Pies, puddings, biscuits and tarts + rolls, buns, muffins, ...

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "David" <dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> Eloise wrote:
> 
> Puddings:
> > 
> > ... traditionally, British "puddings" have been of the heavy, 
> > stodgy variety, cooked, often suet-based recipes,like Christmas 
> > pudding or roly poly, or sponges, for instance treacle pudding 


bboy_mn:

SUET!
OK, your going to have to explain suet to me. I know what suet is;
it's a big nasty dried out piece of beef fat. The only thing I've seen
suet used for in the USA is to put in bird feeders during the winter
so the bird have a high energy source of food. What I need explained
is how anyone in their right mind (no offense intended) would ever
conceive of making a sweet desert/pudding out of something so nasty.

In the USA, sometimes cake frosting is made from mixing food coloring
and sugar with vegitable shortening (shortening: vegetable oil that
has been saturated or hydrogenated to make it the consistency of lard
or soft butter). For most baking only a very small amount of
shortening or vegetable oil is added to keep cookies soft, and pastry
crusts flaky. But trying to make a sweet desert out of a dried up
piece of beef fat, I can only suppose the person was suffering from a
bad case of ergot poisoning (which is about the same as saying they
were on LSD). Of course, I've never tried it, so I really shouldn't
complain, it could be good, but as good as it may be, it sounds like a
heart attack waiting to happen. (no offense intended)

More on pudding-
Pudding in the USA:
Chocolate And Coconut Pudding Recipe

2 cups milk, scalded
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup chocolate, grated
1/2 cup coconut, grated
3 eggs

Mix eggs, coconut, chocolate, and sugar together. Add slowly the
scalded milk. Pour into a pudding dish. Set pudding dish in a roasting
pan partially filled with hot water. Bake in moderate oven for about
45 to 50 minutes.

[Although, this recipe doesn't say so, it's common to refrigeate the
pudding for a few hours before eating it.]


Pudding in the UK???:
Suet Pudding Recipe

3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup suet
1 cup sour milk
1 cup molasses
1 cup raisins

Mix and sift the dry ingredients, keeping one-half cup of flour to
sift over the raisins. Chop the suet fine and add it to the milk and
molasses. Combine the two mixtures and add the raisins which have been
dredged with flour. Grease pudding molds or baking powder cans and
fill two-thirds full of the mixture. Cover and steam for three hours.
Serve with hard sauce or any desired liquid sauce. 

Treacle Pudding Recipe:
http://www.guyskitchen.co.uk/Treacle%20pudding.htm

Quite a difference.


>  
> > This cookie/biscuit/cracker thing is one of the things I find most 
> > confusing. I know what you mean by biscuit but the British biscuit 
> > doesn't seem to me to be an exact equivalent of the cookie.
 
> 
> > Muffin is another one. When we moved to Tokyo, I leaped on a 
> > display of "English muffins", 
> 

> 
> > But the difference is quite clear. Our muffins are toasted and 
> > eaten  for breakfast or tea, ... whereas your muffins definitely 
> > count as cakes and we wouldn't normally eat them for breakfast.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> David

Cookies, biscuits, crackers, muffins, buns and rolls-

A cookie is any very sweet disk shaped (although other shapes are
allowed especially at Christmas) food that is given primarily to kids
as a treat; like afterschool milk and cookies. The exception is sweet
wafer cookies which are usually served with an ice cream sundae. 

An English muffin really isn't a muffin to us; we, in the US, always
thought it was odd of you English to call it a muffin when really it
was a biscuit. A biscuit being a very unique bread-like food. The most
common biscuit is the baking powder biscuit (usually made from a
special flour called BisQuick) which looks much like an English muffin
but is smaller and tastes better (most excellent for sopping up roast
beef gravy). Then there is what you call a bun, which we call a roll
or a dinner roll. A roll could also be referred to as a bun, but most
often the only bread that is referred to as a bun is the hamburger or
hotdog bun.

Now we come to the muffin. A muffin is like a cup cake. If you
remember the small cakes that contained the sleeping potion that
Crabbe and Goyle ate in the movie; those were cup cakes. Expect
muffins, while still sweet and cake-like, are heavier, oilier, larger,
and somewhat more bread-like, usually having some kind of fruit (blue
berries, raisins, apples, strawberries, etc....) added and possibly
nuts mixed in. These are frequently eaten instead of a real breakfast.
Generally considered healthier that coffee and a pastry, but in
reality are very oily, and high in fat and calories. They are also
considered more trendy and sophisticated than common pastries and
donuts; basic yuppy food.

And for David's reference, we dunk our cookies, donuts, and sometimes
pastries in our milk and coffee. Not considered very sophisticated but
oh so yummy. Nothing like a plain old fashioned donut dunked into some
rich creamy coffee.

Just a few more thoughts.

bboy_mn