National Dessert Day

It’s National Dessert Day on the 14th so we are getting ready for all things Sweet. We have our own selection of amazing sweet treats but we’ve also been unearthing some incredible dessert recipes and looking at who came up with the idea of ending a meal with something sweet.

The origin of the word dessert comes from the French “desservir” which here means “to clear the table.” The earliest references to the term dessert being used are in the 1600’s and arrived at the same time as the concept of serving a meal in courses.

As a family business ourselves, we are very proud to be working with another family who run a bakery called Crosbies. They started their bakery after Clare Crosby kept getting requests for her home baked cakes. We now stock a whole range of their cakes along with Salted Caramel Brownies and range of fantastic chocolates.

But deserts can be a lot more adventurous than Brownies and as ever at Lidgates, we have been looking far and wide for inspiration.

In Malaysia they have a dish called Ice beans. It’s an ice-cream based dessert with some unusual ingredients based around shaved ice and beans. Different variations might be done with an addition of sweet corn, palm seed, grass jelly and agar cubes. It can then be topped with condensed milk, coconut milk, fruit, peanuts, chocolate and sweet syrups.

In Turkey they have Tavuk göğsü. Hold on to your hats because this dessert is based on chicken. It was a traditional delicacy in the times of Ottoman Empire. Sultans. The meat is boiled until it’s soft enough to be separated into strips or pounded into powder. Then chicken gets mixed with sugar, milk, rice and different flavourings, for example, cinnamon.

 In the US we came across this Maple Bacon Donut,

Donuts are one of Americans’ favourite sweets. To make them even more attractive, the donuts are often topped with maple syrup.