Salads as puddings

Can’t write a book without a pudding section! Fruit Salad as we know and (may or may not) love it has been around since the nineteenth century, but the idea of mixing fruit and nuts by way of a repast has been around for millennia. I grew up in a time (OK – the 1970s – I admit it) when fruit salad mostly came out of a can and consisted of rather dire, oversweet mini cubes of often unidentifiable slimy fruit broken up with bits of glacé cherry for added excitement. Fresh fruit salad was mostly of the orange, apple, pear and banana variety, with grapes providing the highlight. So I would like to think that with this chapter I will be able to expunge all thoughts of that canned past: please find here below spiced creams, cake croutons and all manner of naughty add-ons to raise that erstwhile ‘healthy option’ into the pudding of choice rather than the dieter’s punishment.