Bread and Butter Pudding - With Mangoes!!

 

Mango- the insanely delicious fruit.!!  I have been eying  luscious mangoes on roadside carts, the aisles in the supermarket and been wanting to make a dessert or cake with it. The season is zooming past and I haven't been able to make any desserts from my mango-based dessert wish list. Real life, with kids, work, maid troubles taking up a lot of my time and mind space. Yeah, I know I have been cribbing about this way too much, but hey, guys, have a heart!! Having food on the mind all the time and not being able to dish them up is hardly the perfect formula towards being a happy foodie..

I started taking pics of my desserts only after I started to blog. I was previously taking pics of only my cakes, to be put up on my Picasa album.  I have made the Bread and Butter pudding a few times earlier, but this time I tried it with mango and baked it in a Bain-Marie( a water- bath).Could not resist the addition of mangoes to this classic, making it  a Bread and Butter pudding- with Mangoes.

The result was a delicious, crispy - moist pudding with pieces of chopped mango in between the layers, topped with pistachio flakes. Though he did not hugely relish the mango pieces in the pudding, my son(not much of a fruit person) said 'It is good, no, better than good, its exceptional'. Lol! Hubby, a man of few words, gave a few murmurs of praise, took a second serving...


I have adapted this recipe from the magazine Good Housekeeping, a recipe from pastry Chef Kishi Arora. I have made a few modifications here. My oven being a small one, the challenge here for me was to make this dessert in a tin which would fit inside another tin, allowing space for the hot water around the inner tin. Oh, well, I manged it, as this was for just hubby and kids. Gotta buy a bigger oven soon, to feed my elephantine sweet tooth, once I get off my diet:-))


Here is what I did, after halving the original quantities.

Ingredients: 
4 slices of bread(I have used whole wheat)
2 Eggs(slightly less than this should work just fine, work out the Math!!)
1/14 cup milk(I have used low fat milk)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 tbspn vanilla essence
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
!/4 cup chopped mangoes
2 generous tablespoons pistachio flakes

Method: Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Grease an oven proof baking dish.( I have used a small square approximately 3 cup capacity tin).

2. Spread both sides of the bread with butter. Arrange them in the dish with pieces of mango in between the slices. The slices must overlap.

3. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla, until well combined and a little frothy. Pour this over the bread in the baking dish and allow it to steep for about 10 minutes.

4. Place the dish in a larger baking tray. Pour hot water into the tray so it comes about halfway up the sides of the baking dish and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.  

5. The pudding is done when the top is golden brown and crispy, but a bit wobbly when you give the dish a shake.

6.Let it stand for about 5 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla custard if you like.

I made the mistake of adding the pistachio flakes before baking as they browned a lil too much. It would be a better idea to garnish the pudding once out of the oven.

This recipe goes to Suma's Baking from a Book event and to Champa's weekly Bake Off.