Bread and butter pudding - again!

Now we have new enthusiastically laying hens my thoughts keep turning to things to do with all these lovely brown eggs we're getting.

I don't do weekday puddings, but a weekend wouldn't be a weekend without one (just as Sunday mornings aren't proper without pancakes).

So this weekend found me heading in the direction of the bread and butter pudding yet again, having plenty of eggs, various bits of sliced white from the local bakery and, serendipitously, a pot of double cream.

This time I did the jam sandwich method. You begin by rootling around in the fridge or the cupboard for suitable jam. Marmalade is also more than suitable and actually preferable in many cases, but not this one as I had marmalade-haters (who'd have thought there's such a thing?) to feed.

This time I found a pot of Andrew's strawberry and rhubarb jam, a jam of such stupendous deliciousness I did toy with the idea of not using it, but I knew it would be fabulous.

What you do is butter the bread and make rounds of jam sandwiches and cut into pretty triangles, enough to fill your dish in a single layer (squeeze them in like passengers in economy class - they don't need to breathe).

I put them pointy side up, but it's not really vital. If you like the crusty bits to be crusty try the other way up or alternate, whatever.

Next empty the 284 ml pot cream into a bowl or jug, fill the pot up again with milk and add that to the cream. Crack in three eggs and whisk it all together with two tablespoons of golden caster sugar.

Now add a tot of whiskey. This is fabulous in the marmalade version of the pud. Go mad and add two tots if you wish. I restrained myself to one as there were children present. Whisk the creamy whiskey mixture and then sniff. It smells like fabulous egg nog. Pour over the sandwiches in the dish and press down.

I hadn't enough of this lovely mixture to quite fill the dish and cover the sandwiches, so I whisked up another egg and half a pot of milk and poured that over too. It doesn't seem to mind this sort of treatment thankfully. I have been known to forget to add the sugar and then have to stir that in afterwards too. Press the sandwiches down into the creamy custard and leave it to stand for about an hour. It is vital the bread has time to soak up the yummy custard.

Heat the oven to Gas mark 4, sprinkle the pudding with a handful of soft brown sugar and bake until the middle is just set and the sugar had caramelised to a lovely crunchy golden brown.

Serve with single cream or ice cream.