Meet your new store cupboard pudding hero! If you have dinner parties that is. I don’t think anyone is having dinner parties anymore, are they? Or no, whoops, sorry – they’re not dinner “parties” anyway – they are “dinners”. “We’re having a dinner”; “I’ve got a dinner”. Saying dinner party is a bit like saying “nightclub” or “Walkman” or “Fax me”.
So let me start again: if you ever have dinners at home with friends but, like me, totally forget about pudding because what an arse and who really ever wants all that stress on top of everything else and won’t the boys just leave it and get up and smoke in the garden? But then at the last minute you think fuck I can’t have no pudding, then do this.
You will need to have pre-purchased:
A jar of Opie kirsch cherries (one jar will serve 4-6 people)
A tub of good vanilla ice cream
Something crunchy to bash up and sprinkle over (use your imagination. Not a champagne glass. Optional)
Then:
1 Spoon some vanilla ice cream into a little glass
2 Spoon over 3-4 little kirsch-soaked cherries over the top with some juice
3 Sprinkle over your non-lethal topping and serve
This is particularly good, by the way, as a kosher pudding, though I realise this is a very niche point. There is a non-dairy ice cream called Swedish Glace, which will verily bring tears of nostalgia to the eyes of any kosher Jew reading thing, which works very well with this
How about you – what are your store cupboard pudding heroes?
The Spike 
March 10, 2017 at 7:56 am
Excellent vegan pudding tip too! Swedish Glace rocks!
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March 10, 2017 at 8:22 am
You could grate dark chocolate over the top in a Black Forest gateau style. Sometimes I just put out lots of type of chocolate in a vaguely stylish heap – a Nigel slater tip.
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March 10, 2017 at 8:26 am
Affogato – vanilla ice cream with Pedro Ximenez poured over. Divine.
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March 10, 2017 at 9:01 am
This made me laugh, and is such a good idea.
I am terrible at dessert. I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth so I never remember it, which is a bit solipsistic of me. I have had some success with grilled figs, honey, and ice cream; relatively easy. Otherwise I throw cheese at people and hope they won’t notice.
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March 10, 2017 at 10:11 am
I was going to say affogato too, but I’d make it as scoop of ice cream with a shot of espresso poured over (an additional Italian liqueur poured over if you want), the hot coffee is essential for the ice cream to start to melt. Elaine x
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March 10, 2017 at 10:12 am
Affogato is a really good shout; covers the after-dinner coffee and pudding in one! I keep some nice bars of dark chocolate and Italian nougat which I’d bash up into shards, maybe some amaretti biscuits and serve with coffee- offering something sweet which people might like without having to faff about with a proper dessert.
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March 10, 2017 at 11:13 am
Vanilla ice cream with bashed up maltesers (Jamie Oliver) or amaretti biscuits works for me! X
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March 10, 2017 at 1:50 pm
I like the simplicity of this idea very much. Although I’d probably eat all the cherries long before the dinner in a fit of ‘What’s in a jar, sweet, and easy for me to scoff?’cupboard-snacking (a habit that seems to have started age 3 with obsessive cooking chocolate theft. I only realised recently that cooking chocolate – the ’80s/’90s kind – is basically coloured and flavoured fat. Barf.)
Anyway, a relatively easy pudding I like to make that appeals to children and fusspot adults alike is Nigella’s Honey pie. It’s from her post Saatchi cookbook ‘Simply Nigella’, is based on a pie recipe from a New York bakery, and is disgustingly tooth-rottingly sweet to the point that even the most ‘I prefer savoury’ sugarphobe will be converted and have to declare it delicious.
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March 10, 2017 at 2:00 pm
Keep posh brownies in the freezer and then warm them in the oven and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and some raspberries scattered about. So easy and people are thrilled they get brownies for pudding rather than some posh French shit.
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March 10, 2017 at 3:36 pm
That’s genius, though I don’t usually have ice cream in the freezer.
My pud saviour is anything I can make at least a day in advance, but especially Jane Grigson’s Almond Pudding II in English Food. It’s basically ground almonds, butter, eggs and semolina, you mix it in a saucepan and spoon it into a cake tin. You HAVE to make it several days in advance AND it’s so easy I usually get my husband (who is a v good cook but not much of a pudding-maker) to make it – hence I’m a bit sketchy on the ingredients. Very simple, very delicious, can be dressed up with fruit/whipped cream/lemon curd/Opie cherries or left au naturel. If anyone wants I will add the recipe but can’t be arsed to fetch it right now …
Swedish Glace so reminds me of a friend at university who used to eat it, and it annoyed me SO much that it didn’t have the accent and so was actually ‘Glasssse’ not ‘Glassay’ (and I thought it was repulsive). She used to have goat’s milk in her coffee which, if you haven’t tried it is fine, but remarkably goat-y. This was, I hasten to add, a fad thing not a proper allergy thing.
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March 10, 2017 at 3:54 pm
Baked nectarines/peaches, cut fruit in half, take out stones, put a knob of butter, brown sugar and a little pepper in each hollow, bake until fruit is soft and the butter and sugar have made a blazing hot toffee like sauce, have with ice-cream
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March 10, 2017 at 4:25 pm
I keep Cadbury’s Caramel buttons in the freezer and sling them in a pretty bowl to serve alongside cheese for the choc lovers. After a few seconds they thaw a tiny bit and are ruddy delish
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March 10, 2017 at 8:00 pm
This post and the replies are making my mouth water! I can’t wait to get hold of those cherries now. Thanks, Esther xx
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March 10, 2017 at 8:30 pm
Toast donuts are my go to emergency pudding. 2 eggs 2 tsp vanilla and a splash of milk, whisk it all up and put in a shallow dish – soak a couple of slices of bread then fry in butter. Dredge in sugar and cinnamon and bam *donuts* otherwise known as slightly fiddled with eggy bread 🙂
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March 10, 2017 at 9:07 pm
Make a ganache by pouring almost boiling double cream over an equal weight of chopped 70% dark chocolate, add pinch of sea salt and a splash of liquor of your choice – amaretto or grand marnier for example. Leave to cool and serve with fancy shop bought shortbread.
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March 13, 2017 at 9:15 pm
Just throw a multipack of Toffee Crisps and a Macbook on the table and announce it’s time to start watching Taylor Swift videos on Youtube. If they don’t like it they weren’t your real friends
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