Summer Pudding for Summer Solstice

Excitingly this week, , the blog turns one! For the past 52 Fridays, I have been sharing seasonally inspired recipes that I have loved making. I wanted to mark the occasion with a dessert, specifically - a summer pudding. We also saw the arrival of Summer Solstice, our longest day in the Northern Hemisphere.

Along with the Summer Solstice also came the arrival of the red currants, raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries on the allotment - with all these amazing fruits it just had to be a summer pud!

The great thing, well one of the great things, about making summer pudding, is that you can use any summer berries you fancy …and you don't need to turn the oven on in this heat - hooray!

Summer Pudding

500g berries

100g caster sugar

small white loaf (a day or 2 old)

You will need a 1 litre pudding basin for this recipe

Place the berries and sugar into a medium saucepan with the caster sugar and 60ml of water and cook on a medium heat for 3-4 minutes, or until the sugar has dissolved and the berries have softened.
Strain the berries, reserving the juice in a bowl and leave to cool.
Meanwhile slice the white loaf into thin slices and cut of the crusts. Cut each slice of bread down the middle.
Once the berry liquid is cooled down, dip a slice of the bread into it, covering both sides, and press into the base of the pudding basin. Repeat this process, completing the bottom and then stacking them vertically around the sides - leaving no gaps. Use small pieces of bread to patch any gaps.
Spoon in the berries to the bread lines pudding basin - they should come just below the top. Finish by dipping the last few slices of bread in the remaining juice and placing across the top, forming a lid so that all the berries are enclosed. Pour over any remains berry juice so all the bread has turned a wonderful juicy red.
Place a small saucer or small plate that fits perfectly inside the rim of the pudding basin and weigh down with something heavy - like a tin of beans.
Place in the fridge over night. When you are ready to serve, remove the tin and small plate and place the plate you would like to serve it on on the top of the basin. Flip the plate and basin over and allow the pudding to slowly come away from the inside - give it a little shake to help it along if needed.
Serve chilled with a dollop of vanilla icecream or a splash of double cream.