What's for pudding?

This week a special on puddings. One of the greatest compliments which Sam ever paid my cooking was to start liking desserts as they ones I make 'are so nice'. However, the potential for morbid obesity in Kirkstall Towers is now soaring.

Firstly, this week, a clafoutis, which I made from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's bread and pudding Daily Telegraph pamphlet that I have become so attached to.

I didn't technically make a clafoutis, as they are always cherry, apparently, and as the fairly unpleasant looking cherries which you can buy in November cost four quid a punnet, I used plums. So it was technically a flaugnarde. From the ingredients, I thought I was making some kind of plum pancake., but this was like nothing I've ever tried. Sort of like a warm custard, or possibly a pastry free flan. In the words of Greg Wallace, or what I imagine he would say if he got his chops round this: 'soft, sweet with a sharp kick of fruit'.

The second pudding I made was a beauty, but in all the hustle and bustle of taking part in A's Thanksgiving extravaganza, I forgot to photograph it. As you will know, darling reader, once I find a source of recipes that works for me, I'll cook a large number of recipes from it and bore you with them. So we're back to Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet. A, who I think I might have mentioned, is American, throws a magnificent Thanksgiving feast for his lucky English friends every year, and I usually make an American pudding for it. This year I picked banana cream pie. This was quite a bit of work, it involved making some very short pastry, then making a caramelised banana filling, which had huge potential for burning. I went to bed on Wednesday, having let A know that I had filled a pastry case with what looked like banana porridge, quite worried I'd made something inedible. The following evening, I introduced a layer of caramel into the recipe, to sit on top of the banana, (I figured it couldn't possibly hurt) whipped the cream to go on top, and folded in some flaked almonds. You should probably only eat it once a year, along with many of the delicacies on A's menu, but it worked very well.  Greg Wallace (can you tell I'm glued to Masterchef at the moment?) would say 'sweet, rich, creamy, and amazing idea with the caramel, Sally, you are a genius'.