As my birthday present this year, Will and I went to Lacock for a few days, and on the last day, before heading back home, we went for a bit of a wander around the shops. Lacock, as a village, is owned by the National Trust, so there is a decent sized National Trust shop. When I went inside this caught my eye:

Good Old-Fashioned Puddings by Sara Paston-Williams

When we were kids, sunday was always a roast, and mum would almost always also cook a sponge of some sort. My favourite was a treacle sponge with custard. Heaven!

Anyway, flipping through the book I got an idea. Though I do bake (I made a banana cake just yesterday), we probably eat more  bought cakes and pasteries and cookies, than home made ones. And while these days I buy fair trade sugar, and chocolate, and free-range eggs, i’m pretty sure that most ingredients in processed baking would not live up to that sort of standard.

Plus my pudding repertoire of hot puddings consists of baked apples and crumbles. And while these are great, why not learn more?

So sunday is new pudding day, as I slowly work my way through the book. (I’m planning to do one recipe from each chapter, from the first to the last, and then back to the first again, and so on and so on, so that we don’t end up with a glut off three months of icecream! or whatever.)

This week’s recipe: Apple-Marmalade Charlotte

(again with the camera phone)

It’s basically bread, and apples, and marmalade. (The marmalade was some we made back in january. 🙂

…with custard.

Conclusion: Wonderful. Didn’t take very long to do (if you ignore that it’s not always easy to find enough stale white bread in our house), and both W and I have munched through it happily over the last couple of dinner.  Will cook again.

More next week.