Fanny Craddock

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Has anyone tried any of her recipes? I ended up down a Youtube rabbit hole watching videos of her and the food looks rather unappetising, especially the 1975 Christmas food

There's a person on TikTok who spoofs Fanny's videos by doing voiceovers. It's absolutely hilarious.

I'm not brave enough to try any of the recipes.

I remember watching some clip of her creating a sort of blue hard-boiled egg concoction that looked terrifying.

I did a trifle once. It was very extra. I think it had been cream and 3 different colours of glacé cherries, chocolate leaves etc.

I didn't put the glycerin (I think) into the melted chocolate layer and it went very hard and had to be hacked at with a knife.

My own fault obviously.

I saw a video of her belittling a woman, who had won a competition or something, to come and cook on tv. She sneered at her menu choices and looked down her nose at her with disdain, the poor woman was nearly in tears. Very uncomfortable viewing.
Its put me off bothering to even look at her recipes.

The episodes I have watched are from the time of the miners strikes and she's trying to do everything on the cheap and stretch every last penny. I wouldn't attempt her recipes

That's on the Christmas series! It was very extra. A lot of her stuff seemed a bit sickly or like a heart attack on a plate 😂although I'd rather try that than her choux pastry creations

Is that the one where the woman was referring to blackberries (I assume?) as "brambles"? Craddock kept asking her what brambles were, as though she (Craddock) couldn't work it out and the woman was some kind of yokel. Horrible.

Anyone heard her husband's comment the time she made doughnuts?!

That was a famous programme which I remember watching as a child (I’m old innit) and she did herself no favours by behaving appallingly to the poor woman who'd invented this pudding recipe. It was for some big dinner - my memory tells me it was served to various dignitaries including maybe Edward Heath? - and la Cradock pulled horrid faces and mimed actual retching when the woman very shyly described her idea for the dish.

I think it was something involving coffee. Anyway, Cradock completely stuffed herself, in the manner of her own devilled eggs, because she was so vile to the nice lady that there were huge complaints from the outraged audience and she (and Johnnie) were promptly dropped from their TV show.

Poetic justice.

It was called The Big Time and was presented by Esther Rantzen. It launched Sheena Easton's career.
The lady was an amateur cook called Gwen Troake and she was cooking a dinner for Edward Heath. Duck in blackberry sauce was the main course and her idea for dessert was a coffee pudding which was rather rich.
Fanny thought that a lighter meringue dish would be more suitable and she was probably correct but the sneering and condescending way she went about it had viewers up in arms and ended her television career.

Fanny was a fascinating character, her whole life was built on several lies. There's a rather good biography called Fear of Fanny if you can get hold of a copy.
Her Christmas programmes are unbelievable!
She made a disgusting looking mince pie/omelette concoction in one of them 😬

Fear of Fanny became a BBC drama with Julia Davis and Mark Gatiss, and I've just been looking for it and someone's uploaded a high def version to youtube - I remember enjoying it, it's worth it for some Fanny insight and inspiration.

I enjoy watching her Christmas programmes just for entertainment value . She does an omelette with Christmas mincemeat 🤢

@ChevreChase thank you so much for the YouTube link. What a fantastic actress Julia Davis is!

There was an episode of New Tricks with a husband and wife pair of tv cooks reminiscent of Fanny and Johnnie. Fictional, of course, one must stress. Honor Blackman was the guest star.

I remember the coffee pudding episode. As I recall, the substitute dessert was too complicated and didn't work well. Edward Heath, when asked, said he would have liked the coffee pudding.

Now I need to find this!

Awful woman. As a side note, I remember the Sheena Easton episode too. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose but unexpectedly she was the only one who actually triumphed, out of three series of 'The Big Time'. I’d had a vague idea that it was connected to Esther Rantzen somehow and I was right - she devised and produced it.

I was reading another (old) thread about the most cruel and distasteful TV shows and there were loads of examples.....Jeremy Kyle etc. I thought about the Fanny Craddock/Gwen Troake incident and although Fanny was rude and condescending (and paid the penalty), it was nothing compared with the sadism of some shows later which ran for ages.

Fear of Fanny-fabulous programme-& title!

@Aquamarine1029 how can I find this person on Tiktok please? I need to see this!

I have two of her cookbooks, both dating from the ‘60s plus some of the booklets which accompanied her TV programmes. If you ignore the dotty and dated suggestions, such as colouring mashed potato green, there are some real gems there.

Her recipe for a fatless sponge, which involves heating your sugar in the oven before mixing it into the other ingredients is absolutely fool proof, as is her method for making a cheese custard tart. Don’t bother with blind-baking the pastry case, smear the base with butter, tip in the egg /cheese mixture and bake. The pastry will not rise up in the way other cooks warn you will happen if you don’t blind-bake.

As said upthread, she was a fascinating creature, widowed at 18, married again but not married to Johnnie for years though pretending to be so. As well as the hard to find biography, ‘Fear of Fanny’ there is also her autobiography, ‘Something’s Burning’, even rarer.

She also wrote some children’s books as Frances Dale. I still have ‘The Gooseyplums of Duckpond-in-the-Dip’.

Was it the same as the comment about her butterfly cakes?