*See Kitchen Notes for links, substitutions and suggestions.
If using fresh berries, coarsely chop the larger berries into smaller pieces, about a large blueberry size. Frozen berries don't need to be chopped.
Remove all of the crust from the bread and slice bread into generous 1/4 inch slices. You'll need 4 to 6 slice of bread depending on the size of the loaf and the size of the ramekins.
Cut 8 circular disks of bread to the diameter of the ramekin (2 per ramekin). Cut several long, thin pieces of bread to wrap around the edges of the ramekin.
Fill each ramekin with some of the juicy berries.* Place another bread disk on top and press. If it doesn't start absorbing the juice right away, pour a little more berry juice on top until all of the bread has absorbed some of the juice.
Place another ramekin on top of the pudding, gently press down and fill the ramekin with "weights". (The juice should come to the top, but not run down the sides. If juice pours over the side of the ramekin. this indicates you have too much juice, so let it flow over or carefully let it drain back into the sauce pan with the remaining fruit.)
Just before serving, heat up the leftover berries/juice or make another small batch of warm berries if needed. Bring to a boil and cook it down to a little thicker consistency if desired.
Use a knife to gently release the pudding from the sides of the ramekins and, turning the ramekin upside down over a small plate, carefully dump the pudding onto the plate. You might need to use the knife or a fork to pull the pudding away from the ramekin.
Top with hot berries/juice and whipped cream.
This mixed berry pudding will keep for 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator. Just keep the ramekins weighted until ready to serve.
Berries – Use whatever you have – fresh or frozen or both. As far as the type of berries – strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries – they all work. Just use whatever is available in your area.
Bread – The original recipe called for a brioche, but pretty much any good artisan bread, or farmers bread all worked wonderfully. However, we didn't like sourdough for this recipe. It fought with the berries rather than complementing them.
Sweetener – The original recipe called for 5 pounds of frozen berries, 5 cups of sugar and 1 cup water which made a very sweet pudding; therefore, I did reduce the amount of berry to sugar ratio a little bit without sacrificing the deliciousness of the pudding. If you don't want to use sugar, maple syrup works great!
Lining the ramekins with bread – If there is a difficult part to this recipe, I guess lining the ramekins might be it; however, I found that it’s not a critical task. Because the fruit and the juice grab a hold of the bread and it all just melds together under the weight; therefore, getting the bread lined up perfectly is not critical. Use small pieces of bread to fill holes and gaps in the lining rather than trying to cut the bread perfectly.
The most critical part is not making the bread too thick. For the small, single serving ramekins, try to keep the pieces to between ¼” to ½” thick, leaning more toward ¼”. If the bread gets too thick, you won’t have room for enough berries and juice and the pudding will be “bready”. For larger ramekins, you can get away with a little thicker bread.
The amount of fruit and juice – Don’t be afraid to be generous. The first time I made it I was overly cautious and didn’t put near enough juice in the ramekins thinking that it would make the pudding “soggy”. Well, it did the opposite – it was too dry. In fact, some of the bread hadn’t absorbed any juice. So just fill the ramekin with berries and juice. As mentioned in the recipe, if you use too much juice, it will run over when you press the other ramekin on top. Just let the overflow run back into the sauce pan.
Weighting down the pudding – To compress the puddings, you need a vessel that fits on top and a little inside the pudding’s ramekin. That’s why another ramekin works great. For the weights, use glass marbles, rocks, or any small, heavy objects.
Recipe author: MJ of MJ's Kitchen