Favourite Desserts - Sharing Memories

Lorine McGinnis Schulze at http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/p/sharing-memories.html has begun a new series of Sharing Memories . Here the theme is Fav Desserts

As a child I was a fussy and unadventurous eater, but desserts were always my favourite.
Growing up in the1950's meant  food was simple,  limited in choice and all home prepared by my mother.

We always sat round the table for meals, apart from Sunday tea when it was sandwiches, jelly and cake from a trolley, whilst we watched the classic children's Sunday serial on the television.

My mother's recipte book

During the week, desserts were puddings, such as spotted dick with custard or golden syrup sauce, baked apples, and rice pudding (which my father loved all his life but I hated)   Shrove Tuesday meant pancakes served with sugar and lemon.

 

Friday was my mother's baking day to set us up for the weekend and week ahead - cakes and biscuits with fruit pies or crumbles (apple, rhubarb, gooseberry, blackcurrant or blackberry).  Lemon meringue was my favourite Sunday dessert, along with trifle and jelly fluff (whipped up with evaporated milk). I disliked blancmange but liked Angel Delight.  Sunday tea meant chocolate cake with thick butter icing.

Icecream was a very special treat, reserved for birthdays, as we did not have a fridge until c.1958, so it had to be bought at the last minute.

At school dinners,  current pie was one of my few favourites - despite its nickname of "fly pie" or "fly cemetery".  I loathed with a passion all milk puddings - rice, tapioca (called "frog spawn" or "fish eye pud" - enough to put you off it for life!) and semolina where I tried to eke out the miserable spoonful of jam to disguise the awful taste. Also among my dislikes soggy bread & butter pudding and Queen's pudding (apart from the meringue topping).    Menus did not seem to change much over my 13 years of school life.

A page from my mother's recipe book

My mother was a great baker and a great follower of the Bero 

Book - Caribbean slices, Victoria sponges, chocolate crispies, currant slices, coconut pyramids, ginger biscuits and Shrewsbury biscuits, flapjacks, fairy cakes, butterfly cakes. Eccles cakes, home made jam and jellies with the muslin bag slung between to two chairs to drip. I loved home-made marmalade - nothing to beat it.

Looking back so much of this food seems stodgy and fattening, yet I cannot remember obesity being an issue. I suppose we walked everywhere, played outside, got plenty of fresh air and exercise and did not snack as today.     It remains  a happy family time in my memory.

Mum, Dad, Chris & myself c. 1954