Banana Walnut Wholemeal Bread Pudding

4/20/2017

When my girls were much younger and were studying in a local elementary school in the East of Singapore, I would volunteer on a weekly basis to keep the kids gainfully occupied while the teachers were engaged in their staff meeting. Occasionally, we would hold meetings related to th volunteering within the school and food was always brought in. One of the parent volunteers, Niza, made an amazing bread pudding that I can't replicate even till today. Attempts to obtain her recipe were always met with vague answers and that she would bring the recipe the following week. I guess when you have an absolutely delicious out of the world recipe, you wouldn't want to share it with friends you don't know so well.

Perfectly understandable but something I wouldn't do. I share my recipes with everyone. I believe that everyone brings a different, their own unique touch to the food they make and it never turns out exactly the way the original cook makes it. For example, let's take my own recipe below. Some may make it full fat, some may use blueberry bread instead of the stipulated banana walnut bread. You get my gist? So go on and share your recipes with everyone. You'll make that person's day! And the fact that someone actually asked for your recipe is a compliment and vouches for your culinary skills. What a boost to your ego :)

For those who may not know, bread pudding is essentially a bread based dessert. It is popular in many countries around the world. Bread Pudding uses stale bread pieces spread with butter and then soaked in a sweet creamy egg mixture and then baked till the custard sets and the top is a glorious golden brown. One of the easiest desserts to prepare and it can be both sweet or savory. Interesting fact - Bread Puddings were first found in a published recipe book in UK dated 1728. We are looking at a close to 300 year old recipe!

Many recipes online use actual bananas and walnuts for their Banana Walnut Bread Pudding. I needed a quick and easy recipe so I used the slices of a Banana Walnut bread loaf, instead. Such an easy fool proof way to bake the perfect Banana Walnut Bread Puddng. It tasted heavenly, by the way :) And look out for the wholemeal version. Couldn't resist not topping off with more walnuts, though!

Ingredients ( Yields 8 big square chunks)

6 thick slices of Banana Walnut Wholemeal Bread
Butter for greasing the baking dish and spreading onto the bread slices
3 eggs
150gm sugar (can reduce it to 130gm if you prefer a less sweet version)
300ml skim milk
120ml low fat cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Method
1) First butter a 10 by 6 inch rectangle glass baking dish.

2) Then cut the bread slices into 4 triangles each and butter both sides.

3) Arrange them into the baking dish in an alternate fashion, till all the pieces are used.

4) Preheat the oven now at 180 deg C or 350 deg F. Then beat the eggs lightly with an electric beater.

5) Add the sugar and keep on beating till all the sugar has dissolved around 5 mins.

6) Now, you will add the cinnamon powder, vanilla essence, cream and skim milk. Whisk everything till all are mixed well.

7) Pour this egg cream mix into the baking dish with the prepared bread slices. Bread slices will start to float, so gently press them down with a spoon. Set aside for 10 mins.