Banana Bread Pudding

Do you have a Sunday breakfast tradition? You know something like a Pancake-Sunday or a Waffle-Sunday ? At my parents house they've had one ever since I was a kid... There, luchi and aloo dam(potato curry) is served for breakfast every Sunday. Its lavish and delicious and every individual who has ever visited us have always looked forward it to. After our marriage I had thought I would continue with the tradition in my new home ... but a few weekends into it and I realized how much work it involves. So I began exploring other options. For a while we tried Pancake and Waffle Sunday... then South-Indian Sundays...Noodle-Sundays so on and so forth... until the idea of Casserole-Sundays struck me...

Believe me Casserole Sundays are the easiest to handle. These days I simply throw in stuff  into the iron skillet and while things bake I laze out in the balcony sipping my chai and catching up on  the Sunday supplement of the newspaper or the blog posts that I have missed during the week. And when the oven buzzes done, I pull out the skillet and serve...... Bliss.... Really... Sunday-breakfast never felt easier than this..

So the other Sunday I made Banana Bread Pudding the old-fashioned way and was delighted to see how the little one also enjoyed this classic breakfast... Truly some recipes are timeless and breading puddings definitely rank high in that list.

The  recipe I followed was inspired by one from the net. It was more or less similar to my mother's recipe except that the milk did not have to be thickened. Of course if you like your puddings to be richer, start off with twice the amount of the milk, boil it down to half its volume before soaking your bread in it. That is the way my mother always makes it but I being her unfitting-ly lazy daughter decided to skip the ordeal and took the easier and quicker route. As a compensation I topped the pudding with custard and that made a delicious breakfast. Its the kind of thing that you would want to serve your friends and house guests... and may be even your papa for a sumptuous Father's Day breakfast.

Banana Bread Pudding

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Recipe by Adapted from Taste of Home

Prep time: 10 minutes                                                                                          Cook time: 40-45 minutes
Total time: 1 hour                                                                                                 Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 2 cups or 4-6 slices of old bread (I used multigrain bread)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 medium sized eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon of good quality Jam (I used strawberry jam)
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon powder
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 overripe bananas (about half cup)
• 1½ tablespoon of cashews and raisins, chopped
• 1 cup custard of your choice for serving on top

Cooking Directions

1. In a saucepan heat the milk long with the sugar and butter until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts. Switching off the heat add the cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and the jam to the milk. Mix well and keep aside for the milk to cool down a bit.
2. Meanwhile roughly cube the slices of bread and place them in a 8 inch iron skillet.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 ° F.
4. Once the milk has cooled down a bit, beat in the eggs into the mixture and pour the milk-egg batter over the skillet of bread cubes and press the bread cubes into it to help them soak up the liquid. (If you have the time, cover the skillet and allow the mixture to stand as it is for 30 minutes or so before putting it in the oven.)
5. Finally scoop out lumps of the overripe banana and place it all over the surface, garnish with the chopped dry fruits and bake uncovered in the preheat over for 30 minutes. Then increasing the temperature to 375 ° F bake another 10-15 minutes till the surface is nicely browned and a knife inserted comes out clean.
6. While the pudding is getting baked prepare a custard of your choice. While my to-go custard recipe is the one using custard powder, when serving bread pudding as a dessert I occasionally top it with a variant of Zabaglione wherein I skip the alcohol and just add vanilla essence to the custard.

Now doesn't that look more delicious than a breakfast of bread, butter, jam...  milk eggs and banana ???