Zucchini Bread Pudding — spiced courgette loaf baked in custard

i. Origin & history

The dish is the meeting of two American home-baking traditions. Bread pudding came over with British settlers as a thrift dish for stale bread — the same lineage that produced queen of puddings and summer pudding — and became a fixture of Southern and New Orleans cooking, where it is often served with a whiskey sauce. Zucchini bread is much younger: a sweet quick bread, leavened with baking soda and powder rather than yeast, that became a staple of American community cookbooks and church bake sales in the 1960s and 1970s as home vegetable gardening boomed.

Zucchini is famously prolific. A couple of plants can produce more than a household can eat, and grating the surplus into sweet loaves — which freeze well — became the classic answer. Zucchini bread pudding is the next step in that economy: what to do with the loaves that are a few days old and starting to dry out. It appears in home cooking and on the menus of farm-to-table restaurants in late summer, rather than as a dish with a single documented origin.

A note on names. Zucchini is the American (and Italian-derived) word; in Britain and Ireland the same vegetable is a courgette, and both refer to the young summer squash. The bread itself contains no detectable vegetable flavour once baked — the grated courgette is there for moisture and tenderness, much as carrot is in carrot cake, which is why it slips so easily into a sweet pudding.

ii. Why the bread must be stale

Zucchini bread is a very moist loaf: the grated vegetable is around 95 per cent water, and the oil-based batter keeps the crumb tender for days. That is excellent in a slice but a problem in a bread pudding, which depends on the bread soaking up custard and then holding its shape around it. Fresh zucchini bread is already saturated — add custard and it turns into a dense, wet paste.

The fix is to dry the cubes first. Bread that is two or three days old has lost some moisture, and a short spell in a low oven finishes the job, firming the outside of each cube so that it behaves like a sponge rather than a sponge cake. Toasted cubes absorb the custard evenly through their open crumb while their edges stay distinct, and the ones on top crisp and caramelise in the oven.

The custard ratio follows from this. Because the bread brings sugar, fat and moisture of its own, the custard is leaner than for a white-bread pudding: three eggs to 500 ml milk, with a modest amount of brown sugar. A richer custard on an already rich bread gives a heavy, greasy pudding. The eggs set the milk into a soft, sliceable gel between the cubes; it is done when the centre has risen and no liquid custard appears when you press it.

Finally, the soak matters. Fifteen to twenty minutes lets the custard penetrate to the middle of each cube; without it the centres stay dry and the custard pools at the bottom of the dish. Baking in a moderate oven — 170 °C — sets the custard gently so it stays creamy rather than curdling into a watery, scrambled texture.

iii. Ingredients

Makes 8 servings · scroll the side panel to adjust

• 300 g zucchini (courgette), coarsely grated
• 250 g plain flour
• 150 g caster sugar
• 2 eggs, for the loaf
• 100 ml neutral oil
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon, for the loaf
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 500 ml whole milk, for the custard
• 80 g light muscovado sugar
• 3 eggs, for the custard
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon, for the custard
• ¼ tsp grated nutmeg
• 60 g raisins
• 40 g pecans, roughly chopped
• 20 g butter, for the dish

The first ten ingredients make the zucchini bread; if you already have a day-old loaf (about 700–800 g), skip straight to the custard. Do not squeeze the grated zucchini for the loaf — its moisture is what keeps the bread tender — but do grate it coarsely so it melts into the crumb. Light muscovado gives the custard a butterscotch note; soft brown sugar works too. Whole milk is enough richness here; replace 100 ml with double cream only if your loaf is lean. The raisins and pecans are optional and traditional in American zucchini bread; walnuts, dried cranberries or chocolate chips are common swaps. Any spiced vegetable quick bread — carrot or pumpkin loaf — can be used in exactly the same way.

iv. Method

1. Heat the oven to 170 °C (340 °F) and line a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin. Whisk the 2 eggs, oil, caster sugar and vanilla, then stir in the grated zucchini.
2. Sift in the flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, baking powder, bicarbonate and salt, and fold until no dry flour remains. Scrape into the tin and bake for 50–60 minutes, until risen, deep golden and a skewer in the centre comes out clean. Cool completely; ideally leave it wrapped for a day or two.
3. Cut the loaf into 2.5 cm cubes. Spread on a baking tray and dry in the oven at 150 °C (300 °F) for 12–15 minutes, until the outsides feel firm and slightly crisp but the cubes have not browned.
4. Butter a 20 × 28 cm baking dish and pile in the cubes in an even layer, scattering the raisins and half the pecans between them.
5. Whisk the 3 eggs with the muscovado until smooth, then whisk in the milk, 1 tsp cinnamon and the nutmeg. Pour evenly over the bread, pressing the cubes down gently with a spatula so they all get wet. Leave to soak for 15–20 minutes.
6. Scatter the remaining pecans on top. Bake at 170 °C (340 °F) for 35–45 minutes, until puffed, golden at the edges, and the centre is set — a knife pushed into the middle should show no runny custard.
7. Rest for 10 minutes before serving, so the custard firms enough to scoop cleanly.

v. Tips & common mistakes

• Dry the cubes before soaking. Zucchini bread is so moist that fresh cubes collapse into paste. A short spell in a low oven gives them enough structure to absorb custard and hold their shape.
• Keep the custard lean. The loaf already contains oil and sugar, so a cream-heavy custard makes the pudding greasy and leaden. Milk and three eggs is enough.
• Grate coarsely, and do not wring out. Finely grated zucchini turns to mush and makes the loaf gummy; squeezing it dry makes the loaf crumbly. Coarse, unsqueezed shreds give the right crumb.
• Let it soak. Fifteen minutes is the minimum. An unsoaked pudding has dry cores and a layer of plain baked custard at the bottom of the dish.
• Pull it when just set. Over-baked egg custard weeps and turns grainy. The centre should be risen and firm but still slightly wobbly when shaken; it finishes setting as it rests.
• Leave some cubes proud of the surface. The tips that stick up out of the custard are what caramelise and crisp, giving the contrast that makes a bread pudding worth eating.

vi. Variations

The method works for any sweet quick bread. Carrot and zucchini loaf, pumpkin bread and banana bread all make excellent puddings; banana bread needs the least sugar in the custard. Chocolate-chip zucchini bread pudding, with a handful of dark or white chocolate scattered through before baking, is a popular modern version. In the Southern style, the pudding is served with a bourbon or whiskey sauce made from butter, sugar, cream and a splash of spirit, or with a salted caramel.

Bread puddings exist all over the world. Egypt's umm Ali soaks pastry in sweetened milk with nuts and raisins; the Levantine aish el-saraya layers syrup-soaked bread with clotted cream; Spain's torrija fries milk-soaked bread for Holy Week; and Britain's queen of puddings tops a breadcrumb custard with jam and meringue.

vii. Serving & storage

Serve warm, in scoops, with pouring cream, vanilla ice cream, crème anglaise, or a caramel or bourbon sauce. It is equally good at room temperature, and a cold square from the fridge is a reasonable breakfast. As a late-summer pudding it pairs well with poached stone fruit; in autumn, with baked apples.

Cover and refrigerate leftovers for up to 3 days. Reheat portions in a 160 °C oven for 10–15 minutes, or briefly in the microwave, which keeps the custard soft. The pudding can be assembled up to the soaking stage and refrigerated overnight — bake straight from the fridge, adding 5–10 minutes. The zucchini bread itself freezes very well for up to three months, so it is worth baking a spare loaf when courgettes are plentiful; thaw it, dry the cubes, and the pudding is ready in an hour. Baked bread pudding can be frozen in portions for a month, though the custard becomes slightly looser on thawing.

ix. More from North American

• Blueberry Muffins — American breakfast muffins
• Ginger Peach Crisp — late-summer fruit crisp
• Spiced Pumpkin Tart — autumn custard tart
• Queen of Puddings — British breadcrumb custard with meringue
• Umm Ali — Egyptian pastry-and-milk pudding
• Torrija — Spanish fried milk bread