Teatime Treat

Among our favourite desserts is that old English teatime treat, bread & butter pudding.

My late grandmother used to bake this when I was a child but I can't recall having it as a teen. Perhaps she just stopped making it in favour of local kuih-muih.

As a young bride abroad, I would make it occasionally, especially when friends came a-visiting. As it were, I wasn't much of a kitchen person, so this sort of slapdash dish, quick and easy to make, was right up my alley.

The Royal Lake Club once served the most delicious bread & butter pudding I had ever tasted (story here). Then the Club changed caterers, and the overall food standard declined.

Adding insult to injury, the Royal Lake Club's now insipid offering paled in comparison to the one served atop KL Tower. Since then we have not found a worthy competitor.

With bread & butter pudding on my mind the past couple of days, it wasn't much of a surprise that I woke up this morning with the urge to bake one.

The end result: the family gave their thumbs-up, and I'm pleased as Punch. So here goes:

Ingredients

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter or margarine, more or less as needed, at room temperature
5 slices crust-on white bread
1/2 cup golden raisins or sultanas
2 cups milk
2 eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 350 F. Add cinnamon to sugar; mix well and put aside. Spread butter or margarine lavishly on one side of the bread. Cut each slice into two triangles. Arrange the slices peak up (re pix), buttered side up overlapping each other, sprinkling mixed sugar and raisins as you go along.

In a separate bowl, whisk eggs into milk, then pour the mixture onto bread. Let stand for 10 minutes for the bread to absorb the liquid. Bake for 30 minutes. Serve with warm custard sauce.

Custard sauce
2 tablespoons custard powder (Bird's my choice) mixed with 2 tablespoons fresh milk to make a paste. Warm 200ml fresh milk in a pan, add 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Add paste and mix to desired consistency.

Eat 6-8.