale bread. You could, of course, just use 16 slices of bread and make a plain old bread pudding.
• 400 ml milk
• Fresh satsuma or tangerine peel, cut into small diced pieces
• Grated lemon peel
• 100g currants
• 2 Earl Grey tea bags
• Fresh or candied ginger, finely chopped
• Powdered cloves
• Powdered cinnamon
• Powdered or fresh nutmeg
• 100g brown sugar
• 1 egg

Method

Into a bowl, tear the buns/bread up into small pieces.  Pour over three-quarters of the milk and knead the mixture with your hands, while trying to soak up as much milk into the bread as you can. Add the rest of the milk as required until the bread is thoroughly soaked with milk and leave for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, put the kettle on and brew up a big cup of Earl Grey with both bags, but don’t add any milk. Instead pour the currants into the tea. Yes, I’m serious - the currants will swell up and take on the delicate floral aroma of the Earl Grey.

Once the bread has finished soaking, take handfuls and squeeze with your fingers to remove any surplus milk. Add as much ginger as you like (less if using fresh) with both the orange and lemon peel. If you can’t get tangerines or satsumas, grate the rind from the outside of an orange but take care not to add any of the bitter pith underneath.  Add two teaspoons each of the cloves and cinnamon and half a spoonful of nutmeg (or less if using fresh.) Pour in the sugar and egg and mix all the ingredients well.  Finally, remove the teabags from the cup and drain off the raisins well before mixing into the pudding mixture.

Pre-heat an oven to 190C and leave the mixture to stand for 15 minutes before pouring it into small loaf tins. Using small tins means you can easily freeze portions of uneaten bread pudding. Sprinkle the tops with sugar before baking in the oven for an hour. Check the puddings regularly by plunging a clean knife into one and removing it immediately. If any wet pudding mixture clings to the knife then you may wish to bake it for a further fifteen minutes before testing again.

Turn the puddings out onto a cooling rack and dust the crusty tops with more sugar. 

Tip: If you store your bread pudding in a paper bag rather than a plastic one, it will last longer – bread pudding stored in a plastic bag tends to ‘sweat’ after a few days.

Serve hot with custard, or cold with a cup of strong tea and a roaring fire.