Princess Diana may have lived a luxurious lifestyle but it turns out she craved simple British comfort food just like the rest of us,
Chef Darren McGrady, who worked as the personal chef to Princess Diana for four years, has shared the recipe for the royal’s all-time favourite dessert, which was simple bread and butter pudding.
in his cookbook Eating Royally, Darren wrote: “This pudding was Princess Diana’s all-time favourite, so much so that she once had a royal reporter write that ‘Darren makes the best bread and butter pudding in the world.
“Well, I am not sure it is the best in the world — but it’s up there! The final texture is a cross between a bread pudding and a crème brûlée.”
If you are looking to celebrate Princess Diana’s memorial today or are simply craving a traditional British dessert then here is how to make bread and butter pudding fit for a princess.
READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth’s favourite ‘unusual’ pancake recipe with key ingredient
Instructions
To prepare, place the raisins in a bowl and soak them in Amaretto overnight, or up to six to eight hours before cooking.
Once ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180C.
Cut the crusts of four pieces of bread and slice them into squares around one centimetre in size before placing them at the bottom of a casserole dish.
Pour the Amaretto-soaked raisins into the casserole dish and on top of the chopped-up bread.
Melt the butter in a small pan on a low heat and cut the remaining eight slices of bread diagonally until you have four triangle slices per one piece of bread.
Lightly coat each freshly cut slice of bread in the melted butter. Be careful not to overcoat the triangle sandwich slices as it can cause the bread to become mushy and more difficult to keep its shape.
Layer the butter-coated sandwich triangles on top of each other in the casserole dish. Chef McGrady advises letting each triangle slightly overlap the other to give the dish an attractive look.
Pour the remaining melted butter all over the casserole dish, and set it aside for now.
Separate your egg whites from your egg yolks. Then, in a large mixing bowl, add the egg yolks, 150g of graduated sugar and two tablespoons of vanilla extract. Mix the ingredients until you have a slightly thick golden batter.
Set the mixing bowl aside, and place a pan on a low heat on the stove. Add the milk and double cream, and bring the mixture to a boil.
Add the boiling mixture to your eggy-sugar-vanilla batter and keep mixing continuously to make sure the ingredients are fully incorporated.
Pour the warm egg mixture all over the casserole dish until it reaches the top of the triangle bread, and then leave the dish to rest for 20 minutes to allow the egg mixture to be soaked up by the bread.
Then, place the dish in the oven to cook for around 30 to 45 minutes until the top of the bread becomes a golden-brown colour and the filling is firm and fully cooked.
For best results, Chef McGrady advises putting the casserole dish in an oven tray, and then filling the tray around halfway with hot water. Be careful not to place too much water in the tray as it risks splashing into the casserole dish.
Once the dish is out of the oven, add two tablespoons of granulated sugar on top of the pudding to caramelise it. Chef McGrady suggests using a crème brûlée torch to caramelise the top, but you can also simply place the dish in the oven once again and broil it for a few minutes, but keep a close eye on the dish so it does not burn.
Finally, once out of the oven add the powdered sugar to the dish and slice up the toasted almonds and also add them to the dish. You can buy toasted almonds from the store or simply heat them up in a pan on the stove.
Your simple yet tasty bread and butter fit for royalty is now ready to serve.
