Pear and Chocolate Bread Pudding Recipe

 

If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?
~Marie Rabutin-Chantal De Sévigné

Hey, Lovelies!
What can be better for dessert than the classic combination of pear and chocolate, bathed in custard with a bread pudding top?

It sounds fancy, but it’s so easy to whip up. I served this on the weekend when dear friends came to visit for an early evening ‘family dinner’. You know, the kind where you sit around the table and chat, not dressed up, just clean and Sunday night relaxed. Where the entire visit lasts a couple of hours and then you’re done.

We ate pasta and salad for a main, and then this pudding with ice-cream afterwards. And it was good!

I hope you enjoy it too.

Love, hugs and chocolate, Nicole xx

Ingredients

• 825g can of pears in juice, drained and sliced
• 1/3 cup dark chocolate roughly chopped
• 3 to 4 (stale is best!) chocolate croissants, choc-chip or plain panettone, or even hot cross buns, brioche or fruit loaf
• 600ml cream or 1/2 cream and 1/2 milk
• 4 large eggs
• butter to grease the dish, and to butter the tops of your cut bread of choice
• 1 tablespoon raw sugar
• 3 tablespoons castor sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• If you like you also use a tablespoon or two of rum, Kahlua or Frangelico. I used Frangelico and it was delicious!

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 160 Celcius/320 Fahrenheit
2. Grease an ovenproof dish and then lay the sliced pears in the bottom. Sprinkle over the chopped up chocolate and mix together.
3. Whisk the eggs, castor sugar, vanilla and cream/milk together gently and set aside.
4. Slice the bread product of your choice to 1 to 2 cm thick, and butter one side. Layer the bread over the fruit, butter side up, until the top of the dish is covered.
5. Gently pour the custard mix over the top of the bread and allow it to fill the dish. Set aside so that the bread soaks up some of the custard mixture. Sprinkle raw sugar on top of bread, which will help give a nice crunch.
6. Place the pudding bowl in a baking tray and add room temperature water just under half way up the tray, then put it into the oven for 45 minutes to one hour. (You can put it in the oven without the water bath, but keep an eye on it as it will hoot faster)You want it to be softly set, rather than super firm, so that there is a spoon-able chocolate custard in the bottom of the bowl when you serve it.