British · Desserts

Summer Pudding

A basin lined with white bread and filled with barely cooked berries, pressed overnight until the bread turns crimson right through. No pastry, no cooking, no cream needed.

35 min prep and cooking plus 12 hr pressing the pudding under a weight overnight 12 hr 35 min start to finish Serves 6 servings Easy
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Summer Pudding

Photograph credit: Summer pudding by adactio · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr

Summer Pudding, in preparation
Summer Pudding, in preparation

Photograph credit: Summer pudding by dichohecho · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr

Summer Pudding, Step by Step

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  1. Put the blackcurrants and redcurrants in a pan with the sugar and water and cook 2 minutes, until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add the raspberries, blackberries and strawberries and cook 1 minute more, until the juices run. Take off the heat and add the lemon juice and cassis.

  3. Strain the fruit, keeping all the juice.

  4. Line a 1.2 litre basin with cling film, leaving plenty overhanging.

  5. Cut a circle of bread for the base and wedges for the sides, dip each piece in the juice, and line the basin with no gaps at all.

  6. Fill with the drained fruit and pour in enough juice to soak it, keeping the rest back.

  7. Cover with more juice-dipped bread, trimming to fit, and fold the cling film over.

  8. Set a plate on top with a heavy weight and refrigerate 12 hours.

  9. Turn out, pour the reserved juice over any pale patches, and serve with the extra berries.

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Tips for Making Summer Pudding

  • Day-old bread. Fresh bread turns to mush.
  • Three minutes of cooking, total. The fruit only needs to bleed.
  • Weight it properly. Something genuinely heavy, overnight.

What Goes With Summer Pudding

  • Pouring cream
  • Clotted cream
  • More berries

Leftovers and Storage

Refrigerated for 3 days. Do not freeze.

Summer Pudding: Questions and Answers

How long does Summer Pudding take to make?

25 minutes of preparation and 10 minutes of cooking, plus 12 hours of pressing the pudding under a weight overnight, so allow 12 hours 35 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.

The Numbers per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .