Bread Pudding Cake

By Chef Thobeka Shangase

I love cake, but I hate bread pudding. There’s something about soggy bread that just makes my stomach turn.  But we serve a lot of bread pudding where I work and so I am forced to be around bread pudding a lot. I’ve tried bread pudding from donuts, thinking I love donuts so I might like it with donuts, no, I hated it.

My problem with bread pudding is its texture, the texture is just strange and unpleasant to me after all it is soggy bread. So if I can change the texture of bread pudding, I could like it. I think.

When I hate a food, like as much as I hate bread pudding, I feel the need to find a way to make it better so I can somehow be able to keep it down. Bread pudding has been one of those foods that have been like a monkey on my back. No matter what I have tried with it, it hasn’t been good to me, others have loved it but I haven’t liked it. I have yet to conquer the Bread Pudding Demon.  
So when I had the sudden idea of creating a bread pudding that eats like a cake, you wouldn’t believe my excitement. My toes were tingling I was so excited.

Initially I thought of making a cake batter and then layering the batter with bread soaked in egg custard in a baking tin and bake it all together, so the bread would bake into the cake and meld into one almost like a crumb cake but a bread pudding cake. The result was great but the bread pudding was missing its signature moist, pudding-ness. But this is an idea I will have to explore further later because it promising to me and it has potential.

I decided to try and simplify things, take things back a notch and think home cooking instead of restaurant cooking. I decided to take the bread out of the equation completely and use an alternative; I still wanted a cake so I thought of using a Madeira loaf or pound cake. This makes complete sense because for trifles I like using Madeira cake because it’s dense and it tastes great with custard, it can take a lot of moisture. So that was the base of my bread pudding cake.
I love it when a good idea comes together.

Bread Pudding Cake

1 loaf vanilla Madeira Cake/Pound Cake
100ml caster sugar
440ml milk
220ml cream
5ml vanilla essence
4 eggs
 Butter
100g sultanas
100g white chocolate, chopped
Topping
100ml whipping cream
100ml sour cream
Dark chocolate

Crème Anglaise
150ml milk
150ml double cream
10ml vanilla essence
4 egg yolks
60ml caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180⁰C. Slice the cake into 1cm thick slices, place on a greased baking sheet and bake in the oven for 8 minutes, this is to just dry out the cake not to cook it, so no colour, just dry. Remove it from the oven, turn of oven and leave the cake to cool.
Cut up the cake into bite size cubes.

In a bowl whisk together the eggs, cream, milk, vanilla and sugar. Add in the cake cubes and press in to soak into the custard. Place in the fridge to soak overnight or for 2-3 hours.

Preheat oven to 160⁰C. Grease a baking dish with butter or ramekins and set aside. In the custard soaked bread, fold in the sultanas and white chocolate and then spoon in the soaked bread into the baking dish. If your using ramekins, fill it up to the top so when it cooks the bread pudding will puff up over the top nicely, kind of like a soufflé.

Place in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes. The custard should be set. Remove from the oven and place aside to cool down.

Crème Anglaise

Place the milk, cream and vanilla essence in a pot and bring it to the boil.
Put the egg yolks and caster sugar in a bowl and whisk together. Pour the hot milk into the eggs a little at a time to temper the eggs while whisking, when the eggs are warm, pour the egg mixture into the pot. Stir the custard and cook it at a low heat until it thickens, stir it continuously. The custard should coat the back of the spoon.

In a clean bowl pour in the whipping cream and whip it until it starts to foam up, add in the sour cream and continue to whip until it’s stiff and holds its shape.

In a bowl, pour in 60-80ml of crème anglaise, pour it in the middle and then move around the bowl to swirl the custard so it’s even on the plate. I used ramekins for my bread pudding cake and so I ran a knife around the inside of the cake and then I turned it upside down on top of the crème anglaise. Place a dollop of the whipped cream on top and grate over some dark chocolate on top.