Banana brown sugar bread & butter pudding.

I got back last night after 21 grueling hours of travel to realise I didn't have any food in the house. I'd managed to leave myself 2 cans of coconut milk in the cupboard and the frosty remains of some mango sorbet in the freezer so I went to bed hungry. Then this morning, jet lagged and idiotic, went to get some food and came back with bread, bananas and soy milk to make this, but nothing else. This pudding was my lunch and dinner.
It doesn't look the prettiest but the sauce is sticky and sweet and cooked bananas have the most amazing flavour. With the bread you get the top part all sugary and crunchy and then a cakey bottom part.


Inspired loosely by a recipe from Joy.


To serve 4 you'll need:
enough sliced white bread to fill your dish (toasted and buttered with a vegan butter substitute, I like the Pure brand), I used about 6 slices
3 tsp ground arrowroot
2 cups soy milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
2-3 bananas
2 tbsp of granulated sugar with 1 tbsp of cinnamon mixed into it, to top.


Lightly toast each slice of bread and butter on one side.
Cut it into diagonal pieces and arrange pointy side up in your dish.
Put the arrowroot, brown sugar and soy milk into a pan and gently bring to the boil while stirring. It should go an amazing brown colour and smell delicious. Once it's boiled, turn down the heat slightly and keep stirring for another few minutes. Make sure there are no little arrowroot lumps floating about.
Turn off the heat and pour the soy milk mix over the bread, you don't need to cover each slice, just fill the base of the dish and maybe drip a bit over the bread.
Slice up your bananas and wedge them in-between the slices, push some down into the milky part, smoosh them all in.
Push the bread and bananas around a bit with your fingers so that most of the bananas have a little sauce on them and the base of all the slices are able to soak up some of the liquid.


Put into the oven at 350F/180C/Gas mark 4 for about 25-30 minutes. When you take it out some of the banana will look a little dried so grab a spoon or some tongs and turn them around in the liquid then put back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes. When you take it out the second time it should look like this:
YUMMERZ. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the whole thing and leave it to cool, let it get itself together so that the liquidy part has a chance to settle down. Nobody wants runny pudding.
Use a knife to cut it, serving spoons are no good here.
See? I told you it's not pretty, but it is totally delicious.
The squidgy parts are my favourite.


I'm going to start uploading a version of recipes that you can print/save so you don't have to scroll through the whole post making notes on your hands (is it just me that does that?) Just click on it to get the big version, then right-click and save!