Last time when I made summer pudding, it was a bit large. So I went out and bought an appropriately-sized one-quart glass bowl, and tried making the dish again at a smaller scale.
I also used some regular white bread instead of challah, and used a different mix of berries.
Summer Pudding
1 1/4 cups sugar
Juice and peel of 1 lemon
2 lbs. of mixed berries (including raspberries), washed
1 loaf white bread, sliced, crusts removed
- Cook the sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, and 2 1/4 cups water in a saucepan until all the sugar dissolves.
- Poach each type of berry, except the raspberries, in the syrup for 30 seconds (2 minutes for strawberries), and place them in a bowl after draining.
- Then take half of the raspberries and poach them for 30 seconds.
- Take the other half of the raspberries, add them to the syrup, and cook them for about 10 minutes, until they’re mushy. The syrup will look really red, with a bunch of raspberry seeds (at least mine had a lot of raspberry seeds).
- Now coat a 1-quart bowl with some syrup. (I tried doing this but it kept running down the sides, so I don’t know what that’s all about.) Then take some of the slices of bread, with the crusts removed, dip them in the syrup, and line the bottom and sides of the bowl with them, so that they overlap slightly.
- Spoon about a third of the berries into the bowl, and then cover that with a layer of syrup-dipped bread.
- Then, take another third of the berries, and cover that with another layer of syrup-dipped bread.
- Finally, put the remaining berries on top of the last layer of bread, and cover that with a double layer of syrup-dipped bread.
- Cover the whole thing with plastic wrap, and then put a plate on top, with some heavy cans on top of that to weigh it down. Refrigerate the whole contraption overnight, along with any leftover syrup.
- Invert the pudding onto a platter, and patch up any white spots with the leftover syrup. Optionally, serve with some whipped cream.
This time, I used strawberries, bushberries, and raspberries. What are bushberries? I have no idea. But they were selling them at the local market. They look and taste just like raspberries.
Here’s the syrup, with sugar, water, lemon peel, and lemon juice.
The poached berries. All red this time.
After half of the raspberries have been mashed up in the syrup, it’s turned this nice red color.
The bread I used this time was “The Shepherd’s Bread” from Trader Joe’s. It says it’s been sweetened with honey, but I couldn’t taste it.
The bottom of the bowl, lined with some bread slices dipped in syrup. It’s much easier to line the bottom of a smaller bowl like this.
The first layer of berries on the bottom.
Here it is, with three layers of berries and bread. It’s bulging a bit. Maybe my bowl was a bit too small this time. I didn’t even use all of the bread this time; I had about half of the loaf left over, plus the crusts I cut off.
The cans on top of a plate, weighing down the pudding. This spent a couple of nights in the fridge.
The summer pudding, after unmolding. I don’t know why it’s leaning so much. The bowl was symmetric. I guess my berries were spread unevenly. Or maybe it was the bread.
Soft berries on the inside.
I didn’t serve this with whipped cream this time, since I didn’t really have that much time to prepare. I think the whipped cream actually helps quite a bit, since there really isn’t any fat in this dish otherwise, besides the small amount in the bread. The rest of it is just fruit and sugar. It was nice to have a refreshing summer pudding before summer ended, though.