When I
started “Sweet Exchange” three months ago, I had no idea of what I was getting
myself into. I couldn’t even imagine how much I was going to learn through food
or how many sweet experiences I would have in eating and tasting so many
different things. My writing skills and my vocabulary have also improved so
much, and I truly felt a little more British just by getting to know all these
stories and memories behind sweets and puddings.
I have to
admit that I never really thought about how food is important to us and how
they can impact us and represent us in so many ways. After this blog, sweets
and desserts are not only fun things to me anymore; they are a source of
information, a way of getting to know people and their backgrounds. And, of
course, they are also a way of showing to others who I am, what I like, what I
choose, what I remember.
My initial
idea for this last post was to have a short video with testimonials from
various people I met this semester, but didn’t actually have the chance to get
to know. I wanted to learn what their favourite sweets are, why they like to
eat them, which memories they have with them. Unfortunately, a few people didn’t
want to be recorded and I had to give up on the idea eventually.
But it’s
okay. I still managed to hear their stories and come near who they really are. I
managed to know, for example, that the receptionist from my building who greets
me everyday comes from South Africa and used to have peppermint tarts with her
family. She misses her mom and dad. And she also eats more sweets now than when
she was a child.
I managed
to know that one of my classmates is really close to her brother and that he
used to play with her when she wanted to keep her Galaxys safe. Another
classmate’s boyfriend hates her favourite chocolate bar. And there’s another
classmate who used to play with those sweet necklaces, but doesn’t really like
how they taste now.
And then there’s
me. I discovered that I will probably always love to eat chocolate and that I
will always miss the desserts my family makes. I found out eating sweets with
my sister is probably one of the nicest things to do when I’m sad. I have
learned that eating a place’s typical dish is a great way to understand its
culture, and that I should make more effort on eating fruits, because they can
be completely delicious :)
I hope you
have enjoyed the blog and everything that has been talked about here. It was a
pleasure to discuss history, childhood, tastes and so many other aspects of
life and food through it. Hopefully, I will be able to add loads of other
sweets and puddings to my memories' list in the future... Who knows what other countries, cultures and people have to share yet? Cheers!
A collage of many fun moments I had related to food while travelling. Hopefully, it'll get bigger soon! :D
I have decided to write an entry about
shortcake particularly because it can mean two different things. The term is
used in England to designate a kind of biscuit, sometimes called by shortbread
too, and also a kind of pastry used in fruit or chocolate cakes. Though their recipes
have almost the same ingredients, their results can be quite different; they
are also consumed in very different ways. The shortcake biscuit, for example,
is usually eaten with tea or given as a treat in special occasions; the
shortcake itself is usually a pudding/dessert with many other flavours and
textures blended in.
Buttery golden shortcakes for me to taste.
Had a great time and will definitely get some more!
It is said that shortcake biscuits were invented
in Scotland during the 12th century and were considered a very
special and expensive Christmas treat. They are are usually baked in three
shapes: large circles, called petticoat tails; thick slabs, called fingers; or small
round doughs. Special occasions biscuits may also come in different shapes, as
the ones sold by Girl Scouts: they sell shortcakes that look like their trefoil
logo. These biscuits are also all patterned with forks or cookie-molds.
The name shortcake comes from the huge amount
of butter used to bake them. In cookery, when the proportion of fat is higher
than the one of dry ingredients, the gluten strands get inhibited from forming.
This process, called shortening, ensures a crumbly texture to the pastry. Traditional
recipes used one part of sugar for two of butter and three of flour. Nowadays,
it is quite common to incorporate baking powder in it, and also a bit of milk or
cream sometimes.
The shortcake cake is usually topped with
fruits and whipped cream, though there are chocolate versions of it too. The
most common is the strawberry one, which got extremely popular during the 1850’s.
The cake is usually baked in layers and moisturised with the juices from the toppings.
Nowadays, a lot of shortcake cakes are not cooked with proper shortcake pastry,
but with sponge or angel cake instead – this is due to health concerns about fat
contents in it.
Taste it!
My initial idea was to taste both kinds of
shortcake: the biscuit and the actual cake. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any
good-looking strawberry shortcakes in the bakeries I visited, nor even at
Sainsbury’s. I’d be more than glad if I could get any recommendations on where
to eat it, though! That said, I decided to grab some biscuits and also some
caramel shortcakes at the market. I had the first one with a cup of coffee and
the second one just after dinner tonight.
The taste of the biscuit itself is, of course,
very buttery and also less sweet than I expected. They are quite crunchy on the
outside, but then instantly melt in a soft texture in your mouth. Having it
with coffee was a great idea, especially if you dip the biscuits into it. This
reminded of my childhood, when I used to go to my grandma’s house and have tea
with “biscoitos maizena”, a typical kind of biscuit in Brazil very similar to
shortcake.
The caramel shortcakes were also a nice
experience, though I liked them a little less. Guess I was expecting too much
from the chocolate and ended up surprised when I found out it was not as sweet
as I expected either. It was a little more soft than the biscuits, and
something on it reminded me of nuts – the caramel, maybe? I also found out that
they are very popular in Australia and sometimes called “Millionaires’ Slice”.
Express it!
One of the oldest literary mentions to
shortcake appears in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, a William Shakespeare comedy
published in 1602. In Act I, Scene I, the character Simple mentions someone
called “Alice Shortcake”, which is apparently used as a codename. This play
deals a lot with prejudice between classes in the reign of Henry IV and
represents a lot of the English Elizabethan middle class life.
Even though the shortcake was a British culinary
invention, Americans are also crazy about it. The first recipe for strawberry
shortcake is credited to Eliza Leslie, an American author from Philadelphia who
wrote very popular books on cooking and etiquette during the 19th
century. In 1847, she published “Miss Leslie’s Ladies Receipt Book: A Useful
Companion for Large or Small Families”, which contained a recipe with crumbly
pastry for “Strawberry Cake”.
But one of the cutest – and most profitable –
representations of this dessert is the Strawberry Shortcake character, which is
owned by American Greetings. She and her dog Custard were initially used in
cards during the late 70’s and early 80’s, but soon enough turned into toys, videogames, posters,
television series and even a film. With time, she also got a whole set of sweet
friends, such as Huckleberry Pie and Blueberry Muffin. I have got to admit that
Strawberry Shortcake was a huge hit amongst girls all over the world – even I had
one of her dolls back home! In my country, we call her “Moranguinho”.
I never thought understanding a pudding could be so difficult...
What the hell is a real pudding?
This is what I thought a pudding was meant to be. In Brazil,
"pudim" is very popular and
It really took me a while to understand what a
pudding meant in British culture. When I translated the word to Portuguese, I
thought it was supposed to designate a dessert we also have in Brazil, called
“pudim”. It is similar to a flan and usually cooked with condensed milk, milk,
eggs and sugar.
Things got even more complicated when I saw some
pictures of puddings that looked like cakes, and also when they started calling
savoury dishes as puddings. There were even sausages being called puddings! It
was too much for me... So I went to Google. And I ended up really surprised
when I read that all the options above were true.
Apparently, the word “pudding” comes from the
French word “boudin”, which has come from the Latin “botellus”. It means “small
sausage”, and was used to identify encased meats used in Medieval European
cooking. These sausages were usually done with the intestines and blood of a
pig or sheep, and then stuffed with oatmeal, spices and meat. That’s where
expressions such as “black pudding” and “blood pudding” come from.
With time, pudding has been used to designate
any kind of dish boiled in a bag – that’s where the savoury puddings appeared, for
example. During the 18th and 19th centuries, these
puddings were very common aboard Royal Navy ships and often used as the primary
dish. The main ingredients were flour, suet and some kind of meat.
This is an example of blood pudding. Very different from what I expected...
Along with the savoury puddings came the sweet
ones as well. At first, they were cooked just with flour, nuts and sugar, but pretty
soon fruits, jam, spices and meringues were incorporated. In recent cookery, creamy puddings also
appeared: these are made with sugar, milk and a thickening agent, such as cornstarch,
gelatine, eggs, rice or tapioca. All these sweet puddings may come in various
textures and shapes – most of them resemble as cakes nowadays.
In a broader sense, that’s where the idea of
using the word “pudding” as a synonym for “dessert” came from: you could cook
puddings in so many ways that they could designate almost any kind of sweet
dish. The word also refers to the idea of a dish that concludes the meal. This
term is also used in other Commonwealth countries, as New Zealand, Hong Kong
and India.
Modern puddings
To find out a little bit about how puddings
were represented in British culture, I have decided to start by searching
through the websites of Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. They both have TV shows
about cooking and I had previously watched a few episodes of each back home. I
thought they would be good examples on how modern cooking deals with this whole
tradition of the pudding.
At Nigella’s website, I got 229 results from
the search, which I thought was quite impressive. I later found out that not
all recipes are hers, but there are also several ones submitted by the website’s
community. I also got impressed by the variety of ingredients she uses: I even
managed to find a “Liquorice Pudding” recipe!
What immediately caught my attention is the way
she describes most sweet pudding recipes. She is known for using a flirtatious tone
and lots of adjectives, which I think suit very well the idea of pleasure from
eating a dessert – that’s why we leave it for last, isn’t it? It is also important
to say that Nigella used the word “pudding” in its broader meaning. In her
website, I could find examples of savoury puddings, such as “Steak and Kidney
Pudding”, but also recommendations about desserts like trifles, syllabubs and
creams.
At Jamie’s website, however, there were only 23
recipes for puddings. Only three of them were savoury, and all the sweet ones
were actually named “pudding”, which made me realise that he might distinguish
the words “pudding” and “dessert”. The photographs are also curious: most of
them show the puddings in their traditional pudding bowl shape.
What I liked about his recipes is that he
manages to offer some really traditional ones, such as the ones he credits to
his mom or grandmother, and also post other recipes with modern twists, which
he is known for. His descriptions are more practical than Nigella’s, but still
have many adjectives; sadly, some recipes don’t even have a “personal”
description. He also talks a lot about the history of his dishes, explaining
where he got the recipe from or why he has decided to change it.
Here are two nice examples of the different ways
Nigella and Jamie cook their puddings. I have selected two of their versions
for Christmas puddings, which are very famous and traditional dishes here in
the UK.
Our Easter puddings! Yummy!
Making my Easter more British traditional
I have decided to try my puddings for the blog
in a very special occasion: Easter! Me and my Brazilian friends had lunch
together, and I was responsible for bringing the desserts. I thought it’d be a
good idea to bring different puddings and taste them together with my
friends... And also in a situation in which most puddings are eaten here in
England.
As I had no idea on how to cook a traditional
pudding, I did some research on popular flavours and went to the market to get
something already done. I ended up buying four different puddings from
Sainsbury’s, which you just put on the microwave and voilà! They were really
good, though: very moist, with a soft texture on the inside and creamy toppings
outside.
We have tried Belgium chocolate, sticky toffee,
vanilla with red berries and spotted dick puddings. Everyone’s favourite was
the chocolate one, of course, but the one with the red berries topping was also
eaten quite fast. There were a lot of leftovers from the spotted dick though,
because most of my friends don’t really like raisins, and from the sticky
toffee, because we found it too sweet.
