A couple of weeks ago I made this, it was good.

I didn’t follow a recipe as such, more like I looked up 3 conflicting recipes and dredged up memories of how I used to make it back when I still lived with my parents and then Nanny Ogged* the process. Then someone asked me for the recipe, so clearly I was going to have to do it again, only writing it down as I went this time.

Which I did tonight, and I made this, it was also good.

Here’s how:

Preheat the oven to 160°C
Lightly grease a baking dish with butter.
Put it inside another baking dish that’s half-filled with water (or you can do that bit at the end if you like, either way works)
Sprinkle sultanas over the bottom of the dish, if you like lots use lots, if not don’t.

Lightly butter enough slices of bread and cut them into quarters (in this case it was 7) to fill the baking dish till it looks like this:

Next up is the custard, I used 300mL of cream, 900mL of milk, 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of caster sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of ground nutmeg. Whisk them all up and pour over the bread. Poke the bread down into the mixture and then let it stand for a few minutes until the bread has soaked it up. Sprinkle the top with a dessert spoonful or so of demerara sugar.

Pop the nested baking dishes into the oven. Keep an eye on it, if the top is browning too much before the custard sets then turn the oven down. I turned it down to 150°C after 30 minutes. The custard is set when the bread all puffs up, but sticking a knife into the middle and having a look is a good way to tell too. After an hour the custard had just set and the top was well browned. Cooking smaller quantities is easier when it comes to getting it cooked through without burning the top.

I then took the pud to my mum’s place where a roast pork dinner was waiting for us, this also explains the large quantity, I was cooking for 7 of us and could have served 8 easily from this dish.

Eat up!

If you’re lucky 2 of your kids will decide it’s not for them and there’ll be leftovers for tomorrow night.

*a bit of this, some of that, some more of that, splosh, splish, ok, that looks about right… (There’s a Nanny Ogg cookbook, one day I will cook some of the more interesting sounding dishes in it.)

Ingredients list you can actually make sense of

sultanas – enough to cover the base of dish
lightly buttered bread slices cut into quarters – I used 7 slices
3 eggs
300mL of cream
900mL of milk
3 tablespoons of caster sugar
1/2 a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
demerara sugar

Short version of the method

Preheat the oven to 160°C
Lightly grease a baking dish with butter.
Put it inside another baking dish that’s half-filled with water
Sprinkle sultanas over the bottom of the dish
Put the bread pieces in the baking dish, butter side up in a single-ish overlapping layer
Whisk eggs, cream, milk, caster sugar and nutmeg together and pour over the bread
Allow to sit and soak for a few minutes
Sprinkle with demerara sugar
Bake in the oven until the top is browned and the custard is set
(30 min at 160°C then 30 min at 150°C in this case)