Pudding course around 1950 (memories of...)

As a special treat my mother would make a white blancmange rabbit in a metal mould,she then chopped up green jelly and covered a large oval plate, placed the white rabbit in the middle and sprinkled tiny sweets over the jelly, we loved it.
I still like tinned peaches but these days have them with Greek yogurt not carnation milk.

School dinner puddings were vile, but Grandma's were great :

Mashed bananas in cream ,bread and butter puddings ,rice puddings ,rhubarb /apple crumbles, fruit pies ,steamed puddings ,thick custards ,creme caramels, lemon meringue pies, sherry laced trifles...after a roast lunch .
I used to eat six roast potatoes ,was a size eight and weighed less that eight stone .

I had a weight loss problem !!!
Those were happy days .

Most of those in above posts although I've never come across Poor Knight's Pudding.

Large jam tarts with twisted strips of pastry on the top, treacle tarts, bread and butter pudding with a good egg custard base, lemon meringue pie, rice pudding (the nutmeggy skin was lovely unlike the yucky skin on custard!).

Sometimes my mother made a large egg custard tart which went wrong because the pastry base ended up on top of the egg custard. Mostly they were fine. I don't know why that happened occasionally.

School puddings were generally horrible.

Steamed puddings, apple tarts and crumbles, milk jelly, rice pudding. The last two sometimes made with evaporated milk. Queen's pudding, bread and butter pudding, bread pudding, pancakes, poor Knight's pudding (jam sandwiches fried in butter) pancakes, tinned peaches, apricots or pears, egg custard tarts, lemon meringue pie (made with lemons eggs and condensed milk, not cornflour). I can't remember much about school puddings except that I didn't like them.

My Mum made lovely suet puddings filled with apples and served with custard. We also had my favourite which was a barley kernel milk pudding.

The meat at school was horrible in the postwar years. I was once made to sit for a whole afternoon with my plate of disgusting gristly meat in front of me, “‘until I ate it”. I refused to eat it, and I won!

Puddings, on the other hand, were wonderful. I love stodge and custard - jam, chocolate, sultana, syrup, any kind of stodge! Fly cemetery was good, too, and I loved prunes and rice.

We definitely had puddings every day at school, and I think at home too. Bread and butter pudding was good - when my brother and I were small we called it “raisin goldie”. We had blancmange, too, pink or chocolate.

In spite of my love of sweet stodgy things, I remained skinny. I never had to watch my weight until I was fifty or so. The trouble is, I still like puddings.

Whatever did happen to junket? It seems to have completely disappeared.

junket (whatever happened to that?)/pink blancmange, semolina pudding or tapioca pudding The above (and sago) were never seen in my home, although were far too common at school. All the others were regulars and much enjoyed

My mother made the most gorgeous rice pudding with lots of nutmeg - and the top of the milk went in to that. Other things we had were stewed fruit, not just apple, but rhubarb, plum, blackberry and apple, with either a sponge or crumble topping, lemon meringue pie, bread and butter pudding and lots of custard, I loved custard (still do).

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…

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.

Chocolate blancmange that was still warm…

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

My school did the most wonderful treacle pudding.

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

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.

Still love. Few of these…..?

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.

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??

'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!