Pondering English desserts… (And don’t even get me started on the Scottish ones!)
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Okay, I love desserts. But I especially love the mystifying names of desserts in the UK. From my first Eton mess, I was hooked. Custard covered spotted dick? Bring it. Clootie dumpling? How about a nice jam roly-poly (steamed in a shirtsleeve, of course)? Fly Cemetery or Millionaire’s Shortbread? Or even the mysteriously awful Banoffee Pie (which more than one British hostess has assured mystified expats is actually an American pudding)? And here in Scotland, Ecclefechan Butter Tart is fun to say, deep-fried Mars Bars are an abomination, while Cranachan with fresh berries will make strong Scots cry.
Fly Cemetery (recipe at Cooking With Granny)
But I have to say the the crown jewel, in my opinion, is my friend Elizabeth Ross’ Victoria Sponge cake. The first time she served it, I was in awe of the velvety, melt-in-your mouth cake with the punch of her homemade raspberry jam and a bit of squirty cream. (No sponges were harmed in the making of this dessert.)
It is, Elizabeth assures me, so simple that it was the first thing she and her friends learned to cook when they were Girl Guides going after their cooking badge. But she learned to make it in a cold kitchen, without a microwave to soften the butter or electric mixer to blend. She remembers holding a heavy bowl as she stirred. And stirred, and stirred, attempting to convince rock hard little bits of butter and egg to finally combine into a light-colored fluffy batter.
Of course, I asked for her recipe. (There may have been some whining and begging. Don’t judge me until you’ve tried her superb cake.) And Elizabeth has graciously passed along her recipe.
The first thing I cooked?
The first thing I remember cooking was frosting, which seemed miraculous to me. My mother showed me how to mix fairly inexact amounts of powdered (confectioners) sugar with butter, vanilla, and milk. Through some mysterious chemical reaction (or maybe magic), you get frosting. Every damn time! It’s actually a comfort in a world where so much is changing.
For our dinners, she mostly made the foods her Irish mother made, and I have to say they were dire. But my mother more than made up for her cooking disasters with her spectacular baking. I think the first dish I made start to finish was the Blueberry Buckle she made from the recipe in the 1950 Betty Crocker Cookbook she got for a wedding present.
I still make the recipe from her cookbook, although it’s nearly indecipherable after almost 75 years of splatters and notations. It’s fast, foolproof, and fabulous.
How about you? What’s the first thing you learned to cook?
Do you still make it? (Recipes welcome!)
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Barb Taub 
My mother had three boys. So … the first thing I learned to cook/bake was brownies from scratch: flour, eggs, the whole nine yards. I’d come home from school (about eight years old) and knock out a batch of brownies in no time at all. Then I graduated to cakes. The same thing: all from scratch. And yes, frosting was my forte.
P.S. And my mother wasn’t about to iron our school (Catholic parochial school) uniforms every morning. We’d line up (my bothers and I) and iron our shirts every morning before school. I was the oldest, so I went first. I got really good at it. I still remember going between and around the buttons and doing the collars.
And there was no driving us to school. We hiked there, along with every other kid in the neighborhood. (It was an Irish-Catholic neighborhood. We all went to the same school.)
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That’s practically husband-porn. HOW did you escape marriage?
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What the hell is “husband porn?” (I never got married, but I’ve been in love a few times. However, they all broke my heart in the end. Not one of ’em could make a decent chocolate pudding like I could. That was another after school treat I indulged in. I never knew pudding came in packages until I was in my teens. But by then I had moved on to making cocktails.)
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My background is English and French (mom from Sussex and dad from French Canada). My mom wasn’t much of a cook but she could bake really well. Her breads, pastries, cakes and other desserts were to die for (but not those awful fruit cakes!). Didn’t like them when I was a child; still don’t!
But I actually learned to cook from my French aunt, including the “mother sauces” and many French country dishes. The first one was tortière, and I still use the same recipe today.
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Is tortière a meat pie? Any chance you could share that recipe?
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Hi Barb, yes, it’s a very common winter dish among Québécois (and generally among French Canadians outside Québec) and is a type of meat pie. It was traditionally served after midnight mass at Christmas but also at any other time during the winter months, too. I’m happy to share the recipe.
I’ve played around with it a lot – it’s very adjustable. It was originally comprised of wild meats since it started as a peasant dish and that’s how I learned to make it. Rabbit and moose meat were common ingredients. The measurements are in metric but this pie is quite convertible to imperial and slightly different quantities shouldn’t affect the flavour.
Tourtière Recipe
Equipment
1 pie pan 30cm / 5cm deep is required.
Ingredients
250 ml chicken broth or meat broth (I’ve also used homemade vegetable broth which has a much stronger flavour than the commercial varieties)
2 pre-made pie dough rounds
2 potatoes medium sized
1 egg
30 ml olive oil or butter
Filling
400 g ground veal or beef
400 g ground pork
1 red onion finely chopped
3 garlic cloves finely chopped
30 ml maple syrup
1 tsp yellow mustard
4 cloves – powdered
3 g cinnamon powder (this is about a half teaspoon)
2 g ginger in powder (about a quarter teaspoon)
2 g red chilli flakes – optional
2 g nutmeg
2 g allspice
salt and pepper
Method
Heat a skillet or big pan at medium-high heat and cook the onions with the olive oil until coloured, about 5 minutes.
Cook the potatoes in a small pot of water until tender, about 30 minutes.
Add the meat, garlic and all the spices to the pan and cook until brown.
Add the broth and let it simmer for about 40 minutes or until almost all the liquid is evaporated.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F), add the bottom pie dough to the pan and cook for 5 minutes.
Once the potatoes are cooked, cut into small cubes, add to the meat and mix.
Cover the pie dough with the filling and then add the top dough layer; press the sides to close the pie and make a cut or hole on top.
Beat the egg in a small bowl and brush it over the pie with a sprinkle of salt.
Cook in the oven at 180°C (350°F) for about 40 minutes or until golden.
You can freeze this pie (uncooked) for several weeks. Cook from frozen adding 10 minutes to the time above. I’ve made my own ketchup from tomatoes and apples to go with the tourtière. Much better than the commercial ones.
Bon appétit!
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This looks delicious. I’ve got to try making it.
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I’m sure all mothers had the same big mixing bowl as my mother, beige outside, white inside. Heavy earthenware, round with one side flat to rest on the work top and keep it still during the vigorous creaming of the butter and sugar with a large wooden spoon.
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Haha! We had SEVERAL of those bowls, until my mother wised up and got the plastic (unbreakable) kind.
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I was let loose on cheese straws from a very early age, around 3 years old, I think.
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You made cheese straws at age three? I’m so impressed!
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Peppermint creams. From a cookery book Julia had as a child. We were only interested in making the sweets.
I need to make that Victoria Sponge :)
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I LOVE peppermint creams. Do you still make them?
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Hi Barb, Great as ever…
My mother was a good ‘plain’ cook early on: 30s,40s,50s…and Mondays it was always ‘Bubble and Squeek’ (?) any left-overs from Sunday, plus whatever was handy…mixed together and fried: always tasty…Just before she was 70 years old,, she decided to take an advanced cooking course… and amazed everyone with her specialities: fabulous wedding cakes and delicate petit fours, teaching her grand-children at the same time! I also enjoyed cooking for hub and three hungry lads…for around 37 years, but when we retired he took over. In our fifties, we ran a small hotel for a few years and did all the cooking ourselves -which was an experience and great fun!! One day I decided to try my hand at making the ‘new Filo pastry’ – imagine Woody Allen on ‘speed’ instead… It must have looked hilarious. It was exhausting and I never bothered again after such a debacle…(Oddly enough, the dessert was successful and tasted delicious, but costly on the nerves…) PLEASE DO N0T TRY IT BARB… xx (wish it had been videod…)
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I’m in awe, Joy!
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O for a video of that! I always thought filo was one of those things (like croissants) that are best left to the experts. I mean — you put in a massive amount of work and what you get back looks quite wonky and is barely edible. Or mayonnaise: sure you could make it yourself, but let’s face it: Hellmans pretty much nails it.
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I was always up for a challenge, cooking-wise, years ago…and at least I tried! I kept to simpler desserts after that experience… Ice cream cake was a doddle then and very popular…(pre-cooked sponge-cake, fresh fruit and ice cream.)
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When my kids were little, I went all out for every birthday, making cakes in the exact shape/color/flavor requested. The one they remember? It was the time I was just too busy at work, so I bought a cake from the freezer section and gave them a bag of M&Ms to do their own decorating. They talked about ‘the best birthday cake ever’ for years…
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I excel at roast potatoes and roux sauces. That’s it. I’ve tried Victoria sponges many times, but the best that can be said for them is that they’re edible. I have bookmarked this recipe.
Both parents were Scottish and so Stovies was a staple and successful part of my repertoire growing up. Ours was a pauper’s version without meat and all I needed was my trusty, deep casserole pot into which I layered slices of onion, potatoes and beef dripping. Once well seasoned, the pot was put into an oven and cooked as slowly as time allowed. The results were always well-received and sometimes we’d push the boat out and serve it with some pickled red cabbage. If I weren’t a vegetarian now, I’d have to go and make some today.
I’ll let you know how the sponge turns out…
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Stovies! One of the unexpected and totally adored blessings of moving to Scotland.
Good luck with the sponge.
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I am definitely going to try that Victoria Sponge. In fact, today I’m expecting a shipment of jam sugar to make my own raspberry jam.
The first thing I remember making is chocolate chip cookies. We didn’t have baking racks, so when the cookies were cooling, we laid them out on a paper grocery bag that we cut so it would lie flat on the table. Lots of good memories there.
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Sounds great. Do you grow your own raspberries?
And we did the same brown bag thing for our baking. My mother also used those brown grocery bags to cover all our school books, which was great because we could then doodle all over those covers.
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We do grow raspberries, but the birds got to them this year before we did.
We used paper bags for our schoolbooks, too. It was great—kids now can’t do that with etextbooks!
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My mother had that Betty Crocker cookbook! Unfortunately, she wasn’t much of a cook. Once I was about 13, she made me take over the cooking. Thank heavens for processed food (mostly canned back then) or the family would have starved.
The few things I learned to cook from scratch, those lessons came from my grandmother (who loved to cook). Meatloaf and roast turkey with bread stuffing are the only two recipes that really stuck with me. Lots of eggs involved in both to make things stick together.
I’m an even worse baker. My brownies taste like chocolate flavored cardboard.
But oh that sponge cake sounds lovely!
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It really is just that good!(And as long as Betty Crocker still makes cake mixes and Ghirardelli makes brownie mixes, there’s no actual reason for you to reinvent those wheels. (Just maybe throw away the evidence…)
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The problem is that even with a mix, my brownies don’t turn out right. But then again, I’ve never tried Ghirardelli’s mix… And yes, that is my motto: Always destroy the evidence!!
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I made scrambled eggs all by myself at the age of 5 while standing on a chair in front of the stove. I wore the kind of short, tulle-lined dress girls wore in the very early 60s. The dress caught fire. My mom, making a bed in another room, though deaf, somehow knew to rush in time to put me out saving me and the eggs, but not the dress, sadly.
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OMG! Did your mother’s hair turn white that day? And more importantly—do you ever still make scrambled eggs?
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Yes, I still make them, but rarely, and I don’t wear dresses like that nor do I stand on a chair (at least not usually). And my mom remained a redhead into her 90s. I’m sure it was totally natural.
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I still have (and use) my Betty Crocker cookbook!
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Except for its slightly-frightening reliance on Crisco shortening, it’s my bible!
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Yes!
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Zoe has allowed me the use of her blog to add something (but not much) to this wonderful post, Barb. A bowlful of great writing with liberal splashes of humor; now there is one helluva recipe. But ok, back to…..ahhhh….cookbooks! I love them, especially those with color illustrations. I have many–from American Cooks Treasury to Jenny Craig’s Simple Pleasures, to the Mediterranean Diet and everything in between. Yes, even that good ol’ Betty Crocker cookbook! And I do dust them off from time to time …
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Thank you Zoe for graciously allowing Emily to post via your blog. I know what you mean about the (somewhat dusty) cookbook collection. My current favorites after dear old Betty Crocker are the Ottolenghi cookbooks and my latest obsession: Plant-Based India by Dr. Sheil Shukla.
Check out this sample!
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There was precious little I could cook, even when I was first married: brownies and baked, stuffed pork chops. But all our friends were superb cooks, so I got the entire set of Foods of the World and have been cooking my way through them every since!
My kids tell me I’m a great cook – little do they know my background!
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you’ve got to love them for the names alone, if nothing else. my Girl Scout food was to put potatoes, onions, and a chunk of meet in heavy foil and cook it over a campfire, with the scouts and then it turns into some kind of stew and is good because you are starving.
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A lovely trip down dessert memory lane – thank you! The first thing I baked was crunchies (as they are known in South Africa, or flapjacks in the U.K.) The recipe is basically foolproof: 6oz butter, 6oz brown sugar and 8oz oats. Mix it all up, pop it in a baking tray, squash it all down and bake at about 400F for about 40 minutes. Allow to cool a little before slicing and then cool completely before diving in headfirst…
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