Irish Bread & Butter Pudding

When I say I love getting in touch with the Irish side of my heritage, I'm not kidding! (find some of my other Irish [based] recipes HERE)

I finally got around to trying an Irish dessert I've been wanting to try...since...like...late February or early March. Now that it's September, there's no better time than now! Amm-i-rite?

With fall being right around the corner, I want to attempt to increase the overall foodie repertoire for the cooler months.

I do try to keep the authenticity of dishes like this. So I did some serious research into some different variations, and came up with one that worked the best for me to make.

So, here's what I did:

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IRISH BREAD & BUTTER PUDDING

Ingredients:

~ 8-12 slices slightly stale/dry white bread, crusts removed & set aside
~ butter
~ 1 C sultanas (plumped golden raisins) or other dried berries/grapes
~ 2-3 T sugar
~ 2-3 T cinnamon
~ 2-3 pinches nutmeg
~ 1 C heavy whipping cream
~ 1 C milk
~ 3 eggs, lightly beaten
~ 2 T vanilla extract


Directions:

* In a glass or ceramic dish (about an 8x8), spray the bottom & sides with cooking spray; I used a pottery casserole dish (that has family story)...it has a great look & fit with what I wanted to do, but I would recommend a squared off dish

* Place the raisins (or other dried fruit) into a small bowl or large coffee mug & cover with hot water for about 10 minutes; this will help plump up the dried fruit a bit to form the sultanas

* Take your bread slices & remove the crusts (set crusts aside - will use in a little bit), cut each slice down the middle (either into rectangles or triangles...but this step is optional: you may leave whole); I have an old Pampered Chef gadget that can make uncrustable sandwiches, so I used it to make my slices round & pretty to fit into my round dish - again, just make it easy

* Butter one side of 4 slices of the bread & place butter-side-down in the baking dish overlapping slices just a bit

* After the 10 minutes of soaking is up for the raisins (now sultanas), drain & sprinkle a few over the top of the bread layer

* Sprinkle about a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of cinnamon & a pinch of nutmeg over the fruit layer & covering the top of the entirety of the bread slice layer

* Repeat the bread buttering step

* Sprinkle with more sultanas (plumped raisins or other dried fruit)

* Repeat the sugar, cinnamon & nutmeg step

* If you are doing a 3rd layer (I did), then repeat the last 3 steps one more time, otherwise move on to the next step

* In another bowl, whisk together the heavy whipping cream, milk, lightly beaten eggs & vanilla extract; pour mixture over the bread slice layers

* Set baking dish to the side for at least 1 hour, or place in refrigerator overnight

* When ready to bake the bread pudding, set oven to 350 degrees F

* You will want to place your baking dish in a bain marie (it's like a hot tub for the pudding in a sauna...spa time for the baking dish!)
Place the baking dish into a larger baking dish that will hold the pudding level; pour water into the larger baking dish - enough to go half way up the pudding baking dish. This will keep the cooking even throughout the dish for pudding

Prepping the Bain Marie

* Allow to bake in the center of the oven for about 1 hour

* After the hour is up, pull bain marie out of the oven & allow to cool for a few minutes, then remove the baking dish from the bain marie to cool a bit more from there

* Serve warm with a topping of whiskey sauce or whipped cream

* Top with a sprinkling of bread crumbs made from the cut off crusts from the bread slices:

   Bread Crumb Directions:

# Set oven to 400 degrees F
# On a baking sheet, spray liberally with cooking spray
# Lightly cover baking sheet with a dusting of cinnamon & a sprinkling of light brown sugar
# Arrange crusts in a single layer on the baking sheet
# Spray tops of crusts liberally with cooking spray
# Lightly cover the crusts with a dusting of cinnamon & a sprinkling of light brown sugar
# Bake for about 10 minutes
# Crusts should be hard & crispy
# Allow to cool for a moment & then crush the crusts into a near dusting or pulverize them in a food processor to make crumbs for sprinkling

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Irish Bread & Butter Pudding
with Irish Cream not-so-whipped topping "sauce"
and bread crumb topping

I have been wanting to make this dessert for quite some time...and it was so worth the wait! Oh, it's SO good!!

This is also another dish that terrifies my kids, and my hubby automatically said he won't do bread pudding. *sigh* I need to find folks to share this with. I am so happy with how it turned out!

It's certainly a perfect dish to have ready for St. Paddy's Day, but I would also love to make a more Christmas-y version using Craisins, and then maybe topping it with cranberry sauce.

This is also a great way to figure out how to use up some of that day-old bread, or the loaf that's close to it's Best By date. Don't let any of it go to waste!

There was a lot of time put into this dessert...but it really was easy!

I might even try this with our wheat bread. It's supposed to be white bread, but I have been working to try to take a more "make it good for you/make it better for you" type of approach.

Oh...and if you make your own bread, all the power to ya! OK? I just used the good ol' store-bought stuffs.

Let me know if you use this. I hope you love it as much as I do! (a new comfort food for me, I think)

ENJOY!