No greater proof lies in the eating of any pudding as much as the humble, bumbling, bread and butter pudding. It doesn’t matter if you used real vanilla, threw a few golden sultanas in or dusted it with cinnamon. All that needed to be done was for you to butter some white bread, dust it with sugar, pile it into

a baking dish, pour a cup of milk and beaten egg into it and wait for the heat of the oven to turn it into soul food. Look online — most people’s bread-pudding recipes begin with abject cravings for it, cravings they ignore for days on end — because, after all, bread and butter pudding is just so… well, humdrum. Every time I pass our local American Express Bakery (no relation to the credit card company) I think about their puddings, baked in individual foil trays, waiting to be lovingly spooned out. Sometimes, I believe, those puddings think of me too. I get the vibe — you know?
Everyone can make a bread and butter pudding. But you know what’s just absolutely fabulous? The bread and butter pudding is the Eliza Doolittle of the culinary world. A little tweaking, some coaxing, slap on a few baubles and by George, you can play Professor Higgins and pass it off as a posh tart, if you’ll pardon the flabby metaphor.
This selection of recipes uses different breads, different measures of egg and cream and different baking times. However, if you make one, you’ve made them all. Experiment, taste, tweak and make changes at will — this is a very forgiving food format — it will excite guests, please children and satisfy your soul.

You can start a conversation with the author about food at http://loveinthekitchenlaughteratthetable. blogspot.com

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Chevre and Rosemary Pudding
I found this recipe on Epicurious.com. We’ve often made a similar cheddary, rosemary pudding spiced with paprika flakes. It’s delicious but a bit basic. This was my favourite of all the recipes this week. The extra egg whites in this recipe cause the pudding to crisp up slightly. As always use the best eggs possible.

Ingredients:
2 large ciabatta loaves cubed (approx 3 cups)
150 gms plain chevre (goat’s cheese)
3 tbs fresh rosemary leaves chopped
1 cup whole milk
1 cup cream
2 whole eggs
2 egg whites
½ tsp salt (at least)
50 gms butter
1 tsp freshly ground pepper

Method:
Grease a baking tin with a smidge of butter. Pre-heat the oven to 200 C. Beat the eggs, salt and pepper together briskly until foamy. Beat the milk, cream and rosemary together as well. Crumble the goat’s cheese. Place the cubes of ciabatta on the bottom of the tin as closely together as possible. Melt the butter slightly and pour it over the bread. Sprinkle the goat cheese evenly over. Place one more layer of bread (if you have any left). Mix the milk-cream and the egg-mix together and pour gently over the top of the bread. Press the bread down gently so it gets soaked. Let it stand for a few minutes. Cover with foil and bake for about 20 minutes. Then uncover and bake for another 10 minutes. Garnish with more fresh rosemary and some pepper and serve
immediately.

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Blue Cheese and Bacon Pudding
This is something we literally invented for today’s column and thought it was fantastic. I had a big wedge of blue Stilton which was beginning to get too challenging in the smelly-cheese department for the weaker-hearted members of the family. And we had some beautiful bacon which I had slated for another project — but well, it offered to help. I made this pudding with normal dinner rolls and then dressed up the top layer with some croissant. It works so beautifully with the poached pears! Perfect if the weather is rubbish.

Ingredients:
3 cups of fresh cubed white bread
½ cup of crumbled blue cheese (approx 175 gms)
200 gms smoked back bacon
½ cup cream
1 cup milk
3 whole eggs
Pinch of salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper

Method:
Grease a baking tin with some butter. Pre-heat the oven to approx 200 C. Cut the bacon into small squares while it’s semi-frozen. In a pan, fry the bacon on very low until almost all the fat has melted. Discard the fat. Beat the cream, milk and eggs with the salt and pepper.
Arrange the bread on the bottom of the baking tin. Spread 2/3 of both bacon and blue cheese over. Cover with a little more bread. Beat the eggs till fluffy. Mix the milk and cream together with the salt and pepper and mix into the eggs. Pour over the bread, pressing the bread down gently to absorb the mix.
It’s alright if there’s extra liquid, it will cook and be moist. Sprinkle the rest of the bacon and cheese over. Cover the tin with foil. Put in the oven.
After 20 mins, check on the pudding. If it’s still bubbling, keep the foil on for another 15 minutes. Then check and if it’s firm, remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Serve hot with the poached pears.

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Chocolate and Whiskey Crème Pudding
The dessert-fiends, the twin sisters, were baking cookies for LoveLunch (my brother’s dabba service) and there were piles of dark chocolate everywhere. Naturally, we had to pinch some. And the whiskey was stolen from my father’s bar.
This is a very buttery, creamy, delicious recipe and the luxuriousness comes as much from its lovely ingredients as it does from using the most buttery, flaky croissants you can get your hands on.
Adjust the amount of chocolate to the level you want it to dominate the dish. (We used ½ cup because the twins were giving us dirty looks.)
Ingredients:
1 large cup milk (approx 200 ml)
½-1 cup dark chocolate flaked
½ cup heavy cream or 1 cup regular cream
2 drops vanilla essence
2 egg yolks
1 whole egg
6 tbs icing sugar
2 tbs butter
¼ cup whiskey
1 large pinch of salt
4 large croissants

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 C. Slice the croissant into 2 cm thicknesses. Grease a baking tray and lay the slices slightly overlapping. Melt the butter and pour over the slices.
In a heavy pan, pour the milk and cream, add the vanilla essence and stir gently, heating through, bringing it to a gentle boil. When this is done, turn off the heat and let it stand for about 5 minutes to cool slightly. Meanwhile, crack all the eggs into a bowl and beat nicely with salt and sugar. Add this to the warm milk-cream with the flaked chocolate and stir so everything melts and is amalgamated. Add the whisky. Stir and pour into the baking dish. Cover it with foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Then open, dust with more icing sugar if you want and bake for another 10 mins. Serve hot with ice cream.

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Ria’s Coconut Milk and Nutella Pudding
The amount of excellent writing, recipes and food photography on the internet is inspiring, exciting and very challenging. The www seems bursting at the seams with intelligent foodies who know how to create beautiful, delicious things and take food-porn quality pictures and then write about the food in an engaging, interesting way. The fact that most of these people are doing this for nothing more than the love of good food is heartening.
Riascollection.blogspot.com is one such blog. This is her own invention and it was just fabulous. We added a shot of dark rum to make it naughty and if you threw in some bananas and some grated tender coconut it would be quite a calypso song this.

Ingredients:
6 slices of white bread
1 cup whole milk
½ cup coconut milk powder
4 tbs dark rum (optional)
1 cup warm water
3 whole eggs
½ cup sugar
1 pinch salt
½ a jar of chocolate spread (we used Nutella)

Method:
Preheat the oven to about 200 C. Toast the bread lightly (this is to help spread the Nutella evenly). Spread the Nutella on them and cut them into 2 triangles each. Arrange them, with peaks-up, into a baking dish. Dissolve the coconut milk powder into the warm water and mix with the whole milk. Whip the eggs, salt and sugar together until fluffy and pour it gently into the coconut-milk mix. Add the rum. Pour the mix gently over the bread. Cover with foil and bake for about 40 minutes. Check that it’s set and serve while still hot.

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Gynelle’s Poached Pears
Poached fruit, especially pears and plums and figs, are a perfect foil to all of these puddings. Also because even the savoury puddings have cheese in them, you can technically serve them as dessert. The pears went best with the blue-cheese pudding.

Ingredients:
4 pears (almost ripe)
1 tbs maple syrup
1 large stick cinnamon
1 sprinkle of nutmeg powder
4 cloves
1 tbs fresh rosemary chopped
Pinch of white pepper (optional)
1 cup hot water

Method:
Halve the pears and scoop out the seeds. Keep the stalks on, it makes for a very lovely, earthy presentation. Put the pears open-face up in an oven-proof dish with the spices. Mix the maple syrup into the hot water and pour over the pears. Cover with foil and bake for about 20 minutes. Remove foil and check. The pears should be tender. Serve in individual bowls with some of the poaching liquid to dip the pudding in.