DESSERTS

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Some might say that desserts for the everyday family meal are going out of style. Maybe it’s our busy lifestyle nowadays, or perhaps the dietary admonition to reduce the amount of sugar we eat. Whatever the reason I think it’s a shame. Dessert is a lovely way to round out a meal but now that there are just two of us in the household, I only prepare dessert when family or friends come for dinner. I should add that the reduction in sugar content in our diet hasn’t reduced my girth at all — quite the opposite, in fact.

When our children were young, and probably also against all child-rearing advice then as now, dessert provided an incentive to the children to eat the main course.

Whichever way, I remain unapologetic about serving desserts over the years. Memories of those happy times at the family table with delicious hot sweet concoctions for winter desserts and light, airy and fruity for summer will always remain strong in my mind. And if you analyse them closely, there are some nutritional benefits to the recipes in this section — calcium from milk, vitamins from fruit, protein from eggs — so you see desserts are not necessarily all bad!