Home › Puddings and Pudding Sauces › Bread Pudding Baked in Cups
Bread Pudding Baked in Cups
To one and one-half cups scalded milk, add one and one-half tablespoonfuls corn starch dissolved in two tablespoonfuls milk and stir until thickened. Add yolks two eggs beaten with one-quarter cup sugar, few grains salt, one teaspoonful butter, and one-quarter cup seeded raisins. Pour mixture over one cup stale, fine bread crumbs divided equally in buttered custard cups. Stand in hot water, and bake in moderate oven until custard is set. Beat whites of two eggs very stiff, then add two tablespoonfuls powdered sugar and put a portion of the meringue over each cup. Bake until lightly browned, serve hot or cold.
A small baked custard stretched with cornstarch and stale bread, made in individual cups. The instructions are complete but assume you know what "moderate" and "set" mean.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven here is 325-350F. Custards are more forgiving at the lower end; 325F gives a smoother set with less chance of curdling at the edges.
- The water bath"Stand in hot water" means set the filled cups in a deep pan and pour boiling water in to reach halfway up their sides. The water is what keeps the custard from breaking, so do not skip it or fill it shallow.
- Judging "set"Expect 25-35 minutes for standard 6 oz custard cups. The custard is done when the edges are firm and the center still trembles as a single mass when the cup is nudged; a knife inserted off-center comes out clean. Carryover heat finishes the middle.
- Cook the cornstarch properlyAfter adding the slurry to the scalded milk, keep it over heat and stir until it thickens and loses any raw starch taste, roughly a minute at a bare simmer. Let it cool slightly before whisking in the yolks, or add the hot milk to the yolks a spoonful at a time to avoid scrambling them.
- Bread crumbs"Stale, fine bread crumbs" means soft crumbs rubbed from day-old bread, not the dry sandy crumbs sold for coating. Dry packaged crumbs will absorb far more liquid and give a pasty result.
- Meringue stageReturn the cups to the oven only after the custard is set. At 350-400F the meringue browns in 5-10 minutes; watch it rather than timing it. Because it is baked only until lightly coloured, the meringue may not reach a pasteurising temperature all the way through, so if serving cold, keep it refrigerated and eat it the same day.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means raisins from which the seeds have been removed, as distinct from naturally seedless varieties. Ordinary seedless raisins are the direct substitute; plumping them briefly in hot water keeps them from drawing moisture out of the custard.
- YieldAbout four 6 oz cups, or six smaller ramekins. Powdered sugar dissolves quickly into stiff whites; superfine granulated works as well.
Bread pudding was a standard use for stale loaves at a time when little edible was thrown out, and turn-of-the-century cookbooks are full of variations that dress the economy up as a dessert. Baking it in individual custard cups with a meringue cap is the genteel version: the same crumbs and milk, but portioned, water-bathed and browned so it arrives at the table looking like a made dish rather than a salvage operation. Cornstarch appears often in American recipes of this period as a way to firm up custards with fewer eggs.