Slow Cooker Bread Butter Pudding with Gula Melaka

Bread butter pudding is a popular dessert in many Malaysian homes, and for very good reason – it’s easy to make, appeals to the young and old, and makes use of that pesky slices of stale bread no one wants to eat anymore. All you need is some bread, raisins, and some freshly made custard. Then just sit back while the oven takes care of the rest. Oven-baked bread butter pudding is pretty good, what with the crust and all. But have you ever tried making slow cooker bread butter pudding? Our minds were blown when we made some in the Kitchen Lab. Crispy edges, deliciously moist everything else? We don’t know if we can have bread butter pudding made any other way now!

Slow cookers work by retaining moisture – making them excellent for dishes like soups, porridge, curries and anything else that doesn’t require liquid to evaporate. And they’re pretty good for making moist cakes too, like our Slow Cooker Gula Melaka Chocolate Cake recipe that’s so good we kind of wouldn’t mind a slice of some right now. Recipes that call for moisture like bread butter pudding is perfect for making in the slow cooker as well. Commonly served with cream or extra custard on the side to make up for the pudding drying in the oven, slow cooker bread butter pudding is so incredibly moist there’s no need to serve it with extra cream on the side at all. It was mouthful after mouthful of pure comfort, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

But first, a history lesson

Despite being a popular dessert in Malaysia, bread butter pudding is not a local invention. It’s actually considered a British cuisine, which makes sense what with colonialism introducing British food to Malaysian shores. The earliest recorded published recipe for bread butter pudding is in 1728 by Eliza Smith…. Just ten years shy of 300 years! That is an impressive number of years for this humble and unassuming pudding.

The basic recipe hasn’t changed all that much since then, although modern varieties may also include an assortment of nuts and other raisin-type dried fruits. We’ve kept our recipe classic, but it wouldn’t be the Butterkicap way of doing things if we didn’t localize it a little bit. And so we took out white sugar and replaced it with the much more flavourful, wholesome and local gula Melaka. The result was delicious –  moist slow cooker bread butter pudding with a hint of sweet caramel that complements but doesn’t overwhelm the entire dessert. We’re pretty sure you’re going to like the local twist we introduced to this recipe.

Let’s bring out the slow cooker and get cracking.

Ingredients

• 250g (8 slices) white bread
• 75g (2/3 cup) raisins

For the batter

• 42g (1/4 cup + 2 tbsp) packed grated coconut sugar (gula Melaka)
• 4g (1 tsp) vanilla essence
• ¼ tsp nutmeg powder
• ¼ tsp cinnamon powder
• 55g (1/4 cup) butter, melted
• 180ml (3/4 cup) cream
• 360ml (1 ½ cup) milk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 eggs

Making slow cooker bread butter pudding

1. Layer bread and raisins inside your slow cooker pot, tearing the bread in half if necessary to fill in any gaps. It doesn’t have to look perfect.

2. Add all batter ingredients to separate bowl.

3. Whisk the batter ingredients until smooth, making sure there are no remaining lumps.

4. Pour batter into the slow cooker pot, making sure to pour it over as much of the bread surface as possible.

5. Using a long spoon, gently push the bread into the batter to make sure all the bread slices have soaked up the batter liquid and is not floating. Do not press down too hard as you do not want to flatten the bread.

6. Select the ‘bake’ setting on your slow cooker with the timer set for 50 minutes. Now go watch that Netflix episode, have a shower, pick up your kid from school, etc, while the slow cooker takes care of your slow cooker bread butter pudding.
7. Your slow cooker bread butter pudding is ready when there is no liquid pooling on the top. You can also test to check it by sliding a knife into the middle of the pudding. It shouldn’t come out clean, and not wet and sticky.

The inversion

The trickiest part of making slow cooker bread butter pudding is taking it out of the pot. While you could scoop it out straight from the pot, especially if you’re not fussy with how it looks on the plate, you’re going to want to make it quite presentable if serving to guests. Getting your pudding out of the pot is not difficult, but it does need to be done with some care.

1. First, remove your pot from the slow cooker contraption.
2. Take a large flat surface, like a cutting or cake board, and place it over the mouth of the pot, making sure the board covers the entire opening.
3. Protect your hands with oven mitts. With both hands, grab the pot and the board together and gently, but swiftly turn it over to let the pudding drop onto the board.

4. Carefully remove the pot, lifting it straight up so the bread butter pudding settles onto the board.
5. Grab your serving plate (checking to make sure it’s large enough to hold the entire pudding) and place it over the pudding. Try and avoid using very heavy plates or you might end up squishing your slow cooker bread butter pudding instead.

6. Repeat step three by gently but swiftly turning over the pudding in one quick motion so it drops onto the plate.
7. Remove the board and your pudding will be the right (and more presentable) side up!

8. Serve pudding while still warm.

Extra tips

1. Bread butter pudding typically calls for stale bread, but here’s no reason why you can’t use fresh bread instead.
2. Not a fan of raisins? Feel free to leave them out.
3. Bread butter pudding is traditionally served with custard, but the slow cooker version is so moist because it doesn’t dry out so there’s no real need to. However, if you can’t eat your bread butter pudding without custard, go right ahead.
4. For extra decadence, serve your slow cooker bread butter pudding with a scoop vanilla ice cream. Just the thought of it has us shivering in delight!
5. We used the Philips all-in-one cooker which has a useful baking function. If your slow cooker only has the standard high or low temperature options, let your slow cooker bread butter pudding cook on low temperature for 3 hours. That’ll give you more than enough time to watch that movie you missed out on at the cinema!
6. Too much bread butter pudding? Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Slow cooker bread butter pudding can be served cold, or heat it up in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds, depending on the size of your slice.