Summer pudding
Summer pudding is a classic British dessert. Full of juicy summer fruit wrapped in bread, it couldn’t be simpler for kids and beginner bakers to make.
Summer pudding is a delicious fruity dessert. Full of summer berries it’s a quintessential British treat, perfect for the summer months.
If you like summer fruits, this is the perfect dessert for you. It’s bursting full of flavour, but not heavy or overly sweet. And best of all, its really simple to make. You need to chill it so it won’t be ready straight away but it takes hardly any time to make and has very few ingredients.
What is in a summer pudding?
Summer pudding is a simple dessert of sliced white bread filled with fresh summer fruits, all soaked in their own juices.
It usually contains a mixture of summer berries – red currents, strawberries, blueberries etc all wrapped in bread and made in a pudding basin.
How can kids help to make this summer pudding?
This is a really easy recipe for kids to follow and as long as you can trust them around a cooker they could probably make this entirely themselves.
You can start with getting the measure out and prepare the fruit before heating it in a pan.
Kids can also help to cut the bread, dip that in the fruit juice and and lay it in the pudding bowl. Once that’s done you can get them to fill it with the fruit before covering it and chilling it.
It’s really very simple and with no real decoration, that’s it!
What do you serve with a summer pudding?
You could eat this as it comes, drizzled with a little bit of extra fruit sauce and fresh fruit, but if you want to really treat yourself try adding a serving of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
How do you store a summer pudding?
A summer pudding is best kept in the fridge. Once you’ve cut into it it wont hold its structure so well, so is best eaten sooner rather than later.
I wouldn’t recommend freezing a summer pudding.
What fruit should I use in my summer pudding?
Use a mixture of summer fruits – strawberries, red currents, blackberries, blueberries, black currents and raspberries. Or if they’re local to you, you could also add things like cherries, logan berries or tay berries.
Try not to use too many raspberries as they’re quite a soft fruit and will lose all their structure as you make it.
Alternatively you can use a bag of frozen mixed fruit like we did. It’s a much more cost effective way of making this recipe and can turn it into a year round dish.
What sort of dish should I make this in?
We’ve used a 900ml pudding bowl. It doesn’t need to be exactly that size but somewhere between 900ml – 1.2 litre is ideal.
What other summer desserts can I make?
Summer fruits are delicious to include in bakes and desserts. Here are some of our best recipes:
Peach melba
Raspberry crumble
Summer berry pavlova
Lemon tartlets
Strawberry cheesecake
Eton mess ice cream
Berry frozen yogurt
Useful equipment
You might need the following baking tools/gadgets to make this summer pudding
Digital scales
Measuring cups
Saucepan
Pudding bowl
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Ingredients
750g mixed summer fruits
150g caster sugar
8-9 slices of white bread
How to make summer pudding
Prepare the pudding bowl
Prepare your pudding bowl by greasing it with a little oil or butter then lining it with cling-film / glad wrap. We laid a few strips of cling-film with enough hanging over the edge to make it easier to remove the pudding later.
Prepare the fruit
If you’re using a bag of pre mixed summer fruits you can just weigh them out and add them straight into a sauce pan.
But if you’ve got your own mixture of fresh summer fruit get your kids to help make sure any stalks or stones are removed and any larger fruit, like strawberries are cut into smaller pieces. Add the fruit to the sauce pan.
Weigh out the sugar and add that to your pan with the fruit. Heat the fruit gently for about 5 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the fruit has softened slightly.
Tip the fruit out into a sieve with a bowl set underneath it to catch the sauce. Set them both aside for now to cool.
Prepare the bread
Get your kids to help prepare the bread. Start by cutting off the crusts then cut the bread into strips lengthways. Mark a circle the size of the base of your bowl on one slice of bread and cut that out. Cut another circle out that’s the size of the top of the bowl.
Make the summer pudding
Start by carefully dipping one side of the circle of bread in the fruit juice then lay that juice side out into your pudding bowl. Now do the same with a strip of bread and lay that up the side of the bowl.
Repeat that step with the rest of the strips of bread until the whole bowl is full of bread making sure to place them in tightly so that there are no gaps showing.
Once your pudding bowl has been lined with bread spoon the fruit into the center and top it up with the juice until it reaches the top.
There should be some sauce left – keep that for later.
Lay the final slice of bread on top then tuck that into the slices around the edge so the fruit is fully contained.
Fold over the cling-film to cover the summer pudding and lay a small plate or saucer on top with something to weigh it down.
Pop it in the fridge to chill for at least 4 hours but preferably over night.
Turn out the summer pudding
Undo the cling-film from the top of the summer pudding and turn it out onto a serving plate.
Drizzle over a little of the sauce you kept, add some summer fruits on top to decorate.
Serve and enjoy!
Summer pudding
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Prepare your pudding bowl by greasing it with a little oil or butter then lining it with cling-film / glad wrap. Make sure there is enough hanging over the edge to make it easier to remove the pudding later.
- If you're using a bag of pre mixed summer fruits you can just weigh them out and add them straight into a sauce pan.
- But if you've got your own mixture of fresh summer fruit make sure any stalks or stones are removed and any larger fruit, like strawberries are cut into smaller pieces. Add the fruit to the sauce pan.
- Weigh out the sugar and add that to your pan with the fruit. Heat the fruit gently for about 5 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the fruit has softened slightly.Tip the fruit out into a sieve with a bowl set underneath it to catch the sauce. Set them both aside for now to cool.
- Start by cutting off the crusts then cut 6 slices of bread into strips lengthways. Mark a circle the size of the base of your bowl on one slice of bread and cut that out. Cut another circle out that's the size of the top of the bowl.
- Start by carefully dipping one side of the circle of bread in the fruit juice then lay that juice side out into your pudding bowl. Now do the same with a strip of bread and lay that up the side of the bowl. Repeat that step with the rest of the strips of bread until the whole bowl is full of bread making sure to place them in tightly so that there are no gaps showing.
- Once your pudding bowl has been lined with bread spoon the fruit into the centre and top it up with the juice until it reaches the top.There should be some sauce left – keep that for later.
- Lay the final slice of bread on top then tuck that into the slices around the edge so the fruit is fully contained.Fold over the cling-film to cover the summer pudding and lay a small plate or saucer on top with something to weigh it down.Pop it in the fridge to chill for at least 4 hours but preferably over night.
- Undo the cling-film from the top of the summer pudding and turn it out onto a serving plate. Drizzle over a little of the sauce you kept, add some summer fruits on top to decorate.
- Serve and enjoy
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