Irish cream bread and butter pudding with chocolate sauce

James shows us how to warm up with an indulgently naughty boozy bread and butter pudding covered in chocolate sauce... mmm!

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

100g softened butter
1/2 white farmhouse loaf bread, sliced
60g sultanas
3 large egg yolks and 2 whole eggs
40g caster sugar
300ml double cream
300ml milk
2 drops vanilla extract
6 tbsp Irish cream liqueur, such as Baileys
15g demerara sugar, to sprinkle
3 tsp apricot jam
Clotted cream, to serve

For the chocolate sauce:

40g dark chocolate broken into pieces
150ml double cream

Method

1. Heat the cream in a saucepan and add the chocolate pieces. Lower the heat and stir to combine.

2. Butter a 1.5-litre ovenproof dish. Spread the bread slices with the remaining butter on both sides. Remove the crusts from the bread and cut into triangles then overlap layers of bread with the sultanas into the greased dish. Finish the top layer with bread only (no sultanas).

3. Beat the egg yolks, whole eggs, and sugar together in a large bowl until creamy. Beat in the cream, milk, vanilla extract and Irish cream.

4. Pour the mix over the bread, and press down the bread slices with your fingers until it is submerged. Leave to stand for 20 minutes, so the bread soaks up the custard.

5. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.

6. Place the dish in a larger dish, half-filled with water. Sprinkle with Demerara sugar and bake for 35-40 minutes until golden.

7. A few minutes before removing the pudding from the oven, warm up the jam in a small pan until runny. With a pastry brush, dab the jam glaze over the pudding.

8. Leave to stand to cool slightly before serving with a drizzle of chocolate sauce, a spoonful of clotted cream and a dusting of icing sugar.