Thing Number Eight - The Best Bread-and-Butter Pudding

There are three things you need to know about Panettone and Seville Orange Curd Bread-and-Butter Pudding.

1. Making it involves an immense amount of faffing around - it calls for special ingredients, requires you to make custard (or its relatives) from scratch not once but twice, and you can't even eat it the day you make it (or, not if you want to eat it at its best).
2. It calls for vast amounts of cream, butter, milk and eggs at a time of year when you have probably foresworn all of those things and vowed never to eat anything interesting ever again.
3. It's absolutely worth it.

The first time I made this, it was genuinely a response to having leftover panettone and feeling I ought to use it up (although in practice it never actually seems to dry out or go stale).  Every year since, I've plotted and schemed and jealously guarded stashed-away panettone, just so I could make it again.  (This task was aided, this year, by Wilkinson randomly selling proper full-sized panettone for three quid each.  Initially I thought this was some error on their part, and promptly bought two.  They kept selling them.  I kept buying them.  Now to open any cupboard in my house is to risk a panettone avalanche...)

This is a gloriously seasonal recipe, coupling panettone that's on its way out with the first appearance of Seville oranges.  (They, if you've never come across them, are the very bitter oranges used to make marmalade.  Think of them as like orange-flavoured lemons; anywhere you might use a lemon, a Seville orange does the same job and just makes things more interesting.  You absolutely wouldn't want to eat them as fruit, though; partly because flavour-wise they don't mess around, and partly because they tend to be full of loads of pips.)

Right, away we go.

Seville orange curd

(This is basically Nigella's lime curd recipe, only with an obvious orangey substitution.  If you can't find Seville oranges, you could go with a mixture of ordinary oranges and limes, for something approaching the same effect.)

First, zest and juice however many Seville oranges it takes to get 125ml juice.  (I needed five.)  Do it in that order - zest then juice - and not the other way round, or you'll drive yourself crackers.  It's also a good idea to strain the juice as you squeeze it, to catch the many, many pips.

Then melt 75g butter over a gentle heat.

Add the juice and zest, 75g caster sugar, and three eggs.  Make sure to keep the heat very low, and keep whisking this the whole time.  You want everything to meld together and gradually thicken.  You do not want orange-flavoured scrambled eggs.

After a while of wondering whether anything's happening and whether you should just throw caution to the wind and turn the heat up, you'll start to suspect it may possibly be ever so slightly thicker than it was.  After that it'll come together quite quickly.  You want to be able to spread this, once it's cooled down, so let it get fairly thick - it should coat the back of a spoon.

Then pour it into a bowl or jar or whatever, and let it cool.

Pudding assembly

I usually reckon on needing about half a large panettone for this.  Slice it however you like.

Now make sandwiches of panettone and orange curd.  Because of its shape, you tend to end up with uneven-sized slices when you cut up this much panettone, so I tend to cut each slice horizontally down the middle; that way each slice is its own partner when making sandwiches and there's no tricky matching up of compatible-sized pairs.  (You won't need all of the orange curd for this.  You'll be using a bit more later, and any left after that will keep quite happily in the fridge for a while.)

Cut the resulting sandwiches into smaller chunks, and arrange them in a (buttered) ovenproof dish of whatever size will fit them.  How they're put in is how they'll stay, so feel free to do tasteful things with the points, if it makes you happy; and do try to avoid the crusts being upwards as they're already browned and might burn in the oven.

The custard

Put 500ml whole milk and 500ml double cream in a large pan and put it on the heat.

While it's heating, keep half en eye on it and prepare the other ingredients.  You need one whole egg, and four egg yolks.  (Yes, four.)  I know some people do the whole passing the egg-yolk back and forth between the two halves of the shell thing, but I always think there's a risk you'll snag it on a sharp bit.  Safer, if messier, to just hold the egg yolk gently in your hand and let the white slip through your fingers...

Beat the egg and yolks together in a good-sized bowl or jug, along with 3 tablespoons of caster sugar, and a couple of spoonfuls of the leftover orange curd.

When the milk and cream are just about to come to the boil, take the pan off the heat and pour the contents into the egg mixture, whisking like mad the whole time.

If this were custard for eating with something, it'd be going back on the heat; but because it's going in the oven it doesn't need any more cooking at the moment.  Pour the whole lot over the panettone sandwiches, making sure to splosh some on every bit of the bread.  Then leave it alone for a quarter of an hour, so the bread can soak up the custard and the whole thing can start to meld together.

Trannsfer it - carefully! - to the oven, and cook it at 160C or thereabouts, for about three-quarters of an hour.  When it's done, it should be golden on top, and the custard should be basically set but still a bit wobbly.

Now for the hard part.  Leave it alone.  Let it cool completely, cover it with cling film, and put it in the fridge until tomorrow.  However good it is now, it'll be better then.  If you're really desperate, eat some of the leftover orange curd on toast, or something.  Seriously.  Leave it alone.

By the way...

Yes, there are four egg whites now going begging.  The thing is, every now and then I try out a recipe for bread-and-butter pudding that uses only whole eggs - because it's less hassle! and there's no waste! and surely it'll be OK? - and every time, I'm disappointed.  It's just too bouncy.

Instead, I'm bagging the egg whites up in twos, and bunging them in the freezer.  They'll be quite happy, and I have an idea for them that I might try out in a week or two...

It's tomorrow.

You're now allowed to eat it.  Don't heat it up; have it cold, or at room temperature.  What you'll have, by now, is a soft, orange-scented custard, where you can't really tell what's bread and what's not anymore.  Go to it. 

(Yes, I had it for breakfast...)