Minced Pies and Puds

Minced pies are very English, aren't they? I always immediately think of Sweeney Todd and the pastries filled with human meat... gross. So you can image I was pretty surprised when at work all of sudden we had little minced pies on display next to our other deserts. Meat pies in the morning? Really? However, not all minced pies are created equal. During Christmas, fruit filled minced pies are all the rage. I still have yet to try one, but they smell delicious.

Christmas pudding, a very sweet cake made heavily with fruits such as raisins, plums and/or sultanas, and bread & butter pudding, a combination of buttered bread and an egg/milk mixture, are very popular during the holiday as well. I'm not a huge fan of either but the b&b pudding has the most heavily smell. Other year-round popular desserts include carrot cakes, lemon drizzle cake, and date & walnut.

Surprisingly, I've noticed a great deal of desserts drenched in cream, not fluffy whipped cream but a milky flowing liquid that creates a little moat around the pudding. Cooking show chefs on the tele are always "double-creme this", "double creme that"... they inhale the stuff!

Puddings, obviously, is a term used for an assortment of desserts here, while in the USA pudding is a term used for more liquid-like desserts like a custard or fudge (mmm, creamy chocolate pudding...). With that said, jelly in England refers to gelatin desserts (JELL-O in the USA!) and jelly in the States is more interchangeable with jam, as in strawberry jelly. Did I confuse you yet?

>>>Christmas Pudding (also known as plum pudding)

>>> Lemon Drizzle at my work
>>> Carrot Cake at my work
(the minced pies on top are from my work too!)

♡-Kristen