Recipe: Vegan Bread & Butter Pudding

📝 What you need

Ingredients

• Lemon
• Sultanas
• Vegan butter
• Dairy-free milk
• Dairy-free cream
• White bread 
• Caster sugar
• Demerara sugar
• Cornflour
• Vanilla extract
• Nutmeg
• Fruit juice, sherry or brandy 

Equipment

For best results you will need to make what's called a 'bain marie' - basically a hot water bath, which makes the pudding cook more consistently and slowly - so you don't get dried out edges and an un-cooked middle.

So when you've layered up your pudding in a baking dish, you will place that baking dish into a larger tin half-filled with boiling water - something like a roasting tin is ideal. Test out the sizes before you start cooking to make sure your smaller dish fits into the larger one with enough room for water.

A round ceramic dish like this pretty one from Kitchencraft is ideal, placed inside a larger roasting tin then half-filled with water.

🔪 Expert Tips

Here are a few little tips that will make your bread and butter pudding extra-special:

• Let the custard soak in to the bottom layer of bread for about 30 minutes. I've seen some recipes calling for overnight soaking, but I find that turns the bread to mush, and prefer a bit more texture.
• Use slightly stale bread If your bread is too fresh and soft it won't hold its texture, and just turn to mush. I used a sliced sourdough loaf which is lovely, but any white bread will do.
• 'Butter' the bread fairly liberally! The more butter you use the more moist and delicious your pudding will be.
• Make a 'bain marie' if you can - basically a hot water bath that cooks the custard gently and evenly. You don't need any fancy equipment for this, just a roasting tin that's slightly bigger than your pudding dish, which you then half-fill with boiling water just before it goes into the oven.
• Be generous with the demerara topping - I usually check on the topping about 10 minutes before the end of cooking time, and if it isn't looking quite crunchy enough I'll add another spoonful of demerara.

👩🏽‍🍳 Variations

There are so many variations you can make to this bread and butter pudding recipe. How about:

• Adding dark chocolate chips instead of the raisins? (check they are dairy-free)
• Adding fresh raspberries or blueberries in place of the raisins?
• Adding cocoa powder to the custard to make a chocolate pudding?
• Using vegan pannettone, brioche or croissants instead of bread?
• Spreading each slice of bread with jam or Biscoff spread as well as butter?
• Adding nuts like chopped hazelnuts or pecans when you add the raisins?

🔪 What else can I make with stale bread?

Never throw away stale bread - it is all the better to make crispy breadcrumbs with. I keep a big bag of breadcrumbs in the freezer and add to it whenever I have odds and ends of stale bread to whizz up into crumbs.

Breadcrumbs are so handy to scatter over all sorts of pies, pasta bakes, traybakes or roasted vegetables for a crispy, crunchy coating, and also ideal for using in:

• Vegan Katsu Curry with tofu coated in a crispy crust of golden breadcrumbs
• Black Bean & Jalapeño Burgers which are bound together with breadcrumbs for a great texture
• Vegan Cauliflower Cheese which has a deliciously crispy golden crust

How do you use yours?