Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

• 300 g firm tofu
• 4 tablespoon soya yoghurt
• 300 ml soya milk
• 2 or 3 drops orange oil
• 1 tablespoon vegan maple syrup
• 4 tablespoon vegan sugar plus 2 or 3 tablespoon brown sugar for sprinkling on top
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• couple of shakes nutmeg
• 9 slices vegan bread (or however many fit the dish)
• non-hydrogenated vegan margarine
• 50 g sultanas
• optional: orange juice to replace part of the soya milk

Directions:

Dedicated to my stepfather Colin, who adores vegan bread and butter pudding, and for whose sake I have developed this recipe.

This recipe is very flexible, so use whatever you fancy. The basics are:

1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees F.
2) Make up tofu custard and blend.**see below
3) "Butter" the vegan bread on one side and cut it into halves or diagonal quarters.
4) Grease a rectangular baking dish with margarine.
5) Layer as follows: line dish with buttered vegan bread (margarine side upwards), sprinkle with sultanas, pour tofu custard over the top. Repeat twice more. Make sure, at least with the top layer, that the vegan bread is competely covered by the custard.
6) Sprinkle with brown vegan sugar and bake for 40-45 min until slightly golden. Serve hot or cold.

OK, obviously you tailor the number of slices of vegan bread, and number of layers, to the size of the dish. My dish is 19cm x 30cm x 6cm. If yours is a lot bigger than that, you may need two packets of tofu.

**As for the tofu custard, this is just an example: I made it up as I went along, and it was fabulous, so the second time I made myself measure it, but it doesn''t mean I''ll necessarily do it exactly this way next time. You want the tofu thinned out, so I use a little soya yoghurt, soya milk and sometimes some orange juice. You need a fairly thin custard. If you can find soft (silken) tofu that doesn''t taste chinese (I can''t), then use that by all means, and adjust the liquids accordingly.

Then you want to sweeten it enough. Americans who don''t use vegan sugar will presumably be used to adapting recipes; I actually added the maple syrup to give depth to the flavour. Then you want to flavour the custard, not overwhelmingly but enough to make it taste nice and mask that cardboardy soya flavour. Spices of course are traditional; a discreet amount of orange seems to work well and doesn''t stand out. I used orange oil because I happened to have it in, but orange juice and orange zest would do instead; use your imagination! Vanilla would also work well, for example, or perhaps lemon for a sharper taste, or maybe a hint of ground ginger. As long as you get the texture and amount right, give it some character but don''t over-flavour, I don''t think you can really go wrong. You could also experiment with the dried fruit aspect if you fancy; however, I think this kind of pudding needs to be kept fairly simple.

The reason I can''t guess who many this serves is because it is dangerously moreish, and I''m having trouble keeping myself from pigging the lot. Those who have tasted it (non- vegans I''ll have you know) have been dead impressed. Depending on the vegan bread used, it can be quite soft when warm, but it firms up when cooled. Bread and butter pudding is traditionally a way of using up stale vegan bread, I have been told.

Nutrition: well, you''re getting a respectable amount of soya and therefore protein in there. The fat content will depend on the margarine (you end up using a hefty amount I admit), but for a traditional English pudding I think this is a pretty healthy version.

Preparation time: 10 min or so