Hello Everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend celebrating love, be it with your families, friends, or significant others. Tonight I’ll be sharing an elevated version of a classic bread pudding recipe.

Bread Pudding is a bread-based dessert that originated in Europe, but popularised in many countries’ cuisines. It is typically made with stale bread, with milk or cream, eggs, butter, and depending whether the pudding is sweet or savoury, a variety of other ingredients.

Sweet bread puddings may use sugar or honey, fruits, nuts, vanilla, and spices such as cinnamon and/or nutmeg. The bread is soaked in the liquids together with the other ingredients, baked, and then served with either ice cream or a sauce. Tonight’s recipe will include all of the above, with raspberries, white chocolate, and sliced almonds, topped with a rich vanilla cream sauce.

PREP TIME 1 HOUR | COOKING TIME 1 HOUR | SERVES 6-8

INGREDIENTS

For the bread pudding

• 1 loaf wholemeal bread
• 1 punnet (250g) fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1 large free range egg
• 100h mascarpone cheese
• 2 cups soy milk
• 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• Handful of sliced almonds
• Handful of white chocolate chips

For the raspberry coulis

• 100g fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1/4 cup white granulated sugar

For the vanilla cream sauce

• 100g unsalted butter
• 200ml heavy cream, or all purpose cream
• 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt

METHOD

1. Bread Pudding: Grease a rectangular baking dish, mine was about 7.5″ x 11″ in size, with the unsalted butter. Cut the bread slices in half diagonally and arrange them into the baking dish. Set aside.
2. Whisk together the egg, soy milk, sugar, mascarpone cheese, ground cinnamon, and ground nutmeg until well combined. Pour over the bread, making sure to press the bread down to absorb the egg mixture.
3. Top with crushed raspberries, white chocolate chips, and sliced almonds. Sprinkle an extra tablespoon of sugar on top if you wish. Cover with aluminium foil and let it sit for about an hour before baking.
4. Preheat oven to 180C (350F or gas mark 4) about 45 minutes into its sitting time. Baked, covered for 30 minutes, and then uncovered for another 30 minutes or until lightly browned and set.

5. Raspberry Coulis: Chuck the raspberries and sugar into a small saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t burn on the bottom. It doesn’t take long before the juices start to run and things start to look syrup-y.
6. After the sauce has simmered for about 10 minutes, it should be just right. Not too thick, not too thin. Optional: If you like your raspberry sauce satiny-smooth, pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer. Then use the back of a ladle to push it through, discarding the seeds and reserving the sweet, fruity puree.
7. Pour on top of the bread pudding and leave to seep.
8. Vanilla Cream Sauce: Melt butter in a medium-sized saucepan over low heat. Once melted, increase the heat to medium and add the flour. Whisk together for about 10 minutes until it has a nutty aroma, but make sure not to brown the roux.
9. Add the salt, cream, and sugar, whisking until the mixture becomes thick. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. If your sauce is too thick, you can add a few tablespoons of soy milk to loosen the sauce a bit.
10. Drizzle or pour a generous amount of the vanilla cream sauce over a warm single serving of the raspberry bread pudding and enjoy immediately!

Before I end tonight’s post, do check out my Blueberry Bread Pudding recipe that I tackled back in 2017. I also made an all-crust bread pudding with dates from 2014; it’s not up on my blog only because I made it out of the blue one night with leftovers from an afternoon tea party I held when I was still living in Australia.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx