Pudding course around 1950 (memories of...)

At school we used to have semolina coloured green, pink or brown served with a blob of something called mock cream which had a sort of slimy, grainy texture. Also tapioca and a horrible trifle which was a layer of tasteless jelly with cake in it topped with a rigid layer of cold custard and a blob of the mock cream. I hated them all.
This was in the late 70s so they couldn't even blame rationing.

Only yesterday I made a lovely rice pudding. I made it in my slow cooker and it is thick and creamy. Made using longlife semi skimmed milk, powdered sweetener and vanilla essence, it's a SW recipe and supposed to be sin free. I made it to reheat later today when my neice comes to visit as she loves homemade rice pudding. Oh yes I added nutmeg too.

Loved my primary school dinners , made on the premisis. My favourite was fish, mashed potato with mushy peas and pickled beetroot! Followed by chocolate sponge and pink custard.

Ma's savoury cooking in general was dire, hence my deep love for school dinners, thankfully good at both Junior and High school, but she was great at the old sweet stuff and her homemade apple fritters were things of beauty. Ditto her lemon curd and jam tarts.
My Welsh grandad used to make sugar pie, simply left over pastry folded like a pasty and filled with sugar, butter and a tiny bit of salt. Absolutely divine and a forerunner of today's salted caramel treats.

My poor mum ....... I always used to moan like mad when she gave us stewed apples and custard. I thought it was such a boring pudding. I now realise that I was lucky that we had a pudding every day ......... my children had to make do with a tub yoghurt or a piece of fruit. Now I am feeling guilty for being such an ungrateful daughter

At Primary school in the 50s, I was able to walk home for lunch. Things changed in 1961 when I went to Secondary school. I absolutely hated the school dinners, having to eat things we never ate at home! Pilchards in tomato sauce and very lumpy tapioca were the very worst. Chocolate sponge with chocolate custard and caramel tart were the best.

DanniRae, me too! We had 2 apple trees in the garden and my Dad and brother loved apple pie and everything else Mum made with the apples! It’s something I never choose to eat now. Thinking back now, I’m amazed that we ate so well on a limited income thanks to Mum’s ingenuity.

'Cement & tadpoles' was our nickname for school semolina with currants. Seem to remember eating it albeit reluctantly. My joy now is a couple of sticks of rhubarb chopped with a sprinkle of sugar then micro for 30 secs. Bliss!
And.... that's enough time to spend in the kitchen for this undomesticated goddess!

I liked school rice pudding! But tapioca, aka frogspawn, ?.

Once a term at senior school we had what was called ‘chocolate cracknel’ which was something like those chocolate crispy cakes, but highly compressed - that was everybody’s favourite.

Our least favourite at junior school was so-called jam tart - very thick greyish pastry, smeared with what we called ‘geranium’ (bright red) jam.

What is Manchester tart??

I have rediscovered how wonderful stewed apples, and baked apples are. Each week now, my supermarket shop includes some Bramley Apples. I do the baked ones in the microwave in a special container, sweetened with one of those low calorie things, and served with plain yoghurt...> Delicious.

Stewed apples (also sweetened with non sugar item), served with thick custard is a favourite of my 50-year old daughter when she comes for her tea with me once a week.

I also like cut up banana with that thick custard, or with plain yoghurt. My Dad used to love banana with Smaetna......and I have discovered I can still purchase this in the wonderful local polish food shops.

Adore rice pudding, bread and butter pudding, etc.

I note that my AC do not usually have desserts with their main meal, except on very special occasions. Back in my day, it was the norm to have mains and dessert every day.

Still love. Few of these…..?

I love all the old puddings mentioned above. My mum used to make spotted dog in a tea towel, it was delicious, I remember my dad used to bark as he cut into it.

I make Manchester tart if I know my brother is coming to ours it’s his favourite pastry jam custard and coconut topping.

My school did the most wonderful treacle pudding.

Instant whip. It was pink and I don't think that it tasted of anything in particular. Neapolitan ice cream, we used to have a family brick. My mum considered tinned fruit strawberries better than fresh

The puddings of my childhood were lovely. In the summer we always had pies made from home grown gooseberries, blackcurrants and apples with lots of custard. My mum spent hours cooking for us as we had a pudding every night. Things like instant whip and viennetta weren't around when I was a child.

Rice pudding is the work of the devil, as is gypsy tart - just so you know.

Gin

School puds, loved and hated them. Sponge apple pudding with custard my favourite but the one I hated we called River Thames mud! It was chocolate blancmange, very slimy. Loved the pies but hated frogspawn (tapioca).

My mother made wonderful puddings with fruit from the allotment and eggs from our chickens. Custard tart with nutmeg, blackcurrents stewed and served with light as air sponge and custard, pancakes with raspberries. Wish I could cook like her!

You're right: we called tapioca pudding "frogspawn". They used to put dried currants in it which made look even worse!

My memories at the tail end of the 50s would be of old fashioned steamed puddings, such as jam and syrup or homemade apple (with cloves) even better apple and blackberry pies, home made jam tarts all wonderful, but they were made by either my mother or grandmother. Sometimes really nice stewed fruit such as plums or apples and rhubarb, from the garden with custard or bananas with custard! Even my mother's rice puddings were lovely, laced with plenty of nutmeg. Also memories of going to the corner shop for a brick of ice cream wrapped in newspaper a very, very soft once we got it home. I don't know anyone who had a freezer then.

Then there were the stuff of nightmares, school puddings which to this day leaves me with a loathing for white lumpy matter, rice pudding which had clusters the size of planets embedded therein, some gloopy stuff that looked like tadpoles and to the taste every bit as bad as it was to the vision, vile shocking pink blancmange, that had lumps in it too. There was an occasional sweet treat accompanied by some sort of fake cream, commonly known as "shaving cream" and a relief to have that instead of the lumpy yellow stuff that passed for custard, the shaving cream was quite nice with a lemon curd sponge one of the better efforts.

Steamed puddings Terri my Mum did marmalade, date and syrup, custard obligatory. We always picked blackberries, Mum had a store cupboard with kilner jars full of plums alongside gooseberries and tomatoes.

Don’t forget Junket, had to add Rennet to set it, is that still available ?

I generally liked all puddings but trifle was just revolting. All the dried up cake in the jelly, yuk. I had to go for school dinners and the trifle was heartily disliked by most of us. Its nickname was Mrs Gordon’s sick ?. She was the head of the kitchen.

My favourite was chocolate pudding with chocolate blackman gelato the that was still warm and Madeira style cake with a thick and gloopy jam sauce. Happy days.

Chocolate blancmange that was still warm…

Tapioca pudding; rice pudding with a brown skin on top (could never understand why people fought over the skin!) ; anything involving bread soaked in liquid - e.g. bread and butter pudding - made me heave; still does. I loved steamed jam roly poly, apple dumplings, and treacle tart.

My mum was a brilliant cook. In fact she had trained as a baker when she first left school at 14. (Years later she trained as a nurse). So school dinners were generally a disappointment. I have a memory of Black shiny mince served with bread at Primary School, another memory of the demon headmaster standing over us to make sure we ate our prunes. Yuk. Secondary school wasn’t much better. The dinner ladies thought it strange that I wouldn’t eat gravy. Well, you could cut it with a knife. The puddings were good though. Giant chocolate balls with chocolate custard, shortbread biscuits with the best custard, banana custard…