Mark Porter visits the Somerset hamlet of Broadway, where fundraising villagers have spoons at the ready for a millennium pudding-fest. Photographs by Noel Murphy.
Never in the annals of English summer-evening pudding binges has so much been eaten by so few, so quickly.
The three jolly ladies at the table outside the old donkey shed are having trouble with their maths. One of them claims they've only had eight puddings, while the other two maintain that the total is nine. "We've had three each," says Shirley. Valerie concurs, but adds that they were small portions. "Speak for yourselves," replies Eve, a trifle defensively. "I only had two."
It is a charity pudding evening and we are sitting in the garden of Tanyard Cottage in the small Somerset village of Broadway, shrouded by clematis, honeysuckle and hydrangeas and bordered by a rose-laden trellis, which leads to an orchard beyond. This perfect English summer's evening is punctuated by the buzzing of bees and the delicate rendition of some Sixties pop hits by a couple of admirably restrained musicians.
The ladies return from their fourth visit to the buffet table, each brandishing a portion of cheese. This they help down with a robust-looking claret of recent vintage, which had been brought along as a post-pudding palate-cleanser. "We read about the pudding day in the parish magazine and we're very pleased that we did," explains Eve, before scooping a modest dollop of stilton onto the end of a stick of celery. "And by the way, the Eton Mess doesn't count because it was only a spoonful. So that means we've only had two puddings, not three," she says, adamantly.
Meanwhile, Mavis Squire, matriarch of the Somerset sorority of pudding-fanciers and mistress of Tanyard Cottage, is busying herself in the scullery, whisking a vat of double cream to go with the cartwheel-sized raspberry and strawberry pavlovas, the pecan pies, profiteroles and sundry other offerings.
Mavis, known to family and friends as Blossom, has cooked no fewer than five dishes, while several other ladies from the hamlet of Broadway have also prepared some splendid offerings for the festival fundraiser. Pudding day, or 'Trifle at Tanyard' as they call it, is part of Broadway 2000, a series of charity events organised by villagers to raise money for local millennial projects.
Earlier, Mavis had been labouring over, among other things, a gloriously rich Mississippi mud pie made from melted chocolate, chocolate biscuits, marshmallows, a pint of double cream and yet more chocolate. Then there is the tiramis�, the white-chocolate cheesecake and the summer pudding, which was squashed down by a plate with a Victorian flatiron on top. There are so many puddings that both fridges are full, as is the entire work surface of the kitchen. When the pudding-makers stop for tea (and giant wedges of chocolate gateau) there is no room to swing a teaspoon, let alone a doorstep of killer cake.
Back in the Seventies, those benighted days of bring-a-course dinner parties when prawn cocktail was king, Mavis used to specialise in desserts. By the Nineties, she had been dubbed the Pudding Queen of Solihull, due to the fact that she had salvaged countless evenings of culinary mediocrity with her great puds. Solihull's loss is Somerset's gain since she and her husband, Andrew, settled there three years ago, after taking early retirement.
The day before the feast, Mavis, who originally hails from Somerset, picked all the strawberries and raspberries herself at Forde Abbey, near Chard. The wonderful cheeses, however, were donated by local cheesemakers Horlicks, in nearby Ilminster.
As I flick through Mavis's recipes while observing a pavlova being loaded with strawberries, I note a diet sheet next to the one for Foolproof Chocolate Cake: it is the American Heart Assoc-iation Diet for overweight heart patients. Just as I am pondering losing 17lbs in seven days, Pam Baker, a retired teacher who is married to the local builder, John, drops by with a large trifle decorated with lemon-balm leaves. It has to be left outside.
Then Anne Potter whistles in with a chocolate cheesecake and a huge candy-embroidered slab of melted sugar, on which the words 'Broadway 2000' are sculpted. Anne, chairwoman of the fundraising group, is dressed in a red skirt, red shoes, a sleeveless white top, with her toenails immaculately finished in vermillion. Here is a woman who knows a thing or two about puddings and, if she were to be hoisted onto the buffet table, she could easily be mistaken for a strawberry cheesecake.
"I love dessert, can't you tell?" she says, prodding a perfectly acceptable waistline. When I ask her who is the best pudding chef in town, there is no hesitation: "My daughter, Emma, of course." This is an unfair question, because I had not realised that Emma is the head chef at Porters, an eaterie in Taunton. Emma has prepared exquisite profiteroles and a chocolate sauce to die for.
At 7.29pm the buffet table is replete. It is both pristine and colourful, like one of those beautiful illustrations from a Raymond Blanc cookbook, and there is not an inch of space for any late-coming puddings. It seems a shame to touch it, but my comrades-at-pudding do not agree. At 7.30pm precisely, the whistle blows. By 8.03pm serious damage has been inflicted to both puddings and puddees, and several ladies are rushing between kitchen and garden, laden with refills.
Where once sat Pam Baker's trifle, there is now only a gory mess. The pavlovas look as if they've been through the Siege of Stalingrad, Joyce Bayliss's summer pudding has been blown away like so many autumn leaves, and evidence of Anne Potter's chocolate cheesecake, there is none (except a brown smear). Never in the annals of English summer-evening pudding binges has so much been eaten by so few, so quickly. The only items left untouched by the locusts of Broadway are a dull-looking trifle and a date-and-walnut bake with fudge sauce that looks like a house brick covered in gunk. I know about the latter: I baked it that very morning, having misjudged completely the kind of thing that we English will eat during high summer.
Despite the volume and content of the evening, it goes with a swing. A man with an Arthur Scargill hairdo looks at one stage as if he is about to dance, but instead pats his wayward hair back into place and sits down. There is something for everyone in the raffle.
Quite what is being bought by the money raised by Broadway 2000 still remains something of a mystery to me. Every time I ask anyone where the loot is going, a small, bearded Welshman sidles up and warns them all to keep mum. "I don't think we should tell the press too much," he says, helpfully. Blossom, too, is hushed up, but not before I manage to find out that special millennial goblets have been commissioned for the little ones at Broadway's primary school. And that some of the money might go towards dredging the old village pond (this scheme is advertised on the notice board outside The Bell, and there is no mention at all of it being on a 'need-to-know' basis).
"We've raised more than £2,000 so far, starting with a coffee morning," says the cautious Welshman, who also happens to be Mr Blossom, aka Andrew Squire. "Then we held a cheese-and-wine do, a hog roast and a sponsored duck race, and now we are looking for suggestions as to what to do with all the money we've collected. There are still things that have to be passed by the committee, so I can't say too much." Cough now, Andrew, or you'll be hearing from my friends at the News of the World.