Jello Recipes
Jello Bread Pudding with Mixed Berries
Summer puddings and fruit puddings are both very popular in England and refreshing summer bread pudding recipes are perfect on hot days. This delicious bread pudding recipe can be made either in one large dish or in 10 individual serving dishes.
The addition of jello gives a slightly different texture than bread pudding recipes normally have and it holds the dessert together perfectly so you can invert the bread pudding on to plates without worrying that some of it will stay behind, stuck in the dish! The lemon zest adds another flavor dimension as well as drawing out the fruit juices especially well. You can use whichever combination of berries you like. Boysenberries, although not always available, go well in this summer bread pudding recipe.
This bread pudding recipe needs to be left overnight in the refrigerator, so that the fruit juices can permeate all the bread, coloring it and flavoring it. So obviously you will have to make this jello bread pudding the day before you want to serve it. If you want to make something special, this is a really good dessert. The ingredients are widely available, as long as you can get fresh berries, and you can use any red berry jello you want.
Summer Bread Pudding with Jello
Ingredients -
1 large white organic loaf, in thick slices, crusts removed
3 lbs mixed red summer berries (e.g. raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, redcurrants, blackberries and cherries)
Zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
1 cup sugar
1/2 package jello, any red berry flavor
Extra berries for garnish
Preparation:
Wash and pick over the fruit. Discard bad berries, cherry stones, and stalks.
Butter the inside of a 3-pint pudding dish. Line the dish with the sliced bread, overlapping each slice. Press the edges together.
Bring the berries, sugar and lemon zest to a gentle simmer for 5 minutes or until the sugar dissolves and the fruit starts to release juice. Use a non-reactive pan for this.
Reserve about ¾ cup of the juice and put it to one side to cool. Pour the rest of the fruit and juice into the bread-lined dish. Seal the top with more overlapping bread slices.
Make up the jello according to the package instructions (using half the water, because you are using half the jello) but using half of the reserved fruit juice as well as the water. Keep the rest of the fruit juice in the refrigerator.
Slowly pour the jello over the whole pudding. Cover the bread with a small, flat plate, which fits inside the dish, and weigh it down with a very heavy jar or at least 3 lbs of weight.
Leave the bread pudding in the refrigerator overnight. The weight will make the juice bleed all the way through and stain everything red.
Slide a flexible spatula between the bread and the dish to loosen the pudding and invert it on to a serving plate. Use the reserved juice to color any areas, which are still white rather than red.
Garnish with berries and serve.
(Serves 10)
Photo Description:
Bread pudding is a very English dessert and this wonderfully colored jello bread pudding is simple to make and looks splendid. You can tell from the photo how juicy and refreshing this bread pudding will taste and the fresh berries make it look enormously appealing. This is a great jello recipe to make if you are having a garden party or a similar outdoors get-together because it looks so elegant and tastes so delicious. Many people have never tasted homemade bread pudding and they have really missed out on a treat.
History of Bread Pudding
The word pudding means different things in the UK and the United States. You might be familiar with jello pudding and jello instant pudding, which is a light, fluffy, mousse-like dessert you make by adding milk to a jello pudding mix. Pudding is often thick and custard-like and you can make it with a pudding mix or you can make your own pudding from scratch.
In the UK, a pudding is usually any dessert, but it can also mean a savory dish. There are savory puddings and sweet ones in the UK. According to the UK definition, a pudding usually contains bread, pastry, or suet, which is a type of animal fat.
Types of Puddings
Puddings have been made since medieval times and very early ones were like sausages. In the 1600s, British puddings were meat-based and also contained fruit, sugar, nuts, and flour. They were packaged in an animal fat and flour-based dough and then boiled in a bag or mold. The word "pudding" actually referred to all boiled dishes at one point.
In France, a pudding used to be a raisin, rum, orange, rum, milk and bread mixture. Yorkshire pudding is popular in the UK and that is made with flour, milk, eggs, and beef drippings. It is served alongside roast beef. Steak and kidney puddings are meat pies in a soft suet-based crust. Rice pudding is made with tapioca and rice.
Bread pudding, or "poor man's pudding" as it was known, dates back to the 1200s. It was a way of using up stale bread. The bread would be soaked in water or milk, then butter, fruit, spices and sugar would be added. The mixture was then baked. Sometimes the bread pudding was served in a "sop" which was a hollowed out loaf of bread. A lot of modern dishes can be traced back to the English Victorian era. Charles Dickens wrote about plum pudding in "A Christmas Carol" and the British still use the word "pudding" to refer to a sweetened cake-like or bread-based mixture.
Today's Puddings
People in the United States in the 1840s would thicken custard-based desserts using cornstarch or custard powder, and this thick custard was then flavored with other ingredients, which is why the word "pudding" now means what it does. Bread pudding today is made by combining bread with berries and sugar. Jello bread pudding is a great twist on the classic recipe because the texture of jello is perfect with bread pudding and it does wonders for the texture of this dish too. It is best to use red jello for making summer bread pudding with jello because the color will be greatly enhanced and the red jello flavors also go nicely with the berries used in this recipe.
