Perfect Puddings

Spent and interesting and tiring afternoon/evening filming "The Pudding Club" edition of Perfect for the good food channel yesterday. Along with fellow judges Nour and Lucy our task was to taste and give out thoughts and opinions about 6 puddings prepared by two mystery chefs. The rounds were; classic, simple and ultimate. I can't say at this point who the chefs were or give the results until the programme is broadcast in January next year. The puddings were; Steamed Ginger Pudding and Steamed Lemon Pudding for the classic round. It was Caramelised Banana & Butterscotch Fool and Passion Fruit Curd & Raspberry Puds for the simple round. Finally - for the ultimate round - it was Rice Pudding Souffle with Raspberry sauce and Chocolate & Lavender Mille Feuilles. Great fun and an interesting insight into the world of telly!

Matching English Puddings with Wine

My other great passion in life is Wine - particularly French, Spanish or Italian. That said I can be persuaded (without too much of a struggle) to try anything. The majority of people who enjoy wine normally associate matching with starters and main courses but dessert is often overlooked. The pleasure of pudding can be enhanced by pairing with a suitable wine. But which wine? I'd be interested to know what you think and what you have tried. Typically a sweet wine is the best accompaniment but while some things work better than others it is about pleasure and not rules. I'd love to build a comprehensive set of suggestions to include on the main site and as a feature page here. What do you think?

Honey recipes

Ok so what traditional English puddings can we enjoy with honey? Something really simple but a delicious change is to add a couple of table spoons of honey to cream before whipping it and then spooning over summer fruits. Very tasty.

You can find a couple of ideas on the main site under Honey Apple Batter Pudding or Honey Tart. The latter is a variation on treacle tart!

Hope you like them. Give them a try and let me know how you get on.

Thoughts turning to blackberries now - watch this space.

Traditional English Puddings Blog Relaunched.....

Welcome again to the Traditional English Puddings blog. I say welcome again as I have decided to relaunch the blog with the hope that I will be more diligent in keeping the content flowing. Am currently sitting in Burgundy (France) on another rainy day and my thoughts turned to warm sticky comforting puddings - crazy for August but there you go!

The main web site www.traditionalenglishpuddings.co.uk is now getting an average of about 20000 unique visitors per month and I thought it high time to start offering my visitors something more to get their teeth into. So we'll see how it goes.

You can also follow us on Twitter @englishpuddings or on Facebook - Traditional English Puddings.