Mango Bread and Butter Pudding

We recently discovered that we have 2 mango trees in our garden!  Now this might seem as though we've been rather unobservant - we've lived here for a year after all - but to be fair to us, it's very hard to actually spot any mangoes on them.  We only noticed when we saw a that the trees were full of monkeys, and small green fruits were raining down into our garden.  On closer inspection we saw that they were unripe mangoes... with lots of monkey teethmarks in them!

However, as soon as we had noted what a mango tree looks like we began seeing them everywhere!  A quick cycle-ride around the Camp just picking up windfalls (plus a few that we managed to pick that weren't too high up) yielded a bowl full of fruit which has been slowly ripening in our kitchen for over a week.

A couple of days ago we got to the point where we really needed to use those which were softening fast.  Coincidentally I had just found 4 slices of sweet sliced bread in our freezer which had clearly been there for most of the year that we have been here, so I devised a recipe that could solve both problems in one delicious stroke.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, the bread really was a near-luminous yellow colour!  Much of the bread you can buy here is quite sweet (hence my own breadmaking habit) but it's perfect for puddings.

Mango Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

4 slices of bread, buttered liberally on both sides
Flesh of 1 large mango, chopped
1 3/4 cups of milk
1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cut the slices of bread in half diagonally and lay into a buttered dish, overlapping slightly.  Place slivers of mango flesh in between and around them, also tipping in any juice.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla.  If your mango is not terribly sweet then you may wish to increase the sugar to 1/2 a cup, but my mango was intoxicatingly, pungently sweet - on the verge of unpleasantness really - so I didn't feel that much sugar was necessary.

Pour the egg mixture over the bread and mango and leave it to soak in for at least an hour.  I left mine in the fridge for several hours until I was ready to cook it.

About an hour before you want to eat the pudding, place the dish into a large baking tray and fill the tray with boiling water (this is called a bain marie).  Carefully place the whole lot into a preheated oven - 160 degrees C.

Bake for 45 mins - 1 hour.  The pudding is ready when the custard is set to a gentle wobble and the edges of the bread are browned and ever so slightly crisp.

I like my B&B Pudding to be very custardy, but if you don't then just reduce the egg mixture to 2 eggs and 1 1/4 cups of milk.

I also sprinkled a little cinnamon on top of the pudding before I cooked it, but I also thought about using some slivered almonds.  I think it's a very adaptable pud.