National Dessert Day

 National Dessert Day

You must remember those heavenly days at both school and home when desserts were eaten with an almost voracious relish and enjoyment. You'd queue up at the Nissan hut that we called our dinner hut and were then dutifully slopped up the most mouth watering sweet desserts that were irresistible and left us with huge piles of timber around our waistline. At the time we didn't know any better but were unknowingly damaging not only our waistline but increasing the cholesterol levels almost irreparably. 

After the traditional helpings of meat, mashed potatoes and assortment of vegetables, we were suddenly confronted with delicious roly poly puddings, Spotted Dick with thousands of currants and raisins and the wonderful honey cake which we invariably looked forward to with the most eager anticipation particularly when they kindly added a generous topping of apple strudel.

There were innumerable puddings, the dreaded semolina which seemed to contain horrific looking layers of skin on the top of the semolina and, quite possibly, apple pies but it's hard to remember them with anything like the clarity that they probably deserved. There were three very maternal, middle aged dinner ladies, women with dainty aprons and headscarves who were always pleased to see these blossoming examples of male adolescence and hoping for just a semblance of appreciation from the boys but were never really given the credit they must have merited. 

So today is National Dessert Day and how sweet that sounds, hey!  Most notably, there were what looked like huge milk churns of custard swimming around in a sea of yellow. Suddenly, the aforesaid dinner lady ladled up the custard, spreading the dessert with a glorious flavour and fragrance that would last for the rest of the day in your stomach. But then there was the dreaded realisation that you'd just added at least five stones to your waistline and although you'd felt bloated and heavy, it was still a hot and nutritious meal. And that's where the likes of Jamie Oliver and a whole host of concerned chefs and dieticians came in. 

According to government ministers in high places, a whole generation of teenagers and very young children are eating far too many packets of sweets, ice creams, chewy toffees designed to leave you with hundreds of fillings in your mouth and an abundance of creamy cakes that can't be good for you in the long term. So the Labour party and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer bombard us with sanctimonious speeches about the ruination of our school-children because they're just vast, fat and obese. 

For years now governments of various hues have jumped onto the bandwagon of childhood obesity, that vitally important period of their maturity and development where they have to be aware of their mental and physical health. Besides, all of those cream sponges, rice puddings with blobs of jam and all manner of clearly fattening desserts are just bulking them up and before you know it, they'll be getting on to their bathroom scales and showing the most ghastly amount of weight that just seemed to accumulate alarmingly by the stones and pounds.

But now more than ever desserts are simply the most guilty of all pleasures. During your teenage years, mum would always reserve that 1970s staple diet that had to be the most stunning food treat you'd ever tasted. It was called an Arctic Roll and it was just out of this world, a culinary special and feast for the eyes. The Arctic Roll was a stunningly thick sponge with the most remarkable slab of vanilla ice cream that once consumed, was never forgotten. 

Then there was the celebrated Angel Delight, another blob of pink jelly like substance that resembled a a blancmange but never really appeared on the family menu or at least that always seemed to be the case. Desserts were often a fusion of chocolate cream confections with hundreds of thousands sprinkled on top. There was the famous Knickerbocker Glory, that astonishing looking dessert commonly associated with the Wimpy fast food burger outlet that still populate the high streets of Britain. Trifles were savoured with huge quantities of jam, lashings of strawberry additives and whole variety of yet more chocolate. 

Personally you always looked forward to Yom Kippur, the divine meal after the Jewish Fast. Mum would be there with your sweet cup of milky coffee and the scintillatingly beautiful honey cake which is still something that most of us can't wait to devour after the Shofar is blown resoundingly across the world. Your wonderfully lovely mum and dad always kept whole packets of biscuits in her bread bin and some of them could often be described as mini desserts, overflowing with sugar  and represented everything that was bad in our diet at the time. But hey ho. It's National Dessert Day so tuck into that apple pie or Black Forest Gateau with complete impunity. You deserve it and. besides, everything in moderation.