Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

 

 

I learned on Tuesday evening that I was having an out-of-town dinner guest on Wednesday, so I needed to get busy with a quick-and-easy dessert recipe. I decided to turn to someone who is good at quick-and-easy desserts, Britain's domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson. The following recipe for her chocolate chip bread pudding was a perfect choice given my penchant for having stale bread hanging about. Ideally, the pudding should be served warm, shortly after it's taken from the oven, to optimize gooey chocolatey goodness. That scenario was not to be this week; luckily, this pudding was fairly tasty served cold. Even a bread pudding skeptic liked it.

 

Ingredients:

• 100 g. chocolate chips ( I used about a cup or perhaps slightly less)
• about 4 cups ( 250 g.) of stale white bread broken into 3 cm cubes
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream (35% B.F.aka whipping cream)
• 2 cups of whole milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/5 cup  (40 g) of brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of dark rum
• 4 teaspoons of demerara sugar for the top of the pudding (I used a lesser amount of ordinary granulated sugar)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

 

Butter a medium-sized baking dish and throw in the bread. Scatter the chocolate chips evenly among the pieces of bread. Whisk together the eggs,milk,cream and brown sugar, then pour the liquid mixture over the bread. Press the bread into the liquid with a fork and allow it to soak for wait 15-20 minutes before sprinkling the top with the demerara sugar and popping the whole thing in the oven. Bake for 40-50 minutes until the top is nicely browned. Serve warmly gooey.

 

Editorial note: This post is directed to my friend Christine, who is a bread pudding aficionado, and would apparently eat an entire pudding at one go if given the opportunity.

 

In retrospect, now having read the recipe thoroughly, I see that I could have left the unbaked pudding in the fridge overnight, taken it out, sprinkled it with sugar and baked it when my guest arrived. Ah well, live and learn. All's well that ends well. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. And so on, and so forth...