Pear and Star Anise Croissant Pudding

This is an amalgam of puddings: a classic recipe, adapted by me and inspired by Jason Atherton, the head chef at Maze.

Some time ago I started making bread and butter puddings, however the problem is with something like this that people have such vivid memories of their childhood puddings that nothing you do can ever come close! I therefore decided to ponce it up a bit, ditching the crusty old bread in favour of croissants and mixing them with a chocolate custard and amaretto soaked raisins.

Then I bought the Maze cook book and read Jason Atherton's recipe for Pear and Star Anise bread and butter pudding. The combination of the pear with the aniseed flavour was fantastic so I decided to nick it and use it with my croissant base. I love the results and it's a very easy recipe that I strongly advise anyone to try out themselves!

This recipe will make 4 portions.

For the pears
In a deep saucepan add 250g caster sugar and 500ml water and mix well. Drop in 2 star anise and bring the mixture to a simmer then reduce the heat, keeping the mixtre hot but not bubbling. Add 2 pears which have been peeled, cut in half and had their cores removed and poach for around 25 minutes. You may find that the pears float up to the surface so you can weigh them down with a saucer.

For the puddings

Preheat the oven to 120c.

Take 4 croissants and tear into small pieces, divide half of the pieces between 4 deep ramekins (you could make one large pudding if you don't have any ramekins).

Remove the pears from the poaching liqour and slice into 2mm thick strips. Place the strips of pear on top of the croissant in the ramekins then top with the remaining croissant pieces.

In a bowl whisk together 120g sugar, 250ml double cream and 2 large eggs. Pour this mixture into the ramekins and then leave them to allow the croissant to soak up the cream mixture, then top them up as much as possible.

Cook the puddings for around 18-20 minutes until the custard is set.

I like to serve the puddings by placing the ramekins on a plate then placing another little bowl of ice cream* next to them. If you plonked the ice cream on top of the hot pudding it would melt by the time you got it to the table, this way you can add the cold ice cream to the hot pudding yourself, the contrast is wonderfully decadent!



* - the ice cream I use is a caramel ripple with honeycomb pieces. If you have an ice cream maker you can make the base yourself (I'll write some more on ice creams at some point) however an easy alternative would be to take a good vanilla ice cream, let it soften BUT NOT MELT and then stir in caramel (either use the old condensed milk trick or you can now buy tins of ready made caramel) and a smashed up Crunchie bar (you'll find it will smash better if you freeze it for 30 minutes before hand) and return it to the freezer.

Sugarlicious.