I don’t know about you, but there are some of us who always think of dessert before we think of a meal. So, if we are at a buffet table laden with all manner of dishes, we go to the finish line, walking backwards, trying to sneak a peek at the dessert section before we start on our meal. We need to know exactly how much room to ‘reserve’ in our stomach.

Of course, some of us also imagine that we don’t need to keep any space available since we have separate, neatly labelled internal compartments and all the sweetmeats and ice creams and souffles go straight into the one marked ‘dessert’. Thus, we can still eat all we please of the main course ... and have our pudding too.

Our childhood home was definitely one that encouraged a sweet tooth. Mother loved to experiment with confectionery and cakes and puddings and we loved to taste the results of those experiments. The combination was ideal ­— and thus we spent our early years indulging in the fruits of Mother’s labour. A hungry and appreciative brood — and friends and relatives dropping in unexpectedly — made her cater over and above what other families of the same size could consume. The ingredients of every recipe she tried were doubled or tripled and she soon became almost incapable of making small quantities of anything: And we grew accustomed to large, heaped-up pudding bowls.

In other homes, we heard parents say: “If you eat your meal, then you can have pudding,” and we looked on puzzled. Didn’t everyone have place for both, we wondered, because in our family, no amount of ‘befores’ ever spoilt our appetite for the ‘afters’!

In time, when Mother grew tired and could barely make her way through preparation of the regular meal, she began to skip concocting desserts. That was when we took over — using the afternoons to whip up something as silently as we could while she enjoyed her siesta. Despite being novices, we refused to halve or quarter the ingredients of Mother’s recipes: If the recipe said one cup of each ingredient, we were sure to double it and struggle with a mound of dough or an overflowing dish of batter, not sure until the very end how it would turn out.

Our mistakes, therefore, were monumental. But Mother always had a solution when she awoke and found us staring helplessly at a mountain of mash-that-should-be-fudge or crunch-that-should-be-cake: A dash of chocolate, some icing sugar, a little honey perhaps, or custard and the mess was transformed into a creative masterpiece to relish. And, of course, we never had a problem with large-scale blunders — thanks to our large appetites.

But all that was then.

Now as the middle age spread gets the better of us, we acknowledge that it is time to cut down — at least on the desserts. So, when we hear of exotic readymade desserts in beautiful, sensibly small glass jars, we feel that they are tailor-made for our requirements — until we try them.

Somehow, those two gulps of fluffy souffles, creamy mousses and fruit jellies fail to gel with us. The cutesy little reusable container packed to just the right level with a divine dessert has us scraping the bottom of the dish within a few delicious mouthfuls. We look around eagerly, but there is no prospect of ‘seconds’ — and our taste buds have just about got going and are screaming for more.

We should have had our fill in the past, but despite all those decades of over-indulgence — or maybe because of it — we have this voice at the back of our minds crying out ruefully about the reduced portions.

Are these really our “just” desserts?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.