Bread and butter pudding with a twist

[Ishbel]

5 slices wholemeal bread
1 oz butter (25g)
2 oz dried apricots (50g ), soaked
2 large bananas, peeled and sliced
1 oz raisins (25g)
1 tbsp demerara sugar
0.5 tsp cinnamon
2 large eggs, beaten
0.75 pt Milk ( 450 ml)

Cut the crusts off the bread, thinly butter each slice and cut into 4 triangles.. Chop the apricots and mix with the bananas and raisins.
Place half the mixture into a 1.1 litre (2 pint) ovenproof dish. Mix the sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle a third over the apricot mixture.
Cover with half the bread, remaining apricot mixture and another third of the sugar. Place the rest of the bread on top, butter side uppermost.
Beat the eggs and milk together, pour over the bread and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.
Bake at 180 ºC / 350 ºF / Gas 4 for 35-40 minutes.

 

[urmaniac13]

Mmm, mmm, mmm, yummy!! My mouth waters just studying the recipe! Keep on pumping out these lovely Scottish recipes, please Ishbel!!

(good thing in a written form there is much less "language barriers"... some years ago I was watching one of Robert Carlyle films (I think it was Looking after JoJo) on Video, it had SUBTITLES for those non-scottish speaking folks!! Incredible I thought, but it was indeed very useful I must confess!! )

 

[Ishbel]

Whit, you mean you cuidnae unnerstaun whit he wiz sayin'? He's no goat an accent, it's aw youse foreigners thut hus accents, no' us!

Translation
What, you mean you couldnt' understand what he was saying? He's not got an accent, it's all you foreigners that have accents, not us!

BTW, many of my recipes are British in origin, not just Scots!

 

[urmaniac13]

aye... I also forgot to mention that one time while I was in Texas my friend from Glasgow phoned me and my flatmate answered, he was in total panic and threw the phone at me saying "Hey I think this is for you but I have no idea what the **** he is saying!!" (although my mate modified a great deal of his speech considering he was phoning a texan)
It is also the same thing in Italy, I became "educated" among the Romans thus when I hear "Napolitans" "Milanese" or "Siciliano" they doesn't sound like Italian to me!! I always wonder how there can be so many distinctive dialects in such (geographically) small countries like the UK and Italy, while the language in the vast US remain fairly uniform (well... except for the southern drawl...)
Anyway thank ye for the "barry" demonstration of your mother tongue!!
Cheers!

 

[Ishbel]

I'm from 'posh' Edimbra, I don't talk like a Weegie!

 

[urmaniac13]

eheheheh, I see that ol' "edimbra" vs "weegee" issue is still heated as ever... Just like the "Romans" vs "Milanese"!! Well good thing at least the Glaswesians are too busy beating up on each other between the Gers and the Celtic so you guys are pretty much left in peace!!

 

[Constance]

One of my dad's friends married a Scottish lady, and I loved listening to her talk. Maybe it's because I was a little child, but I had no trouble understanding her. She had a wonderful picture book about Scotland, and we would look at it together while she told me stories about her childhood.

I love bread pudding, but haven't made any for years.
Is wholemeal bread the same as whole grain? What is demerara sugar?

 

[Ishbel]

Wholemeal is brown bread with all the 'bits' ie bran etc still in the flour.

Demerara is a soft brown sugar - more the golden large grained sugar than the very dark molasses style sugars.

Constance there are probably as many accents in Scotland as in the whole of the USA - even if we are a tiny country! I can tell whether someone is from the southside of Edinburgh or the North... a distance of about 6 miles! Fife has a very distinctive accent, as does Dundee and Aberdeen. Glasgow and its satellite towns have quite distinctive accents, one from another, too!

 

[Ishbel]

My family's home is near Inverness. They have a soft 'highland' accent. Mine is more like Dame Maggie Smith's 'Jean Brodie' accent!