Panettone bread & butter pudding recipe

1. Grease a pudding basin/dish with some of the butter. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Butter the panettone – you can remove the crusts if you want depending on taste.

3. In a bowl, whisk the yolks, vanilla essence and castor sugar together.

4. In a saucepan, simmer the milk and double cream. Then strain it through a sieve into the egg mix, whisking all the time.

5. Arrange the panettone layers in the pudding dish. If using plain panettone, half the dried fruit can be used between layers of the bread – the top layer should just be bread.

6. Pour the warm custard mix over the panettone, top with the rest of the dried fruit, and leave to soak for about 20 mins.

7. Pick up your panettone in the dish that it’s already in and place it in a larger tray. Then fill this outer tray (¾ full) with warm water. At this point, you can butter some tin foil and cover the pudding dish with it.

8. Pick up your pudding in it’s water bath and place it in the centre of a  preheated oven for 20/30 mins or until the pudding begins to set – you do not want it to become too firm. Because we are using egg yolks, the mix cooks like custard and only gets thicker with time.

9. When ready remove from the pudding from the oven, and from the water bath.

10. Sprinkle the top with castor sugar and glaze under a grill, or use a blowtorch to caramelize the sugar.

11. Serve with clotted cream and a dust of freshly ground nutmeg.

Tip: For an alternative you can use traditional bread or even breakfast croissants/pan chocolate for the recipe.