White chocolate and Chai proved themselves winning bed-fellows in a previous chocolate fondue experiment (try it using ice cream waffle cones or madeleines to dip in….). I thought I’d give it another go, now that I had a packet of Chai teabags taking up space in the cupboard.

This recipe turned out to be super-easy to remember when I realised that by happy coincidence, pretty much all the ingredients came in quantities of 2 or 200. May prove a useful rule of thumb when trying to use up any stale bread in this way.

In this variant of a bread pudding, I brewed a super-strong cup of Chai and used this to soak the stale bread. (OK, I broke the use-two rule slightly here, using 4 tea bags to around 200ml of water. Will you let me have that one?). Don’t go out and buy Chai tea bags especially, your favourite blend of warming spices will work just as well (cinnamon, cardamom….).

I added another slightly niche ingredient – Speculoos spread. I’ve no idea if this is popular in France but this is where I found it. Best described as spreadable biscuit, it’s delicious on bread or toast as a treat but the original purchase was inspired by a fondue recommendation (starting to feel a common theme here…). I’ve never actually got round to trying it as a dessert fondue but I can imagine it would be divine. Again, don’t feel the need to hunt it down especially for this recipe. You could easily omit it or substitute with something like a salted caramel spread (maybe use a little less than the 200g if you go with this option as I’d guess it might be a bit too sweet with the white chocolate). I wouldn’t swap it for chocolate spread as I think this would drown the delicate Chai spices. You want something more vanilla-y or creamy.

Serves 8-10 as a dessert, afternoon tea or snack on the move

Equipment

1. Oven-proof dish approx. 15x25cm and 10cm deep
2. Large mixing bowl

Ingredients

Stale Bread, Croissants or bit of both	200	grams
Chai Tea Bags	4
White Chocolate	200	grams
Speculoos Spread (optional)	200	grams
Mixed Berries (frozen work well)	200	grams
Milk	200	millilitres
Eggs	2
Butter (optional)	20	grams

 

Method

1. Brew a super-strong cup of Chai (I did 4 bags to 200ml of water but it could have taken more). Leave to steep for around 5 minutes, I think any longer and it will start to stew and take on a bitter flavour.
2. Slice the bread or stale pastries into small cubes and place in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the berries. Frozen work really well here as they tend to release lots of juices as they defrost which will soak into the bread.
4. Pour over the Chai, no need to worry if it’s still warm.
5. Cut the white chocolate into small chunks. Melt around two-thirds of it in a glass bowl over gently simmering water. Remember it’s critical that no water gets into the chocolate else it will turn into a grainy paste from which there is no return.
6. Add the Speculoos or any other spread you are using and stir gently until both chocolate and spread are melted and combined. (Alternatively you could try melting the Speculoos on its own and stirring through the dish at the end to give ‘seams’ of biscuity delight.)
7. Pour the melted chocolate mixture over the berry-bread-chai mixture.
8. Add the eggs
9. Add the milk.
10. Add the reserved chocolate chunks and stir until just combined. Enthusiastic mixing tends to lead to a denser pudding as the bread will collapse completely.
11. Leave for around 20 minutes to allow the juices to soak into the bread. How long depends really on just how hard the bread was. If you have used stale croissants you can probably get straight on with cooking.
12. Grease your dish and pour in the mixture, spreading in an even layer.
13. If you wanted to try they ‘seams of biscuit’ suggestion (see number 6), now is the time to loosely cut in the Speculoos.
14. If you want to get fancy, you could decorate the top with slices of any other bakery goods which you need rid of. It turns out that there is a way of slicing and arranging croissants to make them look a bit like a Christmas tree, if that’s relevant and you like that sort of thing.
15. Dot the top with butter (optional really but if you have decorated with any stale pastry it’s probably less optional as this should avoid the top burning).
16. Bake in a hot-ish (180c oven) for around 40 minutes, using the usual knife-comes-out-clean test to check it is cooked.
17. Serve warm or cold, with a little ice cream, cream or more berries as you wish.
18. Will freeze well and could easily be cut into individual portions for picnics or eating on the move.