Delia's Bread and Spiced Apple Pudding

By Chris,
Main Ingredients:

• 2x Bramley apples
• 5x slice of brown bread
• 50g sugar
• 25g sultanas
• mixed spice and nutmeg

To kick off Pudding Month, I decided to go for a traditional English pudding, which went down a treat on a rather rainy and dreary day. Delia's Frugal Food has quite a lot of dessert recipes, but no pictures, meaning it's quite hard to envisage what they're going to look like, so I headed into new territory blindly and bravely...

First up a few slices of brown bread were used to line the tin, then the filling was made up from two peeled and thinly sliced apples, a handful of sultanas, the spice mix (mostly cinnamon) and a few tablespoons of sugar. then more bread on the top, more sultanas and nutmeg. To hold it all together, half a pint of milk mixed with two eggs was poured over the top.

The resultant concoction looked quite hefty and I wasn't sure we'd be able to devour it all, but after half an hour at 180 degrees, the pudding came out surprisingly light and fluffy. The apples were well cooked, but not mushy, the subtle flavours blended together nicely and the whole dish was served up with warm custard. I'd say this recipe is a great half way point between bread and butter pudding and apple crumble, and rather than being a compromise, it was better than both.

I rather imagine we'll have to re-adjust our expectations in terms of value for money for pudding month, but even so, the 54p a head this cost still seems like very good going.

Best for... Comfort eating on a soggy day, summer or winter.

Taken from... Delia Smith - Frugal Food

Helen says... Not too sweet, even with custard, but it still made me feel pleasantly greedy.