Sweet dreams are on the menu at the 'home' of Britain's Pudding Club – at Three Ways House Hotel, in the Cotswolds village of Mickleton.
Renowned for its Pudding Club evenings - when guests can sample up to seven different traditional, home-made puddings in one sitting - Three Ways House in Mickleton, Gloucestershire, also boasts a number of themed pudding rooms, including 'The Spotted Dick and Custard' bedroom.
Privately owned and personally managed, Three Ways House first became the venue for The Pudding Club in the 1985. A light hearted response to the shortage of traditional puddings to be found on restaurant menus at that time, The Pudding Club quickly drew a passionate and faithful following from fans of Sticky Toffee Pudding, Jam Roly-Poly and Spotted Dick.
"Meetings of The Pudding Club are held every Friday, and many Saturday evenings too. Everyone is welcome" says co-owner, Jill Coombe. "The evening starts at 7.30 with an aperitif in the lounge when the full history and rules of the club are explained. We then offer a choice of three light main courses before the serious business begins, when we parade seven traditional, British puddings through the room to much applause and cheering!”
Each pudding is accompanied by "lashings" of custard, and guests are allowed to sample as many of the puddings as they wish or to have as many helpings of one particular pudding. At the end of the evening, a vote is taken for the 'Pudding of the Month'; and at the end of the year, at a special meeting, a vote is taken for the 'Pudding of the Year'.
Not surprisingly, the fame of The Pudding Club has spread far and wide. Appearances on numerous TV programmes have helped to establish its reputation as the 'spiritual home' of the traditional British pudding, and visitors to the picturesque north Cotswolds hamlet can either sample some of the puddings that are available in Randall's Bar, or in the main restaurant.
Nothing, however, can match one of the Pudding Club evenings or, better still, a two night 'Pudding Club Break' which costs around £200 for a double/twin room per night. Guests staying in any of the themed bedrooms can expect to pay a little more.
Copies of The Pudding Club recipe book, meanwhile, are on sale in the reception of this 48-bedroom, three star (81%) hotel as well as online.
Pudding Club puddings are also now available for sale in Waitrose supermarkets across the UK.
Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
MICKLETON, England - Do you consider yourself a spotted-dog lover or are you more of a gooseberry-fool fan? Perhaps your tastes run more toward jam roly-poly or treacle.
From Sueddeutsche
Englische Desserts sind kompliziert, unmodern, kalorienreich und unfassbar köstlich - zu Besuch im einzigen Pudding-Club der Welt.
January is the traditional month of detoxification, the weeks in which we forgo all indulgence: the booze, the pies, the sweet treats. And yet here I am with 60-odd members of the Pudding Club at the Three Ways House Hotel in the heart of the Cotswolds, faced with the prospect of dining on not one, not two, but seven puddings. I hold no truck with the diet brigade, but surely this is rather over-egging it?
The Pudding Club began here 25 years ago, the brainchild of the hotel's then-owners Keith and Jean Turner. It was a protest against the tiddly little portions being served up in the era of nouvelle cuisine, and also an attempt to revive the traditional British pudding. Since then, the club has earned an impressive reputation, convening here each Friday night and attracting pudding fans of all ages from all over the world – they've had Japanese tourists, hen parties and groups of goths, all arriving in search of the perfect sticky toffee, the queen of apple crumbles. The club's enduring appeal is perhaps down to its British eccentricity as much as its excellent puddings; there is something both wonderful and faintly peculiar about sitting in a room with 60 strangers to worship at the altar of the jam roly-poly.
Last autumn, Waitrose began to stock the club's branded puddings, and now the hotel is expanding its repertoire, too, with chocoholic days, walking breaks and photography weekends. This year, to celebrate the club's anniversary, there will be pudding-making workshops, a country market and a retro pudding evening.
Three Ways House makes for a delicious destination, with or without the puddings; a kind of boutique country hotel, not too sleek, nor too grand, and set within some of England's most beautiful countryside. Even some of the rooms are pudding-themed: the Sticky Toffee room, the Spotted Dick room, the Chocolate suite. I stay in the Oriental Ginger Syrup Sponge room, with its shantung curtains, gingery-stippled walls and a complete pudding recipe on the door.
And so I commence proceedings with great optimism. There is a light meal before the puddingy bit begins, and in a move that I shall later regard as cavalier, I even help myself to extra turnip and green beans. I am sitting beside a club veteran named Richard, who tonight will eat his 100th Pudding Club pudding, and he looks on with the bemused expression of a man who knows better.
Our master of ceremonies is Peter Henderson, who paces the floor with a giant wooden spoon, reeling off the rules of Pudding Club. The first rule of Pudding Club is you may eat only one pudding at a time. The second rule of Pudding Club is you may have your next helping of pudding only when you have completely finished your last. You must visit the pudding buffet table only by table and by invitation; you may not hide surplus pudding in your napkin or in your pockets or behind the curtain; you must remember that the record for pudding eating was 24 helpings.
The seven puddings are paraded into the dining room with a great deal of ceremony: ginger syrup sponge; winter lemon; Lord Randall's pudding; very chocolate sponge; bread and butter pudding; passion fruit charlotte; spotted dick. There are several pints of custards. Chocolate sauce. Cream.
But I have tactics; yes, I intend to take an approach we might describe as "delayed gratification": I shall begin by eating the puddings I like least, spurred on by the promise of the ones I do like still to come. And so I start with the smallest portion of spotted dick and custard. I have never eaten spotted dick before, and while I am sure this is a fine example of the dish, I immediately feel as if I have eaten a hippopotamus. Even at this early juncture, I am suddenly unsure whether I even like puddings. Still, I stumble onwards towards bread and butter pudding and winter lemon (a tangy sort of sponge) and then two dainty spoonfuls of passion fruit charlotte before I collapse in a heap of suet and failure and custard and pain.
Still, I'm certainly in the minority. As the evening draws to a close, Peter holds a vote for the favourite pudding (42 of the 63 puddingers favoured the ginger syrup sponge) and asks how many of us managed to eat seven puddings or more; my companion and I are among a handful of people who failed. "Wimps!" hisses Peter.
Three Ways House Hotel, Mickleton, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, GL55 6SB
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