St Alban’s Bread and Butter Pudding
Every month in her Cape Town kitchen, Grazia Barletta prepares a recipe inspired by the saints, and shares it with our readers in text and photos taken exclusively for The Southern Cross by the chef herself.
Saint Alban lived in the early 3rd century in the Roman city of Verulamium where he worked, just down the hill from where the cathedral stands today in the modern-day city of St Albans in England.
One day St Alban gave shelter to a stranger fleeing from persecution. This stranger was a Christian priest, now known as Amphibalus. While sheltering the priest, Alban was inspired by how important faith was to the priest and asked to be instructed about Christianity in order to accept the faith.
Soon the Roman authorities caught up with Amphibalus. However, Alban’s newfound faith would not allow him to let the authorities arrest the priest. Instead, Alban swapped clothes with Amphibalus and was arrested, allowing the priest to escape. Alban refused to renounce his beliefs and the magistrate ordered that he should receive the punishment intended for the escaped priest. Upon this ruling, Alban was led out of Verulamium and up the hillside where he was beheaded.
The feast day of the patron of converts, refugees and torture victims is on June 22.
Alban is honoured as Britain’s first saint, and his hillside grave became a place of pilgrimage. This story of an ordinary man doing an extraordinary thing has endured to this day. The cathedral of St Albans, a pretty town in Hertfordshire, has a shrine that is said to contain some of his bones. I took the photo at left on a recent visit there.
What better way to celebrate St Alban than with delicious bread and butter pudding? This typical English dessert is comforting; custardy on the inside, golden and buttery on top. It is served with custard or vanilla ice cream.
The recipe uses eight heaped cups of white bread, preferably slightly stale, and cut into cubes or just torn into pieces.
Although the classic version uses plain white bread, you can make this with any bread of choice – like raisin bread, brioche or even hot cross buns. One can also use pre-sliced white bread. For this recipe, I used challah bread.
Preparation and baking: 35 minutes. Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 8 heaped cups of white bread • 1 cup sultanas or raisins • 3 eggs • 1 ½ cups of full-cream milk • 1 cup heavy/thickened cream • 3 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
- ½ cup white sugar • 1 tsp cinnamon powder
Extra:
- 2 tbsp melted butter for top pre-baking
- Icing sugar for dusting
Preparation:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Briefly whisk eggs in a large bowl. Add the milk, cream, butter, sugar and cinnamon, and whisk.
- Add bread and raisins, mix briefly, and set aside for 3 minutes to allow the egg mixture to soak through the bread.
- Pour into a baking dish. If you have lots of raisins on the surface, push them below.
- Drizzle melted butter over the mixture, then bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden on top and the inside is set but still wobbly (poke to check).
- Once out of the oven, let rest for a few minutes then dust with icing sugar, and serve topped with custard or ice cream.
- Enjoy with a prayer to St Alban!
Every month in her Cape Town kitchen, Grazia Barletta prepares a recipe inspired by the saints, and shares it with our readers in text and photos taken exclusively for The Southern Cross by the chef herself.
Grazia Barletta is an author, book designer, and food photographer & stylist. She can be contacted at
Follow her blog at www.momentswithgrazia.com and connect with Grazia on Facebook/Instagram: momentswithgrazia
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