Gluten free bread pudding

This is a great variation on traditional bread pudding made with gluten free bread, cream and dried fruit. It’s perfect as it is, or you can serve it with rich vanilla ice cream. If you are looking for something a little fancier, you can also try this bread pudding with Irish cream!

Why make this recipe?

• Gluten-free version of the traditional bread pudding
• Anyone who doesn’t need to have gluten-free diet won’t be able to tell the difference, so the whole family can have this dish
• Super tasty (and filling!) pudding

My top tip on making this recipe successfully

If you have the time, leave the bread to soak up the cream mixture. It will make it much lighter and more baked together like a yummy cake!

Any specialist equipment needed?

Use a glass Pyrex dish or baking tin to make this recipe. Ideally you want slightly deeper tray or baking dish, so that you can build up the bread layers.

Ingredients & Possible Substitutions

• 7 slices gluten-free bread large slices
• 300 ml milk whole or semi
• 300 ml single cream
• 4 eggs
• 50 grams sultanas or seedless raisins or other dried fruit
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3 tablespoons caster (fine) sugar plus extra for sprinkling on top
• 3 tablespoons butter to grease your baking tin
• zest lemon and orange optional

The method – Instructions

• Prepare a glass baking dish (or a baking tin) by greasing it with butter.
• Cut the crust off the gluten free bread and spread it with butter.
• Mix together the eggs, cream, milk, sugar, vanilla essence with nutmeg and the cinnamon.
• Arrange the bread at the bottom of the dish creating single layer (and cutting & shapping the bread as you need to.
• Sprinkle the bread with about half of the sultanas (or your choice of dry fruit)
• Pour about half of the cream mixture into the baking dish to cover the bread.
• Add another layer of bread if you have any leftovers, add some more sultanas and pour over the rest of the cream.
• Finish the dish with more sugar dusting and few extra sprinkles of cinnamon.
• If you have time, leave the gluten free bread pudding to stand for the bread to soak up all the liquid. 20 minutes (or up to 1 hr) should be sufficient.
• Preheat oven to 180C or 350 F.
• Place in the oven and bake for 30 -40 minutes or until golden brown on the top.
• Serve hot with a custard or vanilla icecream.

How else you can make this recipe?

This recipe is gluten-free, but if you substitute the cream, butter and milk for a plant based cream and milk, you can also make this recipe dairy free. These days, there are some really good alternatives of plant based creams and you can pick up any plant based milk you like. The only one I’d probably not use, is coconut milk because the flavour will come through quite strongly.

What can you serve bread pudding with?

Bread pudding can be served on it’s own or you can add vanilla custard or vanilla or other creamy ice creams. Any kind of fruit coolies (thick fruit juice) would also work well. Here are some of my favourite recipes that will work perfectly with this gluten-free bread recipe.

• Sweet Apple Sauce >>

Serving size & can I scale up or down this recipe?

This recipe makes enough for 4 large portions or 6 smaller ones. You can easily scale up or down this recipe, just double up all the ingredients. When you do this, make sure that you use twice the size of the baking dish (or use two). Don’t bee tempted to use much deeper dish to make up too many layers as the bread pudding might not bake through. If you increase the dish size (double/tripple), the baking time will be the same.

Can this recipe be made in advance?

This recipe is best served straight from the oven, but you can make it perhaps a day in advance and then just warm it up.

How to store this recipe if you have any leftovers

Cover the dish and store it in the fridge after it has cooled down completely.

How to re-heat this recipe

Either take out a portion and heat it up for 30 seconds in the microwave or place the whole tray back to preheated oven (180C or 350F) for about 10 minutes.