Cheese Pudding

So here it is, straight out of the oven, all golden and bubbling, Cheese Pudding, a staple of Maggie's family who was given the recipe by her mother-in-law, Janie, who apparently grew up on it herself. Very informal family too, no surnames this lot. Or maybe they just want to hide their identity from militant cows.

It's certainly a dairy-lovers dream.

Cheese pudding
5 -6 slices of bread and butter
2 eggs
a little mustard
salt pepper
1 pt/560ml milk
3-4oz/85-115g grated cheese - I used a mature cheddar
1 oz /45g breadcrumbs

Butter the bread and cut into halves diagonally, and lay in an oven-proof dish.
Beat the eggs with the milk and add the mustard and 3/4 of the grated cheese
Stir and pour the lot over the bread.
Top with the remaining cheese and the breadcrumbs

Bake in the oven for 40min-45mins at 170C/340F

And here it is on the plate - no looker, but there's an honesty to it that is appealing. Simple hearty fayre



So, what was it like?

It was a stodgy, cheesy mess and not unappealing either, exactly like a savoury bread and butter pudding, and I can see the appeal on a cold winter's night with an empty stomach, but, and I have to be honest here, it was way too stodgy.

This I believe - ok, I now know - was down to me as I used home-baked wholemeal bread which I probably cut too thickly (don't you just hate middleclass, namby-pamby values at times?). Because when I emailed Maggie to mention this she was horrified at the suggestion of using anything so wholesome, as it must be made with pre-cut white.

Apparently, the ideal garnish is a packet of Cheese and Onion Crisps (potato chips), so I guess the clues were there.

Now, on to the all important scores out of ten, a completely meaningless rating system devised by my more competitive side:

Taste: 7
Ease of making: 10
Family approval rating: 6

Which gives us a Recipe Orphan Rating (or a more snappy ROR) of 23