British Puddings are dying out 😮

I was a pudding baking/steaming queen back in the 70s-90s but dietary needs ended it all plus the fashion for yoghurt! My teenage/20s children frowned on such old fashioned stodge but now middleaged son makes a superb steamed syrup sponge!

Special treat for DH is a Passionfruit Cream recipe from James Martin. Needs lots of passionfruit. I always have a bag of crumble mix, Delia's, in the freezer and a bag of mixed summerfruits. When the freezer broke recently, I used both to make a summer crumble. It's a new favourite pud. I have mine with Greek yoghurt and DH prefers a small pot of cold custard.

I make a trifle at Christmas and for DH's birthday. It has to be raspberries, preferably from the garden.

Syrup sponge pudding and custard - Yummy!!

I used to.love .asking a syrup pudding with custard for the kids. But now they've all grown up.i wouldn't bother.

Forgot to say I absolutely LOVE puddings of all kinds but rarely make or eat them and agree that the modern small selection of the same things in pubs and the like is BORING!

Oh, I do make a trifle now and again - exactly as my mother made it. Very simple, only fruit is mandarin oranges, but everyone declares it wonderful. A few years ago my cousin and my mum's cousin's daughter came over from NZ and stayed with me. I served a trifle one day and they both made exactly the same recipe. They had both lived in NZ for over 50 years!

DH was brought up on huge quantities of home-made cakes, biscuits and puddings and was never overweight. My DM baked a fruit cake, an apple pie and a rice pudding every week of her long married life and I could never make them taste the same as hers. She made a fantastic, lighter Christmas cake but couldn't ice it for toffee - so DD did it with a plasterers trowel, made a complete mess of it so fluffed it up with a fork into a snow storm! He was a builders' labourer! But heck it tasted good! None of us was overweight at all.

But back then both DD and DM did manual jobs, scrubbed the front step, hung the carpets over the washing line and beat them, cut the lawn with a pair of shears, walked miles to work etc, carried heavy shopping home and did all the home maintenance. My dad used to have a one word phrase for the idea of getting in a tradesman, which was "Pay?".

Today's life is so fast and furious that there is no time for daily walking or scrubbing, or healthy home cooking, and everything has a machine to do the job, so obesity can soon appear. It does need effort to prevent it (and all the other damage to the body) and lots of folk haven't got the time.

The next one I make (widowed friend coming for dinner soon) will be a good old apple and mincemeat crumble, since I’ve still got some of my Delia’s mincemeat left from last year. 😋

I really want a pudding! 😁

I’d also add portion sizes will have an effect to my post 17:33:45.

Oops sorry Allira and JaxJacky 😁

Never eat puddings. I like apple crumble but never make it & probably have it once a year, if that

Stillness

We have puddings at the weekends and enjoy them. I’m amazed at this news story considering the rise in obesity.and wonder what it is exactly that’s causing so many people to put on so much weight.

I think it is probably down to ‘fast foods’ that are not home made, such as burgers, laden with melted plasticky cheese and sugar rich things such as the sauces used, bought from the various fast food outlets, ditto the pizzas, etc. Buying and eating these regularly mean you have no control over the ingredients used - the various palm oils, flavourings and additives which you wouldn’t put in home made versions are frequently used in these.
This, coupled with a much more sedentary lifestyle for the majority, where people don’t often walk anywhere but hop into the car, even for local school runs, contribute in my opinion, plus hard, manual labour doesn’t apply to the majority any more - many jobs nowadays are largely sedentary based, and I think you have part of the answer.
Just my view, of course, and others may strongly disagree.

Ziplok

AuntieE

Well, I enjoy steamed puddings, but the price of electricity these days rather puts me off making anything that has to be cook for 3-4 hours!

I agree with Alira regarding the slow cooker for steamed puddings, but also, if you have one, a pressure cooker which cooks them extremely quickly.

It was JaxJacky who suggested it but yes, I agree.

Good for steaming Christmas puddings too, and for reheating them.

My mother always made a pudding every day, apple pie (she always put garlic cloves in with the apples)

Were they garlic cloves or cloves?
My mother always put cloves in with the apples in a pie, I wasn't keen on them but they're an aromatic spice used for flavouring. You weren't supposed to eat them but sometimes you'd find one in your mouth with a mouthful of pie.

I've got jars of them because I was going to use them with the DGC to stud oranges to hang as pomanders at Christmas, then came Covid!

My mother always made a pudding every day, apple pie (she always put garlic cloves in with the apples), crumble or charlotte, bread and butter pudding, steamed puddings - jam roly poly made with suet pastry and home made jam and steamed in a lots was the family favorite, milk puddings - rice, macaroni, semolina or sago, Queen Of Puddings and jam tart. At Christmas she made her own Christmas puddings and mincemeat. I followed suit because we had two hungry boys but when they had both left home my pudding making dwindled as DH worked away from home a lot and after he retired he developed Type 2 diabetes so puddings are a rare treat. I do miss all the cooking and fear I have lost my skills. I have noticed how extortionate ready made puddings are in Sainsbury’s and M and S so if puddings were ever back on the menu I would make my own.

AuntieE

Well, I enjoy steamed puddings, but the price of electricity these days rather puts me off making anything that has to be cook for 3-4 hours!

I agree with Alira regarding the slow cooker for steamed puddings, but also, if you have one, a pressure cooker which cooks them extremely quickly.

I tend to make puddings in autumn and winter, perhaps early spring, too, if it’s cold. In the summer months and late spring it’s more likely to be various fruits, yoghurts and crème caramel type desserts, maybe a pavlova or ice cream occasionally.

So, from a personal point of view, puddings are not going out of fashion in this household, but the really warm weather doesn’t lend itself to most of them.

Also, they’re not something we eat every day or even every week (apart from fresh fruits), as we need to watch our sugar levels (DH) and cholesterol levels (me). I love a pudding, but limit it.

I make lots of crumbles whatever the season. I make a big batch of crumble mixture and keep it in the fridge/freezer. I think I'm known for my crumbles (possibly because I rarely make any other dessert).

Jaxjacky

AuntieE

Well, I enjoy steamed puddings, but the price of electricity these days rather puts me off making anything that has to be cook for 3-4 hours!

A slow cooker does the job and much cheaper to use.

👍

That's rather sad. Puddings are probably the only thing that other nations have had to admit that the British can cook.

We rarely have puddings, mainly because I can't be bothered, but at least I know how to make quite a few. The family favourite is Nostalgia Pudding, a Jocelyn Dimbleby recipe. It's a steamed sponge, made lighter with breadcrumbs, and it has apricot jam and chocolate chips. It's yummy.

Can’t stand summer pudding; soggy bread - ugh!
I’m very found of Sussex Pond pudding,often make marmalade steamed pud, ditto Bakewell tart.

Mum used to make Queen Of Puddings. It used stale white, crust less bread. Milk, eggs ,sugar and oodles of raspberry jam. All crowned off with a crisp , meringue tippy.. I can taste it right now. Happy days☺️

AuntieE

Well, I enjoy steamed puddings, but the price of electricity these days rather puts me off making anything that has to be cook for 3-4 hours!

A slow cooker does the job and much cheaper to use.

The obesity problem her and in the us isn’t down to puddings, it’s down to quantity and junk food= additives.

Spot on Petra.
We have a pudding every night because MrA thinks the main meal isn’t complete without one.
However, they’re always home-made never shop-bought, and we don’t snack either.
Neither of us are overweight.