“When you’re being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.”

John Cleese, Monty Python

It’s Bastille Day today, so, appropriately, we eating something ‘frenchified’.

I had French friends to stay, so in deference to them I made this classic bread and no butter (you substitute the lemon curd for butter) pudding with brioche instead of the normal English farmhouse.

One gallic Saucy Dressings tester was particularly enthusiastic, commenting that “the acidity of the raspberries cuts through the ‘breadiness’ very satisfactorily.” The lemon in the lemon curd emphasises this effect, and it’s also the reason why the acidic, fruity yoghurt goes so well, dolloped joyously over the overlapping slices of the light-as-air French bread.

Heaven!

A rather nice winter alternative to raspberries is to use dried sour cherries dehydrated with a little rosewater and unsweetened pomegranate juice. There is a similar summer/winter substitution made with our Raspberry Honeycomb Cake, where the winter version uses dried cranberries.

Recipe for tangy raspberry French pud

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 small brioche loaf (400g/14 oz)
• 120 ml/½ cup lemon curd
• 150g/5 oz raspberries (because this pudding is cooked you can use frozen raspberries, in which case add a few extra)
• 180 ml/¾ cup single cream
• 180 ml/¾ cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 3 tbsps golden caster sugar
• 1 tbsp icing sugar (optional)
• 3 eggs
• cream, ice cream, or best of all, The Collective Luscious Lemon (or mango, or passionfruit) yoghurt to serve with it

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Slice the brioche, spread it with lemon curd, and place, curd-side up, slightly overlapping, in an oven-proof dish.
3. Distribute the raspberries over the bread.
4. Whisk together the milk, cream, vanilla paste, the eggs, and two tbsps. of golden caster sugar; and pour over the bread and raspberries.
5. Cover with foil and bake for twenty minutes.
6. Remove from the oven, take off the foil, sprinkle over another tbsp of golden caster sugar. Return to the oven for another quarter of an hour.
7. Serve, dusted with a little icing sugar, together with the Luscious Lemon Yoghurt – or cream or ice cream.

Music to cook to

Try Les Moineaux de Paris.