Ah Christmas, the wonderful time of year when office party venues across the country suffer the mass delusion that a plate of out-of-season tropical fruit chunks are a worthy gluten free substitute for a sticky toffee pudding when it comes to soaking up too much cheap champagne! It was one such Christmas party that first inspired us to set up the Fruit is Not a Pudding campaign.

To celebrate the annual fruit onslaught, we’ve been running a mini twitter competition to find the most sorry-looking pudding tagged with #fruitisnotapudding. Here are the Sad Bananas who served fruit to some of our fellow Coeliactivists:

First up is blogger Laura with a classic example- the kind of fruit salad you’ll also find on the breakfast buffet the morning after – totally not what you need with last night’s ill-advised 80s singalong still hazy in your mind. These guys don’t even get points for presentation…

In the presentation stakes, Nikki‘s fruit salad took things to a whole other level – a thing of beauty! We almost thought it was a pudding, but not quite. One wonders why, if the chef can put that much care into presentation, why not into creating a delicious gluten free pud?

… unlike our next entry from poor Kayleigh, who not only had her fruit, including a solitary kiwi slice ‘artfully’ presented; but got given a stonking ‘look at me I’m special’ label to add insult to injury! Seriously guys, what is that on top of the strawberry – a worm?! Oh no, my mistake it’s orange peel! Fruit is not a pudding, fruit PEEL isn’t even food! And would it kill you to remove the grape stalks at least?! (P.S. please dust grapes, ta).

New tweep Jesse Coeliac has been in on the game, delighting those of us who grew up in the 90s with his Fast Show-esque pronouncements including:

Ah Jesse, the cursed melon bookend. We feel your pain.

Whereas Ewar Woowar‘s party went for an edgy approach – adding some below-par cheese to the fruit. Now we quite like a spot (or whole wheel) of cheese, but argue that you need to add at least cream, and ideally chocolate to fruit in order for it to qualify as dessert. As this party was in Revolution we hope he at least got to drown his sorrows in vodka.

Similarly we can only assume that the chef had inhaled a little too much of the dry ice obscuring this late-in-the-day entry from Sara:

And finally, to an entry that really takes the biscuit – or more precisely the crumble.

Wow – just wow. We also noticed that Colin is gluten free in solidarity with his coeliac daughter – kudos to him.

And finally, a little mention to one of our twitter besties, David, who got no pudding at all. Boo.

And the winner is… Kayleigh! Nothing could top your peel-adorned plate! Poor love. We will be sending you a #fruitisnotapudding apron and some dairy free treats to make up for your poor pudding experience. And because our hearts are softened like so much gluten free icecream, there’ll be a little treat for Colin to share with his daughter too.

So it seems that there is still much to learn in the afters department for many chefs. Happy Christmas fellow gluten free buddies, I hope you are enjoying a proper pudding at your own festive meal, and I look forwards to playing with you again next year. #FruitIsNotAPudding