Chocolate Banana Pandoro Bread Pudding

It's January. This means:
1. Its cold
2. The post Xmas sale is on.
The only shopping I can do in a radius of a good few kilometers is food shopping. How exciting is a supermarket sale, you ask? Very! All Pandoros and Panettones are going for practically free which works just fine with my budget!
I bought a Pandoro; a tall, festive 'golden bread', encapsulating the smell of butter, cream and yeast. The Panettone and Pandoro are sold in gift boxes, making the purchase of one feel like I am buying myself a really nice gift, and although it goes great with coffee, I wanted to celebrate an entire cake, not just the slice.
So lets do the math; its cold, and I have a Pandoro. If I add the winning combination of chocolate & banana to the equation the answer is crispy clear.
A Chocolate Banana Pandoro Bread pudding, made from layers of buttered Pandoro bite size cubes, laced with golden banana medallions and sizeable chunks of dark chocolate, topped with crushed amaretti cookies for that fresh crunchy almond note. Now you see it, now you don't...
It came in contact with the atmosphere for approximately 5 minutes before it disappeared into the wonderful world of digestion...definitely one for the book.
If you want to give it a go the recipe is attached.

Chocolate & Banana Pandoro Bread Pudding

Serves 8

3/4 Stale Pandoro 3cm cubes

50g Butter cut to small cubes

2 Ripe Bananas sliced

150g Dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

275ml Milk

65ml Cream

3 Large eggs at room temperature

1Tsp Vanilla

50g Caster sugar

1/2tsp Nutmeg

1Tsp Cinnamon

15 Amaretti cookies roughly grounded

Lightly buttered 20x30cm baking dish 4 cm high

Preheat the oven to 180C. Fill a large shallow pan with hot water and place at the bottom of the oven. This helps to create a humid environment in the oven, preventing the pandoro from drying out, burning, or curdling.

Form the base layer by placing half of the cubes on a slightly buttered dish, skin side down. Scatter half of the butter chunks evenly on the Pandoro cubes, followed by the banana slices and dark chocolate. Arrange the remaining squares of pandoro cubes, skin side up, overlapping slightly.

Scatter the remaining butter chunks evenly on the Pandoro cubes.

Whisk the milk, cream, eggs, caster sugar and Vanilla together and pour the mixture all over the pudding.

Press the bread down into the custard very lightly and sprinkle the nutmeg and cinnamon. Place on a high shelf and bake for 40 minutes, until the surface is golden and crunchy. You may want to cover loosely with foil half way through to prevent the top rust from charring.

Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Sprinkle with the crushed Amaretti.

Can be served warm, cold, alone or with a dollop of (coconut) ice cream, or (coconut) whipped cream.

Variation: I also tried this recipe replacing the chocolate and bananas with Guava paste and dulce de lece, and toasted almonds instead of the amaretti.