An Ode To Nigella- Boozy Brioche Pudding

Got some dried fruit around? What about those crusty hunks of yesterday's fresh bread which are no longer so fresh? Or even better, some day old brioche or croissants? How about combining them into a decadent pudding, dotted with hints of dark chocolate and dried fruit, and livened up with some liquor.




This recipe is an adaptation of showing I saw Nigella Lawson do once, in which she made bread and butter pudding out of left over croissants. It's very simple, delicious and very easy to alter to suit what you have in the house.

Boozy Brioche Pudding

This is a fantastic recipe to use up all those day-old crossiants and slabs of brioche you have just casually laying about the house

Ingredients

Enough bread to generously cover/fill the dish: 2/3 crossiants and some great slabs of brioche, some thick crusty bread, whatever you have laying about.

3 eggs

250mls milk (this is a rough guess, you may need more- to increase richness you could use a little cream as well)

Pinch of nutmeg, allspice, ginger, salt

1tsp cinnamon

1T maple syrup (or other sweetner- honey, 1T sugar if necc. Brown sugar would work well)

1/3 C chopped dried fruit (I used raisins and apricots, I don’t think dates would work that well, something that absorbs liquid well)

2-3 T liqueur ( I used pisco- brandy would work well, something with a flavour to compliment the spices and dried fruits)

Dark CHOCOLATE!  This is up to your discretion. At least 50g. Broken up into piece-size chunks)

Add the fruit to the liqueur and heat up a little into microwave to increase the absorption of liqueur into fruit. If you have time, soak together for a few hours.

Break up the bread into rough chunks and arrange on the dish so that the chunks are quiet tightly packed in and the entire dish bottom is covered.

Add spices, sweetner, milk and eggs together and mix well.  It should be creamy. Add more milk if it looks like the liquid you have won’t be enough to cover all the bread in dish.

Mix boozed up fruit into eggy mixture.

Pour mixture over bread. If it doesn’t cover enough at this stage (i.e tufts of unsoaked bread are apparent) pour more milk over mix.

Dot chocolate around the dish in strategic locations.

Bake at 180 oC for around 20-30mins. When its done it will still be moisture, but enough liquid will have evaporated so that its eggy and mooshy, but not sloppy.

Enjoy with ice cream, hot or cold!

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