Pudding cakes.  I love pudding cakes.  We used to have one occasionally when I was a child.  They usually came from a box mix.  I think there was a date one, a banana one, and an apple one. I am not a snob. To me, they tasted pretty good!  Having one of those was a real treat! Mom used to serve them warm with ice cream.

  

Rhubarb, its one of my favourite fruits.  I have loved it since I was a girl. My mother used to give us sticks of it to eat raw with small bowls of sugar.  Like a preservative free pixie stick.  Oh boy but it was good.  Made your jaws ache it did, with the tartness of it all.

 

Our rhubarb is no good again this year.  No matter how much manure Todd ladles onto it, it doesn't do anything.  We just have poor soil.  I picked up some at the shops today so that I could make this favourite spring pudding of ours.  It was £1.50 for 3 sticks. Highway robbery.

 

The cashier at the tils said that her father always said that rhubarb was the only thing in the garden that a pig won't eat.  I am not sure what she was getting at . . . but in my opinion, pigs are missing out big time!

 

Because I did not have quite enough rubarb for this I added some raspberries to make it up.  If you want you can leave the raspberries out and just use all rhubarb.  It was delicious with the raspberries however, and they gave the fruit sauce a really nice ruby colour!

 

Todd enjoyed his warm with some pouring cream, but this delicious pudding cake would be equally at home with vanilla ice cream or . . .  dare I say it  . . .  clotted cream!

  

What you have here is a lovely fruity sweet/tart sauce base covered with a delicious sponge, flavoured lightly with vanilla and cardamom.  In short . . . a tiny bit of spring time bliss!

  

 

 

Place the sugar and cornflour into a large saucepan  Stir together.  Add the rhubarb and the orange juice.  Toss to combine.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the fruit releases its juices and the mixture begins to thicken considerably.  Stir in the raspberries.  Pour into the bottom of a 1 litre glass pie dish or casserole dish.

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4.

Beat the butter and sugar together for the cake until light and fluffy.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom.  Beat the vanilla and egg into the creamed mixture.  Add the flour mixture alternating with the milk until you have a smooth batter.  Dollop the batter over the fruit filling and smooth out as best as you can.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

 

Whether you choose to add raspberries to this fabulous dessert or go it alone with just rhubarb, your family is sure to fall in love with it!  Bon Appetit!

   

I make no secret of the fact I am crazy about the flavour of ginger.  Ginger tea, ginger cookies, ginger cakes, in stir fries, candied . . .  in short however it presents itself.  I am having a love affair with ginger.  Combine it with lemon however  . . .  and I am totally smitten, ensnared . . .  lost forever.  It is  combination I find very hard to resist.

 

I never make a Jam Roly Poly for dessert but what I don't think of one of my favourite childhood stories, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers and the Roly Poly Pudding by Beatrix Potter. Its kind of a gruesome story really when you think about it . . . rats capturing an innocent little kitten and rolling him up in pudding dough to bake and eat . . .  it sent shivers up my spine at the thought.  A tale really of a lesson learned about the perils of disobedience and the consquences which follow!

 

 We are lucky enough to have a very prolific black currant bush in our back garden and so our freezer is filled with black currants for me to use all year round in tasty desserts, pies, cakes, etc.   This is one of Todd's favourite pies.  Well, apple anything is his favourite, but when you mix them with his other favourite fruits, black currants, well you have bagged a real winner!

 

This is a deliciously simple cheese cake that I have been making for years that your family will really love.  Its as simple as blitzing a few ingredients together and pouring them into a pie dish.  Seriously. 

You cannot get much easier or tastier than this delicious dessert!

 

It magically bakes into a delicious dessert that is a LOT less trouble than making a regular cheese cake.  I think the original recipe came from a box of baking mix but I make my own baking mix these days and just use that. 

 

 

You can find that recipe here.    It, too, is very easy to make.  I always have a plastic container of it in my cupboard.  It comes in handy for all sorts.

 

Once you blend everything and pour it into the pie dish, you simply bake it and then presto chango you end up with a delicious cheesecake that went together in a flash and tastes fabulous! 

 

I love desserts like this. Quick, easy and delicious.

 

I like to make a sour cream topping for it.  This not only tastes nice, but helps to hide the inevitable crack which appears in the centre of the cheesecake.  (The sign of a great cheesecake I might add!) 

 

You can also hide it by adding a fruit topping. Cherry Pie filling comes to mind. Very nostalgically retro.

 

I like to serve it with a simple fruit topping which I create by mixing together some fresh fruit and jam and heating it gently together until the fruit softens.  This day I used blueberries, but fresh raspberries or strawberries and jam also work very well.  

 

About 1 cup of fruit with several spoonfuls of jam and a tiny bit of water does the trick.   Altogether this is quite, quite delicious!  And a real doddle to make!