Yesterday I was off ill, and I’m feeling worse this morning so I thought I’d cheer myself up by making a pudding. I remember having bread and butter pudding in the 1990s. It was never homemade. My Grandma insisted she wanted bread and butter pudding because it was her favourite from when she was a little girl and my Mum bought some microwave pudding because that was easier and nobody else in our household wanted to eat the pre-war meals my Grandma raved about.

However, I’m broke and have bread that is just beginning to stale and a can of custard buried in the back of the cupboard so I thought I’d make a variation. The recipes I find online have a custard-like goo in them anyway so I thought I had enough to have a go. I thought this was going to be rubbish but it was actually OK. I think the lovely sultanas helped. I would’ve taken step-by-step photos but I wasn’t expecting to want to share this.

Ingredients

• Stale bread (at least six slices)
• Custard (100g-200g, depending on how gooey you want it)
• Sultanas (30-45)
• A butter/butter-like spread for greasing the dish

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350F/gas 4.

Rub some butter or butter-like spread on to the dish.

Cut crusts off the bread. I left some of the crust on, I regret doing this.

Put the first slice of bread in the dish. Pour 10g-12g of custard on the bread and then rub in with the back of a spoon (or your fingers for better coverage). Put as many sultanas as you want on top of the custard-covered slice. I put seven on mine.

Put the next slice on top of your now sultana and custard-covered slice. Repeat the previous step until you run out of bread.

When you put the final piece of bread on, push it down so you squish all the slices underneath. Then use the back of the spoon to smooth custard over any dry bits of bread you see, including the top.

Put in the oven and cook for 30-35 minutes.