1. Cloves - Bread & Butter Pudding

After a weekend of very chilly camping, I've felt a need to constantly fill my belly with comfort food. Anything warming, stodgy, accompanied by gravy/custard is on my list. I knew that I had a cottage pie waiting for me when I got home this evening so my train journey home was spent searching for pudding ideas. I started thinking about a recent episode of Nigella Kitchen where she made a chocolate chip bread pudding so I've used that as my inspiration and adapted it slightly to my taste (I think the chocolate is a step too far in an already sweet dish). This is the perfect pud for a cold evening.

Ingredients

A very small amount of butter for greasing your dish
500ml milk
8 cloves
50g sultanas
A generous glug of dry Madeira (I used this as it was the only suitable booze I had in the cupboard. I think whiskey or dark rum would also work well)250g stale crusty white bread, crusts removed (mine wasn't stale so I dried it out in a low oven for a few minutes)
3 large free range eggs
40g soft light brown sugar
125ml double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp demerara sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Method

Preheat your oven to 150C Fan/170C/325F/Gas Mark 3.

Grease an ovenproof dish lightly with butter.

Pour the milk into a saucepan and drop in the cloves. Bring to a gentle simmer over a moderate heat and then remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. This should give enough time to infuse a subtle flavour of the cloves.

Put the sultanas in a separate pan and cover with the Madeira or booze of your choice. Bring to a gentle simmer, let it gently bubble away for a few minutes and then remove from the heat. This will give you plumped up little fruits. Leave to cool.

Slice the bread into rough 3cm cubes and scatter into the buttered dish.

In a bowl or jug, whisk together the milk, sultanas (complete with Madeira), soft light brown sugar, double cream and vanilla extract. Make sure the milk and sultanas are completely cooled to avoid getting scrambled eggs.

Pour the mixture over the chunks of bread. Squidge the bread down slightly so each bit of bread gets a chance to absorb some of the custardy mixture. Leave to stand for 20 minutes.

Sprinkle the demerara sugar and nutmeg over the top and place in the oven for about 40 minutes. Check at regular intervals to make sure it's not browning too heavily on top. The pudding should wobble ever so slightly, don't let it get heavy and solid.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes or so. Enjoy under a duvet in front of a roaring fire. Bliss.