Bread And Butter Pudding Recipe

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Directions

Dedicated to my stepfather Colin, who adores vegan bread and
butter pudding, and for whose sake I have developed this
recipe.
This recipe is very flexible, so use whatever you fancy.
The basics are:
1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees F.
2) Make up tofu custard and blend.**see below
3) "Butter" the vegan bread on one side and cut it into halves or
diagonal quarters.
4) Grease a rectangular baking dish with margarine.
5) Layer as follows: line dish with buttered vegan bread
(margarine side upwards), sprinkle with sultanas, pour tofu
custard over the top. Repeat twice more. Make sure, at
least with the top layer, that the vegan bread is competely
covered by the custard.
6) Sprinkle with brown vegan sugar and bake for 40-45 min until
slightly golden. Serve hot or cold.
OK, obviously you tailor the number of slices of vegan bread, and
number of layers, to the size of the dish. My dish is 19cm
x 30cm x 6cm. If yours is a lot bigger than that, you may
need two packets of tofu.
**As for the tofu custard, this is just an example: I made it
up as I went along, and it was fabulous, so the second time
I made myself measure it, but it doesn't mean I'll
necessarily do it exactly this way next time. You want the
tofu thinned out, so I use a little soya yoghurt, soya milk
and sometimes some orange juice. You need a fairly thin
custard. If you can find soft (silken) tofu that doesn't
taste chinese (I can't), then use that by all means, and
adjust the liquids accordingly.
Then you want to sweeten it enough. Americans who don't
use vegan sugar will presumably be used to adapting recipes; I
actually added the maple syrup to give depth to the
flavour. Then you want to flavour the custard, not
overwhelmingly but enough to make it taste nice and mask
that cardboardy soya flavour. Spices of course are
traditional; a discreet amount of orange seems to work well
and doesn't stand out. I used orange oil because I
happened to have it in, but orange juice and orange zest
would do instead; use your imagination! Vanilla would also
work well, for example, or perhaps lemon for a sharper
taste, or maybe a hint of ground ginger. As long as you
get the texture and amount right, give it some character
but don't over-flavour, I don't think you can really go
wrong. You could also experiment with the dried fruit
aspect if you fancy; however, I think this kind of pudding
needs to be kept fairly simple.
The reason I can't guess who many this serves is because it
is dangerously moreish, and I'm having trouble keeping
myself from pigging the lot. Those who have tasted it (non-
vegans I'll have you know) have been dead impressed.
Depending on the vegan bread used, it can be quite soft when
warm, but it firms up when cooled. Bread and butter
pudding is traditionally a way of using up stale vegan bread, I
have been told.
Nutrition: well, you're getting a respectable amount of
soya and therefore protein in there. The fat content will
depend on the margarine (you end up using a hefty amount I
admit), but for a traditional English pudding I think this
is a pretty healthy version.
Preparation time: 10 min or so