British Puddings and Desserts

A pudding is a dessert course of a meal.Be careful, not all our puddings are sweet - like Black Pudding (boudin) and Yorkshire Pudding. Puddings and Cakes You may not know this but there are hundreds and hundreds of puddings in Britain and so few of them are actually known... Nearly all puddings start with the same ingredients: milk, lots of sugar, eggs, flour and generous amounts of butter. Lots of them have fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries and of course cream and custard.

The most well-known british puddings are:

- trifle (one of my favorites, a layered pudding consisting of lots of strawberries or raspberries, jelly, sponge, custard and cream),

- apple or rhubarb crumble (consisting of apple or rhubarb and crubled pastry on top),

- Victoria sponge (consisting of two sponge cakes sandwiched together with strawberry jam and cream. Bad Victoria Sponge is cloggy, good Victoria Sponge is priceless),

- Bread and butter pudding (consisting of slices of bread in a cake tin coated with milk and egg yolks and a few raisins, then oven-baked for a rich, creamy inside and a crispy top)

- Spotted dick, also known as Spotted Dog (a steamed suet pudding containing currants, served with brown sugar and custard).

All five of these are divine. British puddings are mostly simple to make and quite filling, and there's nothing quite like eating trifle on a sunny Summer's day in the park, or a good, comforting crumble when the biting Winter freezes your toes.

Olivia