I don’t often do cake-y things – I don’t fancy myself as either a cake or pastry cook – but today was an exception. I tried making something really simple: Bread Pudding. No, not Bread and Butter Pudding, that’s something entirely different, where you cook buttered slices of bread with fruit and what is essentially a custard, and I’m not a fan.
Bread pudding also uses up an excess of bread, with dried fruit, but is effectively a cake. And it is very forgiving, which as regular readers know is something we like as we tend to make things up as we go along.

This is (roughly) what I did.
Ingredients
- 300g white bread (without the crusts)
- 300g mixed dried fruit
- 1tbsp mixed spice (be generous)
- ½tbsp ground mace
- 360ml milk
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 90g soft brown sugar (or muscovado), plus a little for dusting
- zest 1 lemon
- 80g butter, melted
- 50ml Amaretto or similar liqueur (again be generous)
Method
- Pour the liqueur over the dried fruit and leave to marinade.
- Tear the bread into pieces and put in a mixing bowl with the milk. Leave for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile mix the sugar, spices and lemon zest. Beat the eggs.
- Butter and line a cake tin.
- Heat the oven to 180°/160° fan/gas 4.
- When the 30 minutes is up, melt the butter.
- Now mix all the ingredients into the bread, being sure to mix thoroughly. Pour the mix into the cake tin, smooth it over and dust with a little extra sugar.
- Bake for about 75-90 minutes until a skewer comes out hot, the pudding is firm but springy, and golden on top. (Cover with foil if the top is crisping too fast.)
- Leave to cool somewhat before lifting from the tin and dividing into portions. Dust with icing or caster sugar if desired.
- Eat hot or warm as a pudding with custard; warm or cold as cake.
Notes
- I used a 20cm square, shallow tin and this quantity only half filled it and came out about 3cm thick. Double the quantity if you want a thicker result, but it’ll probably need slightly longer in the oven.
- The 20cm tin size cuts into 9 acceptable portions.
- Use whatever spices you fancy or have to hand, although mixed spice is the right balance for me.
- The addition of 50-100g candied peel would be good.
- I’m going to experiment with adding some flaked almonds or walnut pieces to the mix for some variety of texture.
- The mix should be quite wet but not slushy; if you think it is too dry add a splash more liqueur or brandy.