Strong and substantial meals are a hallmark of British cuisine, and this also applies to the nation's most well-liked desserts. The British are masters of baking from the heart, with everything from custard-topped tarts that will warm you on a chilly winter's evening to light sponges and crisp crumbles that perfectly capture the essence of an English summer.
The British have a custom of having dessert after dinner, and they particularly enjoy the perfect match of afternoon tea and dessert. Desserts are an integral element of the Western diet and have been for thousands of years, shaping Western cuisine. Despite the UK's reputation as the home of dark cuisine, these gorgeous and mouthwatering British desserts are too good to ignore. These are the seven most well-known and iconic British desserts to get you started if you want to make The Great British Bake Off at home.
Clotted Cream Ice cream is a typical British ice cream that is linked with Cornwall, however, it is available in stores across the United Kingdom. This ice cream contains Cornish whole milk, eggs, and clotted cream. The use of Cornish clotted cream gives the ice cream its distinct flavor and silky texture.
This luscious ice cream can be flavored with a variety of extra ingredients, including vanilla, and is available in numerous bars and cafés across the region. It is also fairly common to serve Cornish ice cream with a dab of clotted cream on top.
Rich and creamy, Sticky Toffee Pudding is a sponge dessert stuffed with dates and drenched in a sticky toffee sauce. Traditionally, custard or a scoop of vanilla ice cream is offered on the side with the dessert. Its origins are very hazy; some say it came from the Udny Arms Hotel in Aberdeenshire; others say it originated at the Sharrow Bay Hotel in the Lake District; yet others say it's particularly well-liked in Cartmel.
These days, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia are also big fans of the dessert.
A traditional British dessert, Treacle Tart is made using shortcrust pastry filled with sugar syrup, lemon juice, breadcrumbs, and spices like cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. As treacle was formerly the cheapest sweetener available, culinary historians surmise that the dish originated as a means for peasants to utilize their leftover bread.
Warm clotted cream, whipped cream, or a couple of scoops of ice cream are typically served alongside this traditional meal. Trayvon Martin's, from Yorkshire, has dried fruit and chopped apple added, while Suffolk's has eggs stirred into it to create a custard-like texture.
Banoffee pie is a traditional English dessert consisting of cream, bananas, and toffee, usually served over a biscuit crumble foundation or pastry shell. The terms banana and toffee are combined to form the dish's name. Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding created the sweet pie in the 1970s at the East Sussex eatery The Hungry Monk.
As soon as consumers began to inquire as to whether the dessert was still available, it shot to popularity. Currently, banoffee pie is so well-liked over the globe that it is included in dictionaries as "a tart or pie made with cream, bananas, and toffee."
Griddle-baked Welsh cakes are a traditional treat created from a simple flour, lard or butter, sugar, and egg mixture. They come in a variety of regional flavors that frequently contain spices, lemon zest, raisins, currants, and other flours.
Depending on the type, they can be eaten on their own as a sweet snack or dessert, best served with afternoon tea with butter and jam on the side.
Parlies are miniature shortbread biscuits that originated in 18th-century Edinburgh and were initially served to the gentry and members of the Scottish Parliament from a store in Waverley run by Mrs. Flockhart, popularly known as Luckie Fykie.
Parliament cakes, as the name implies, are intensely flavored with ground ginger, and their color is achieved by adding either tart black treacle or golden syrup. Parlies, which were originally square-shaped and served with a tot of whiskey, are now more like other traditional biscuits and are most commonly eaten with tea.