IT'S that wonderful smell of home-baking that hits you first - warm and sweet and oh so comforting. This is pudding heaven. Huge bowls are piled high with freshly chopped rhubarb or rich, dark, chocolate mix. Boxes of pears wait to be chopped and caramelised, golden bread and butter puddings cool on a table, raspberry and apples wait for their crumble topping. A rack of sticky toffee puddings are ready, tempting and tantalising in the corner.

It looks and smells like a particularly appealing farmhouse kitchen, but in fact it's an industrial unit just outside Ripon, where Rosemary Robinson makes Just Puds.

But she's a farmer's wife alright. Husband Graeme is the seventh generation of his family to farm near Masham. They had pigs, cattle and sheep but now it's arable with just a handful of sheep.

We all know what's happened to farming in recent years. And to confirm it, the price of pigs, which they got out of and grain, which they're still in, dropped again this week.

Rosemary, who was a traditional farmer's wife, looking after their two children and keeping everyone fed, always enjoyed cooking. While the children were young she did bed and breakfast for seven years

"Until I came home and found her asleep in the garden in the rain," says Graeme, "And I reckoned she was doing too much."

But the need to diversify intensified.

"Then a few years ago a friend needed people to do things for a craft fair, so I did a table full of puddings," says Rosemary.

"They went almost immediately. It was just about the time that Farmers' Markets were starting up, so I tried those and people just kept coming back for more."

Many of the puddings come complete with their own sauces, but of course, there's nothing stopping you adding cream.

Business grew until puddings took over the kitchen and were threatening to take over the house. Then came foot-and-mouth disease - which did for most of the farmers' markets ("Apart from York. They kept going all through it, which was a real lifeline") and the realisation that the up-turn in farming, if at all, was going to be later rather than sooner.

It was time to think bigger.

So last summer, stocked up with second hand equipment, they moved to the industrial estate. "We moved overnight, couldn't afford to have a big break in production. It was harvest -time too."

Now they employ three people and supply shops and restaurants all over the country, from Surrey to Stirlingshire,.

There are about 20 puddings - such as Chocolate Eclipse, made with dark and white Belgian chocolate, Sticky Ginger Pudding with brandy and ginger sauce, Plum and Sloe Gin Crumble, Chocolate Truffle Torte, Caramelised Pears and of course, everyone's favourite, Sticky Toffee Pudding - with or without pecans in the butterscotch sauce.

"We try to make things a bit seasonal" says Rosemary.

But, above all, they make things with proper ingredients - everything's recognisable, not an e number nor a poly something among them.

"Everything's made with free range eggs, butter and cream. No preservatives, no additives."

This might not make them cheap, but it does make them delicious and still essentially home-made

Some of the recipes are old family favourites, others are variations on modern themes.

"Yes we test them on family and friends, and have tasting sessions here," says Rosemary.

What a place to work.

("I bet that's put you off chocolate by now," I say to Henrietta, an assistant making a huge bowl of Belgian chocolate mixture for the Eclipse puddings. "Not a bit ." she says. Can you imagine the temptation of being surrounded by that stuff ALL DAY?)

More and more of us are buying in ready-made food, even now, shamelessly to give to friends at dinner parties. Just Puds would pass the dinner party test no problems.

But when Rosemary has turned pudding-making into an art form, why should the rest of us even try?

l Just Puds are available from delicatessens and farm shops throughout the region, including Hunters of Helmlsey; Smithy Farm Shop, Baldersby; Farm Shop, Scruton; Katy's Kitchen, Sedgefield; Dobbie's Farm Shop, Garden Centre, Chester-le-Street.

They are also available from Farmers' Markets at Ripon, Richmond, York, Wetherby and Whitby. The next Richmond farmer's market is on Saturday, March 16.

Going nuts... A colleague bought some Country Products Brazil Nuts recently.

"WARNING" said the packet, "This product contains nuts." Well, how very reassuring.

Published: Friday, March 8, 2002