Birthday Greetings.

[curiouswombat]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO calturner AND zanthinegirl!

Here is a summer pudding for you to share....

I hope that you both have a lovely day and a very, very good year.

Comments

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

That's not a pudding, that's Suicide by Raspberries! Yum; raspberry is one of my favorite dessert fruits.

By the way, puddings in America are vastly different. Here's what "ours" look like: http://www.cookiemadness.net/puddingphoto.jpg
It's made of a substance like gelatin and it usually served cold. The most common types are chocolate (as in the photo), vanilla, tapioca (I think made from another kind of bean like vanilla), and rice (made with real rice in it) pudding.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

In UK English 'pudding' is a blanket word - more traditional than 'Dessert' which is seen as a bit of a middle class affectation! In practice no one would use 'dessert' as part of the name of a dish, but there are many many things with 'pudding' in their name.

Americans use the word for a small subset of what we would class as puddings - we would call most of your 'puddings' blancmange. We would also refer to the tapioca and rice ones as milk puddings - but would always eat them hot - do you? Actually tapioca is usually called 'frogspawn'!

I heard someone on the radio last week explaining that Americans don't have any of the real classic British hot puddings at all - Eve's Pudding, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Jam Roly Poly, Lemon Pond Pudding and so on.

I felt very sorry for you all! But on the other hand you don't have anywhere near the amount of temptation when you eat out!

Summer pudding, I hasten to add, is actually a cold one.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

In the US, there is no stigma about the word "dessert". In fact, it's what we normally call it.

All of our puddings are blancmange. We don't really have any other types. Just about all the blancmange is served cold; I rarely see it served hot. We don't have any interesting, cute names for our puddings. They're named by the main ingredient.

Just about the only "real" puddings we see in America are blood pudding and plum pudding--and that's only at the holidays when someone or some restaurant wants to be "ethnic".

Oh, we have plenty of temptation. But our dinner portions at restaurants are immense, and so being on a full stomach, you have no room to fit in dessert. You should try the American version of fudge. It's vastly different from what I've heard your fudge is made of. Ours is made with rich cocoa or peanut butter--too good to eat just one square!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I realised that I hadn't mentioned the whole set of savoury puddings - steak and kidney pudding is very traditional. blood pudding is called 'black pudding' in the UK, and eaten fried in slices with bacon, saisage etc.

Fudge here is very rich too - the main ingredients are sugar and butter, but then flavourings are added; vanilla, or chocolate (sometimes by adding cocoa, sometimes by adding actual chocolate to the mix), rum and raisin, cherry and walnut and so on. Our local shop does a very good peppermint.

Looking at pictures on Google, and recipes, I think it must be pretty similar on both sides of the Atlantic - I had to check each time to see whether the picture was a UK one or a US one - although I think yours always looks like the softest of the British stuff - so some of the British stuff is slightly more crumbly than yours.

Then there is 'Tablet' which is the Scottish version and is much more crumbly, a 'shorter' texture - you can break a piece of tablet in two, but fudge would just bend and stretch. Actually I like tablet even more!

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I don't think I could eat steak and kidney pie/pudding. I'm not really one for organ meat. No one my age (twentysomethings and younger) in America really eats organ meat--that's more for the "old farts" who like liver and onions.

Fudge is the same? All right then. I had heard from other Brits that your fudge isn't all that good. Guess they were wrong!

I would like to try tablet. It sounds good! What sort of flavors does it come in?

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Tablet is usually vanilla, or just sugar flavoured(!) although I have seen recipes that include chocolate. I have just posted my tablet recipe as a new post, so that it is easier for me to refer back to anytime.

This icon is ironic when discussing tablet!