Chocolate croissant bread and butter pudding with rum-caramelised bananas

Preheat the oven to 180˚C and grease a 23cm-diameter round casserole dish, or approximately 30cm x 20cm rectangular casserole dish (the size doesn’t have to be exact). Slice the croissants on the diagonal into 4 pieces each, and spread each slice generously with the 120g softened butter. Arrange the buttered croissant slices in the prepared dish of your choice. The croissants don’t need to be neatly arranged or in an even layer – you can simply tumble them in.

Sprinkle the chopped milk chocolate over the croissants and put the dish inside a larger ovenproof dish to catch any spills that may occur during cooking. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, castor sugar, milk, fresh cream, vanilla essence and salt until well combined. Pour over the croissants (if the egg mixture seems like it will overflow from the dish, wait a while for the croissants to absorb some of the liquid, then add a little more, repeating these steps until all of the egg mixture has been added to the dish).

Bake the pudding in the preheated oven, 35 – 45 minutes, until the custard has set (start checking after 30 minutes, and if you think the tops of the pudding are browning too much, too quickly, but the custard hasn’t set yet, cover the top with foil and bake a little longer).

For the caramelised bananas, add the 50g butter and the sugar to a frying pan, and place over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally, until evenly golden in colour, about 5 – 10 minutes. Add the rum and sliced bananas to the caramel. Cook, a further 5 minutes, turning the bananas once. Heat the caramelised bananas just before serving. Serve the bread and butter pudding warm, topped with the caramelised bananas and vanilla ice cream.