Layers of soft bread cooked in a silky, smooth delicious custard loaded with dark chocolate and orange. Serves 3-4
Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.
Slice the bread into slices, around 1 cm thick and roughly 7cm x 4cm in size.
Next, in a microwave safe measuring jug, measure out the chocolate, butter, milk and add the double cream. Blitz in the microwave until melted. Give it 1 minute, stir, and leave for a few minutes to see if it all melts. If not, blitz again in 15 second increments.
Stir in the sugar, orange zest, vanilla and salt and then whisk in the egg.
Pour ⅓ of the chocolate custard into the base of a well buttered baking dish and cover with ½ of the bread slices. Pour over another ⅓ of the custard.
Top with remaining bread and the final ⅓ of the custard.
Cover with cling film and leave for at least one hour, or up to 48 hours in the fridge, for the bread to absorb the custard before cooking.
When you are ready to cook the pudding, preheat oven to Fan Oven 160°C/180°C/350°F/Gas 4
Remove the cling film and bake in the centre of a pre-heated oven, for about 30 – 40 minutes or until the bread slices on the top of the pudding are crispy and the custard mixture has just set. You will know it is cooked when the centre rises in a slight dome shape and feels firm, yet wobbly, to the touch.
Sieve over some icing sugar and serve hot or warm, either as is, with ice cream, cream or even some custard.
Equipment: