Daddy's Favourite

Last week Ben passed his driving test. Our celebratory meal was an homage to nursery food and school dinners. We ate sausages, baked beans and mashed potatoes followed by a kind of jam roly-poly. The pudding was a recipe from my Great-Grandmother's hand-written recipe book and I tried it out for the first time in honour of Carla's father's driving success as it is called Daddy's Favourite.

The roly-poly was also a success with Ben finishing off his bowlful saying "I think that might be Carla's Daddy's new favourite". He likened it to a cross between a Swiss Roll and a pancake.

This newly discovered heirloom will definitely be forming part of Carla's culinary education and here's the recipe for any of you out there who might be craving comfort in the form of a good old-fashioned pud. I chose to serve it with ice-cream but custard would probably do the job!

Daddy's Favourite (Daddy being my Great-great Grandfather!)
2oz butter
2-3oz sugar (I used 2oz in the batter and 1oz to coat)
1/4lb flour
2 eggs
1/2 pint milk
1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream fat and sugar, add beaten eggs and then flour and milk. Put in baking powder. Put into a well greased tin or pyrex dish.

Bake in a moderate oven till set and slightly brown, turn out onto sugared paper. Spread quickly with warm jam and roll up.

P.S. I have copied the recipe word for word from Great-Granny's book. I used a well greased Swiss Roll baking tin and I baked it at 180c for about 1/2 an hour to 40 mins. You do need it to go golden and start to curl up at the edges so best to just keep an eye on it.

Basingstoke, my love...

Carla is a spirited young lady and can get quite excitable around bedtime, which is not ideal. When we were getting her ready for bed recently, I came across two more phrases inherited from my Granny.

Both expressions were used in an attempt to soothe when I was an easily frustrated and temperamental child. The first, "Gently, gently, Mr Bentley", is not unheard of by others but my husband has only heard it in the abbreviated form of "Gently Bentley". Whether my Grandmother embellished the traditional phrase or whether others also use the longer form, I do not know and would be pleased to find out.

My husband was amused by the second expression as he had never heard it before. When I got myself into a tizzie (quite often but that's another tale to be told), Granny would not say "Calm down" but would quietly soothe with the words "Basingstoke,my love, Basingstoke". None of us know where this idiom comes from. Like the "toe-cover", I think my Granny may have claimed it had a literary origin. Perhaps I should telephone her now to find out.