PB Chocolate Bread Pudding

It’s the Wednesday after Easter and himself has taken the 3 year old off for the day to help digging a garden. This leaves me on my own with the baby, who has just fallen asleep.

Sitting on the kitchen table are a number of Easter Eggs, unopened and while I would really like to crack 1 open and demolish it on the spot I’m craving something a bit more filling so I wander to the cupboard to check out the bread stock.  I was originally intending a crisp and chocolate sandwich which would marry the two salty and sweet flavours in a savoury bit of bread. I begin to salivate a bit.

That’s when I find the bread is stale. Normally at this stage I’d whizz up the bread in the food processor and pop it into the freezer for use as breadcrumbs at a later point but there are millions of things you can do with stale bread and bread pudding is one of them.  I figure that adding the leftover Easter Egg into a bread pudding would be inspired and when I reach into the press to grab the cocoa powder for the milk/egg mixture I brush against a pot of peanut butter.

Oh wow, peanut butter instead of butter. That could just about work.

I paste 2 slices of bread thickly with peanut butter, sandwich them together, trim off the crusts, then cut into triangles. I place the triangles pointy bit upwards in a small ovenproof dish and stick pieces of egg in between each peanut butter triangle.

I grab a mug, fill it half way with milk (half fat but as if that’s going to save me now), whisk in an egg and a teaspoon of cocoa powder. I didn’t add sugar to this “custard” mixture as I figure that the chocolate and peanut butter combination will be sweet enough. I then pour the custard over the bread in the dish. Place the dish on an oven tray and pop it into the oven at 170 degrees Celcius for 15 mins, or until it becomes brown and crispy on top.

Eat straight from the dish once it is has cooled a bit. You can serve this with whipped cream, custard, or even a bit of creme fraiche.

So there you go, budget busting (and waistband stretching) Peanut Butter Choccy Bread Pudding.