Chocolate Bread Pudding

Michael and I are quite bad at eating up bread. Personally once it gets a bit stale I don't like it anymore. I love FRESH bread. So we often end up with the end of a loaf sitting waiting for someone to eat it. I sometimes make breadcrumbs or bread and butter pudding but once we've have b&b pudding once we seem reluctant to have it again the next night. So... what to do?

Well I have a husband who is fairly well guaranteed to eat anything chocolatey and I know bread pudding (rather than bread and butter pudding) keeps well but have never made it. Is there such as thing as chocolate bread pudding? Well despite a few recipes claiming to be just that they seem to be b&b pudding with rich cream and chocolate (whereas I was hoping to use milk and cocoa!)

In the end I found a Cranks recipe for bread pudding and adapted it as follows:

8oz (225g) Stale bread hacked into small pieces
1/2 pint (284ml) plus an extra 4tbsp (60ml) milk
3/4 cup of cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
5oz (125g) Dried fruit - whatever you like but adding something like apricots to the usual raisins is cool
2oz (50g) grated butter
4oz (100g) Brown sugar
1 heaped tbsp (20ml) mixed spice
1 egg
nutmeg to grate

Put the cocoa in a small bowl (or large mug!!) and add the boiling water, stirring to a smooth paste. When it is smooth, gradually add in the 1/2 pint (284ml) milk.

Put the broken bread in a large bowl and add the chocolate milk mixture. Stir thoroughly. Leave to soak for 30mins at least, and give it the occasional stir. The longer you leave this the better really!

Put the oven on at Gas Mark 4 (180C/350F)

Add the fruit, grated butter, spice and sugar to the large bowl. In a small bowl (the same one again if you like!) whisk the egg with the 4tbsp (60ml) milk. Add this to the laqrge bowl and mix.

Press it all into a shallow oven proof dish (we use one of those funky teflon flexible ones so no need for lining paper) Put this in the oven for 45 mins until set. Then remove from the oven, slice and have at least one piece for yourself then put the rest on a plate or in a tin to eat later!!