Forget sultanas and nutmeg – raspberries and chocolate are where it’s at in terms of bread and butter pudding!

Whereas other bread and butter puddings can be a little stodgy and reminiscent of bad school dinner food, the dark chocolate and bread combination in this one transports me to French village patisseries, while the sweetness of the sugar and custard works perfectly with the bitterness of the chocolate and raspberries. I found a basic bread and butter pudding recipe here and then adapted it to make this delicious dessert.

I’m afraid I tend to work with amounts that involve the word ‘about’, but this does give you leeway to adjust it to your own taste.

Ingredients:

• About 1/2 a French stick. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit stale – in fact that works very well!
• Raspberries – about 1 small punnet.
• Dark Chocolate, roughly chopped – about 50g.
• Butter or buttery margerine
• 350 ml milk
• 50 ml cream
• 2 eggs
• 25g sugar

Directions:

Grease an small oven dish with butter.

Slice the French bread in rounds as thinly as you can. Some people may prefer the crusts removed but I left them on. Butter each slice on one side.

Cover the bottom of the dish with one layer of bread, butter side up.

Sprinkle over most of the raspberries and chocolate.

Top with another layer of bread and add the rest of the raspberries and chocolate, allowing it to fall through any gaps in the top layer of bread.

Set the dish to one side.

Heat the milk and cream together, making sure it is hot but not burnt.

Whisk the eggs and most of the sugar together until light.

When the milk and cream are hot, add them to the whisked eggs and sugar.

Pour this custard over the bread layers through a sieve.

Leave to stand for 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 180.

Sprinkle the remainder of the sugar over the pudding and then cook for approx 30 minutes.

Enjoy with a touch of ice cream or cream.

Apologies for the lack of a good photo – we ate it all up too quickly!