Bread Pudding - Wet Nelly

When you find a pudding with such an extraordinary name, don't you just have to make it to see what it's like?   "Wet Nelly" is what old-fashioned bread pudding is known as in Liverpool, and is also the name of James Bond's submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me!  Always up for a challenge, I downloaded a National Trust recipe, which seemed to me to be the easiest, and had a go.....   I'll be the first to say that the result looked unexciting, but it was delicious hot, with lashings of custard.   Then it cooled down, and I cut it into large chunky pieces, and left it out to get cold.  It was extraordinary - bits kept disappearing....  the culprit was one of my sons, who found it extremely moreish and made excuses to keep passing the plate.  The ultimate accolade was via a sweet-toothed friend, who downed four pieces without apparent effort, and would probably have had a couple more, if I had been pressing!

Note that the bread has to be soaked for at least four hours/overnight - you want to achieve a high level of stodge!

Wet Nelly - Bread Pudding 

Wet Nelly

1 loaf of white bread (uncut)
4oz/110g butter
5oz/140g brown sugar
¾ pint milk  

1lb/500g mixed fruit
1 tbsp mixed spice
3 medium eggs

First, cut the crust off the bread and cut the bread into large cubes.  Put it all into a bowl and pour over the milk.  Cover and leave to soak at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.   

Put the oven to 180 deg C, and line an oblong roasting tin with parchment (the original recipe said only to grease it, but that didn’t quite work).    Beat together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and beat again.   Then add all the other ingredients, mix together well and pour into a greased deep sided roasting tin.
Bake for approx 1 - 1 ¼ hours until soft but springy to the touch.