Kate & Wills & George &...

The weeks seem to be absolutely flying by at the moment - I couldn't quite believe there had been a gap of over a month between the last two posts I wrote, which really is terrible. And it's more than two months since I posted about the birth of the royal baby, whose name was later announced as Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, and was christened as such this Sunday just gone. What better excuse therefore to have a go at making that classic dessert, the charlotte.

While there are some quite fancy and fiddly versions of the dessert, such as the charlotte russe (with a Bavarian cream centre encased in sponge fingers), and the charlotte royale (which uses swiss roll instead and as you can see above, ends up looking weirdly brain-like), in its simplest form, a charlotte is made by lining a pudding basin or mould of some kind with bread, adding a filling of fruit and baking it in the oven. A Google search for recipes suggests that apple is the most common filling, but pretty much anything goes really, though I feel that berries, cherries and the like would take this a little too close to Summer Pudding, which is chilled rather than baked. I saw a couple of recipes for a pear charlotte, which as I happened to have a small tin of pear halves in my stash, seemed the perfect option.

As to a suitable dish to make it in, I do own a couple of pudding basins, but these are far larger than really I wanted to go for. My ramekins, by contrast, are a bit too small for purpose. Thankfully, the world of tins came to the rescue - I still had the tin that my Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pudding came in, which was the ideal shape and size for a dessert for one, and had the added benefit of increasing the tinned element of my attempt at the recipe.

First of all, the tin was lined with slices of white bread dipped in melted butter, to prevent it from browning too much or even burning during baking. As with a summer pudding, it's worth going for a better bread than bog-standard sliced white, which is too insubstantial, and likely to turn to mush when the fruit is added.

For the filling, I drained the tin of pears of most of their syrup, chopped them up and spooned them in on top of the bread. I had a little taste of a piece of pear too; the tin was marked "Del Monte Quality", and they certainly seemed good compared to some I have tried, still with a bit of bite to them but without the unpleasant grainy texture you sometimes get. I wonder if that might be down to the ripeness of the fruit at the point it is canned - if so, the Man from Del Monte clearly said "Yes" at the optimum time in the fruits' lifetime.

The fruit was then sealed in with more bread, and the original lid of the tin placed on top. You could use foil, if you've thrown your lid away. On to a baking tray it went, and into an oven at about 160 degrees.

On its own though, a dessert like this wouldn't quite feel complete - something else was clearly needed to go with it, and to my mind, with a baked pudding, only custard will cut the mustard. Fortunately I already had the ammunition in my armoury - a tin of Tesco Everyday Value "Ready to Serve" custard, which I had picked up for next to nothing, as it was a little dented. Almost literally next to nothing, in fact - it had been reduced down from 17p to just 2p, making it the cheapest tin I have purchased so far for this blog.

I had been expecting the custard to be unnaturally yellow in colour, so was quite surprised to open the tin and find it to be a far mellower, darker colour, more like the hue of condensed milk. Taste-wise too I was pleasantly surprised - I had feared it might prove to be like some of the less successful attempts I have made at making up a batch of custard from powder - overly sweet, and not really sufficiently thoroughly mixed, leaving a somewhat chalky, starchy taste in the mouth. In fact it was very nice - less rich than some ready-made custards but still quite creamy and smooth, not at all sickly, and it even tasted like vanilla might be the "flavouring" mentioned in the ingredients list. Even at 17p, this wouldn't be too bad a buy at all.



I get the feeling that Princess Charlotte will probably grow up to get used to rather better quality groceries than Tesco Everyday Value products, so it seemed only right to try to tart it up a bit. One of the recipes I had seen online intrigued me particularly: a thyme-infused custard, made from scratch, of course, but I saw no reason not to just bung a few twigs of thyme in with the contents of the tin while heating it up, and then leave them in for a bit to impart their flavour. So that's what I did. I would wager that it is probably the first time a tin of Tesco Everyday Value "Ready to Serve" custard has ever been infused with anything, other than perhaps a slight metallic taste. But perhaps it won't be the last time!

After about 15 or 20 minutes in the oven, the bread on the top of the charlotte was starting to brown, and I could hear the filling bubbling, so out it came. As with the steak and kidney pudding previously contained in the tin, then came the moment of truth, turning it out into a bowl. Would it hold its shape, or get stuck to the tin and fall apart?

Success! It didn't look too bad at all. But of course that didn't really matter too much anyway, as it was about to get doused in a big dose of thyme custard.

Classic British puddings might not always be the most elegant things to look at, but they certainly make up for that with the homely, comforting feel they provide. And as for the eating, the charlotte certainly ticked all the boxes too. The buttery bread casing had just started to crisp up on the outside, providing a nice contrast with the soft, juicy chunks of pear in the middle. The real hit though was the thyme custard - the flavour was quite pronounced even though it had only had a matter of minutes to infuse. Thyme isn't the first herb that would spring to mind when thinking of dessert dishes, but the flavour worked well with the sweet creamy custard. Possibly apple would have been a better match for the thyme than pear, but then again it might have got a little lost against the woody flavour of the herb - the taste of the pear was certainly still discernible. I had only heated up half of the tin of custard with the thyme, just in case it didn't prove to be very nice, but I ended up doing the same with the leftovers the next day, as I enjoyed it so much.

So, there we are - a charlotte for Charlotte, and a nice spin on a homely classic for a happy, modern family.