This is one of those things I've been meaning to make for ages, but never quite got round to it. I've been freezing my almost-stale bread for a while now in anticipation of it, but now I have an abundance of the stuff and I needed to make bread and butter pudding so that I could free up space in my freezer.
I know people say this all the time, but it's surprising that adding custard ingredients and a few spices to bread can transform it into a really tasty and satisfying pudding. The number of ways in which you could vary this are never-ending, too. You could swap the raisins for chocolate chips, take the cocoa out of the custard mix to make a plain bread and butter pudding, add some mint for a mint chocolate pudding, add some peanut butter... or peanut butter and chocolate chips... maybe even spike it with something? That way, using up stale bread will never be boring, and you'll never feel like you have to make croutons (and let's be honest, how often are you going to eat those croutons?) again.
If I were you, I would find some stale bread (even fresh bread will do) and make some of this immediately. A hot, steaming pudding is the perfect remedy to a cold night, and there are plenty of those coming up. The recipe is based on the one from The Complete Book Of Baking by Carole Clements, but I tweaked it a bit to add a few more spices and the chocolate.
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C and grease an oven proof dish.
Butter the bread and quarter the slices. Layer them over the bottom of the dish, sprinkling raisins between the layers.
Put the double cream, milk, cocoa powder, eggs, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon in a jug or mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Pour over the bread slices and tuck in any bread that's sticking out. Leave to soak for 15 mins.
Bake in the oven for 30-40 mins, or until set.
For tips on how to make this pudding lower in calories, take a look at Healthy(ish) Baking.
I'm entering this pudding into November's We Should Cocoa challenge. The challenge was started by Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Teapot, and is hosted this month by Nazima of Franglais Kitchen. Nazima has chosen bread for this month's theme, so I suppose a pudding made of chocolate and bread fits in reasonably well.
Chocolate bread and butter pudding sounds like a perfect comfort bake to me. I was amused that you had frozen the perfectly stale bread for the pudding ready for the time you wanted to make it! very organised!