Bread Pudding

This is comfort food at it's best - squidgy and stodgy in all the right ways, and with a warming hint of mixed spice to finish it off. Perfect for chilly February afternoons. This recipe is another one of the family oldies I found whilst sorting through my recipe books - mum can still vividly remember her granny making it, and she always requested the crunchy corner piece! As with most old recipes, there was no picture, and this led to a slight mistake on my choice of cake tin - I went for a loaf tin, but I was later informed that a traybake is the better option - this is because you get more surface area, and so more crunchy Demerara sugar topping per slice (wow, that was almost scientific, Heston would be proud!). So, you'll see my loaf cake version in the picture, but I'd advise that you use a traybake tin of about 20cm/20cm (you want to be able to fill it at least a couple of inches deep).

Ingredients:

225g stale wholemeal bread

225g mixed dried fruit (get a mix that includes dried peel if possible, as this adds a great hint of citrus)

50g light soft brown sugar

50g margarine

1 and 1/s tsp mixed spice

1 egg

1 heaped tbsp demerara sugar to scatter on the top

Method:

1. Break up the bread into chunks (including the crusts), put it in a bowl, cover with water and stir it around for a couple of minutes to soften the bread. Put it into a sieve and push out the excess water (you may need to do this in two batches).
2. Put the soaked bread into a dry bowl and stir through all other ingredients (except demerara)
3. Grease your chosen tray (see comment above) and spoon in the mixture.
4. Push the mixture down and sprinkle the demerara sugar on the top.
5. Cook in the oven at 160 degrees celsius fan / 180 non fan for 1hr.
6. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove to store in an airtight tin.

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