Bread and Butter Pudding in a Jar

Now, I love bread and butter pudding. Crucially, everyone I know loves my bread and butter pudding too. The problem with it is that it’s not exactly a portable dessert. Bringing it to a friend’s house for a sleep over, on a picnic or as part of a lunchbox for one of the boys – just too complicated. You end up with a horrible mixture of yellowy mush, which might still taste the same but is unappetising, sticky and messy. But then I realised, the thing I love the most in the world are jars. And bread and butter pudding in a jar is great. Especially with my special version of the classic recipe.

Ingredients:

4 croissants

4 eggs

1 cup of melted butter

½ cup of granulated sugar

1 and ½ cups of full fat milk

½ tablespoon vanilla extract

Tear the croissants apart into medium sized chunks and pass through the grill for a minute. Put the pieces in the jars (which should probably be sterilised but you’ll have to eat this quite quickly so it doesn’t really matter).

Whisk all the other ingredients together in a bowl. Pour the mixture in the jars, keeping in mind it will raise and you still want to be able to close the jar.

Close the lids, shake vigorously and leave in the fridge for half an hour or until you are ready to bake – you can leave them for as long as a day, just give them a shake before putting them in the oven.

Take the lids off, cover the top of the jar with tin foil (which you will poke with a fork) and put in the oven at 180°C for about 15 minutes. Check your jars won’t crack in the oven.

Take the puddings out, let them coo then screw the caps off.

My nephew loves to find a small jar of this in his lunchbox as a treat!

Just because you can’t keep these, it doesn’t mean you can’t give them away as presents. I like to fill the space between the pudding and the lid with boozy plums and their vodka, close the whole thing and give it away as a very last minute Christmas gift. If you want to give it a festive feel, you can mix in half a cup of chocolate chips or, for a more deorative effect, 1/4 cup glace red cherries finely chopped and 1/4 cup glace green cherries, also chopped - it will look like Christmas confetti. It is also delicious with half a cup of rum marinated raisins folded in with the batter.