Plum Pudding

Plum Pudding Postcard
Self Promotional Holiday Card with Recipe

In December of 2012 I was in Portfolio at Madison (Area Technical) College. For the big show I wanted to create a nice take away that was also thematic to the time of year. Therefore I decided on a holiday postcard. I thought it would be fun to make it multi-purpose, so the postcard is also a recipe card; decorative and functional, which I strive for in my work.

For the style of the card I wanted it to tie in with my Elizabeth Gaskell Criterion DVD set, because I was planning on printing it on Neenah's Esse paper, which is what I used for the slipcovers for the DVDs. Also, because I am an Anglophile (the DVD set should be a tip off) and love British holiday traditions, I decided that the card would be about that most British of holiday foods, the plum pudding, a staple during the holidays of Elizabeth Gaskell's time. Note on British food, all desserts are pudding, so this is really more "cake like" and only has plums in it if you count the raisins... yes, British food doesn't make much sense.

Originally this postcard was going to be my process piece, ie, it would be in my book and show how I created it from beginning to end. Though in the end I chose another piece to show it's process, I wanted to include the process here. Because I felt that if I was going to have a recipe, well, it wasn't sporting of me unless I tried to make the pudding myself. This is also how the 'notations' section was born on the back of the card. I feel like when you're making a recipe, unless some kind soul has written notations, you might think you're doing something wrong, especially when at certain phases the smell of the food almost induces vomiting. In the end though it was worth it, because the pudding tasted amazingly good and I had a great take away that had a story behind it.