bread and butter banana pudding

Bananas drive me mad at the moment.  I seem to only be able to find green ones or ones that are getting brown and spotty and mushy.  Don't get me wrong I like very ripe bananas, but now and again I don't want to be eating hard unripe or mushy bananas. Everyone seems to try and ignore the last banana to. When we did our weekly shop on Friday I picked up a nearly out of date sliced loaf knowing we had a few very ripe bananas at home.  Today I made use of both things for the men in the house. 

Started with cutting the crusts off 8 slices of bread and buttering them cutting in half i triangles and laying half of them in the bottom of this pie tin, I artistically cut up ( hacked) a banana and a half into rough slices and layered over the bread and butter with a small handful of chocolate chips.  Sprinkled over cinnamon and then a small handful of demerara sugar. I layered over the rest of the bread and butter and sprinkled a few more chocolate chips, more cinnamon, a thin coating of sugar and a grating of nutmeg. 

I them mixed together 350 mls of milk ( we had semi skimmed to hand) a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3 medium eggs. Pouredd the milk and egg mixture around the edges of the bread and squished the bread down a bit and left the bread to absorb the eggy milk for about an hour before putting it in the oven at gas mark 4 for about 30-40 minutes. 

The top goes crunchy, to be honest I found the banana to be a bit to bananary but I only had a spoonful so not to sure if that was just my spoonful.  The rest of it was eaten by the men who were quiet eating it and made good comments afterwards.  Now to find something to do with the rest of the bread! 

Gadget review Verteggo

Anyone who knows me well knows that leaving me with a laptop and the internet when bored is dangerous.  Especially when left online surfing on Amazon or eBay.I have to admit most the purchases are good bargains but also most of the time I didn't know I needed or wanted the things until I saw them. Am worse than a kid on pocket money day some days. So in my defense I am going to say it was YouTube that tripped me up this time.......I can't remember what I was watching but it had something called a Rollie egg something or another which is a vertical cooker for eggs.  Then if that wasn't clever enough the eggs rise out the top when they are cooked. Watched a few of these gadget reviews on this then headed on over to Amazon. Just to look you understand..... Found a very very similar product that does the same thing called the.....wait for it....... the.....Verteggo. The rest as they say is history.  It arrived at our house yesterday. 

Looks pretty much like a travel coffee cup. Plug it in and the light is red

When it is hot enough light goes green.  Pretty simple so far.

Instructions say to spray inside the tube with non stick spray.  We have Frylight so that is what we used. Then crack in 1 or 2 eggs. There are other recipes but for now we just have been doing eggs

Put in a skewer if you like but not needed you can tip the eggs out onto a plate or use tongs.

Then the fun starts at the 6-8 minute mark roughly the egg starts to rise up. 

And up.......

Keeps going up.........

So magical for the easily amused like me!

And here it is out on a plate.  Now I admit you can't do the family a big plate of eggs all at once.  But this is a lot easier to clean up than a pan and utensils, and a lot less thought to it if just one person wants eggs

The eggs come out not quite hard yolked but not runny. Tender and not rubbery at all.  You can play with the times to find your favourite way.  There is no timer so you can pour out the eggs early if you like.  If the eggs aren't done to your liking you can pop them back in the tube again.  Big bonus for me is the upper bit of the Verteggo doesn't get hot not even in the inside upper lip so it is not to dangerous for little inquisitive hands to hole while trying to get a look in, or by helping crack the eggs in.

With 3 of us at home now we all have different breakfast habits, especially during the week.  This may be very amusing at the moment but for an antisocial, slow, and on autopilot Mum like me first thing it could well be the answer to the perfect eggs for one son in the mornings.