Waste Not

Pauper’s Pud!

This is my take on a classic bread & butter pudding. It amasses itself into a great, steaming mound of fruity, chocolatey loveliness. Instead of using just bread I use stale old hot cross buns or leftover chocolate sponges or cakes. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to use up the leftover remnants at the bottom of cereal boxes that don’t stretch to a whole bowlful. Also using over ripened fruit from the fruit bowl because when baked it seems to caramelise and go all juicy. Mixed with an odd chocolate chunk or two, it’s just heavenly. I call it Pauper’s Pud because it’s primarily made from items that would otherwise be thrown away.

Ingredients

12oz leftover (preferably stale) Hot Cross buns/muffins/old chocolate sponge cake, torn into chunks

12fl oz milk

2oz sugar (brown or white, whatever you have)

2oz butter melted

2 teaspoons of mixed spice

2 eggs beaten

2 or 3  leftover fruits in the fruit bowl (apple, dates, pear or plum, preferably on the turn) peeled & chopped into bite sized chunks 

Some spare chocolate buttons or similar chocolate chunks 

Handful of remnants of any crunchy cereal (Honey Nut Clusters or Crunchy oats)

Sprinkling of Demerera sugar if you have, normal will do otherwise

Grated nutmeg

Method

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5, 200 C.

Butter a big baking dish that holds about 2 pints.

Into a large bowl, throw in all of your chunks of hot cross buns, muffins and stale chocolate sponge and pour over all of the milk so all the chunks absorb all the milk. Usually I leave it about 20 minutes.

Then add your chunks of soft fruits and also your melted butter, mixed spice, sugar, chocolate buttons and the beaten egg.

Gently combine all of these so it is mixed well.

Put this mixture into your buttered dish and finally sprinkle over a couple of spoons of Demerera sugar and crunchy cereal to give it a nice crisp and crunchy topping.

Finally sprinkle on some nutmeg to finish.

Bake for about 40- 50 minutes or until it is golden and bubbly.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or simply on its own.

ok, it looks a bit of a state but it's lovely, honest!! ___________________________________________