Summer Pudding

Ingredients:

• Soft fruit (strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, blueberries, loganberries) in any combination.
• Sugar, about half a cup, or to taste
• Several slices of white bread, one day old is best.

Directions:

Line a pudding bowl with white bread, cutting the slices to fit the base and sides of the bowl as tightly as possible.

Stew the fruit and sugar gently until soft (about eight minutes). Drain off a little of the liquid into a jug.

Pour the fruit into the bread-lined bowl and cover the top of the bowl with another slice of bread cut into a circle. Press a plate that fits snugly inside the top of the bowl on top of the pudding and on top of this press a heavy weight. (I use a couple of heavy weights from my weighing scales but two tins would do just as well.)

Leave overnight in a cool place - or for twelve hours or so - then carefully turn over using a large plate. Tap the pudding bowl hard and carefully lift it, and the pudding should turn out in a shining red dome of fruit. Pour the remaining fruit juices over the top and serve with fresh cream or ice-cream. If it collapses, it's still delicious.

By Lucy from Oxford, UK