Steamed raspberry jam & rose-petal pudding

Winter

I can taste roses in raspberries, in the juice that pearls on their skin; it’s like a perfume. When you cook raspberries for jam, sugar holds in their essence like you’ve made a perfume, it’s so scented – a scent in a sugar prison. When you dry rose petals you trap their scent in a similar way, although it’s still in the flower, and the flower is dead. How can something so dead be so alive? This pudding is a distillation of both raspberries and roses, and it works beautifully.

Makes 1 large pudding (serves 6)

Ingredients

100g (3½oz) unsalted butter, softened, plus extra butter for greasing
1 tablespoon dried rose petals (the small, red variety)
150g (5½oz) unrefined golden caster sugar
2 large eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
dash of vanilla extract, or the seeds from 1 vanilla pod
150g (5½oz) self-raising flour
pinch of salt
50g (1¾oz) fresh white breadcrumbs
5–6 heaped tablespoons raspberry jam

Method

Begin by greasing a 1.5 litre (52fl oz) pudding basin with butter and scattering over the rose petals, trying to make sure some of them stick to the buttered sides as you do so.

To make the sponge, cream together the sugar and softened butter until pillowy, light and soft. Beat the eggs, the egg yolk and vanilla extract or seeds into the creamed butter mixture. Carefully fold in the flour, salt and breadcrumbs and combine to create the batter.

Spoon the raspberry jam into the prepared pudding basin, then spoon in the sponge batter. The batter should come two-thirds of the way up the basin. Cover the pudding with buttered baking parchment and tie a length of string around the rim of the basin to hold the paper in place.

Place an upturned saucer in a large pan and set the pudding on top. Pour in boiling water so that it comes halfway up the sides of the basin, then cover the pan, put it over a high heat and bring the water back to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the pudding for about 2 hours. Check the water level and top it up, if required.

After 2 hours, carefully remove the basin from the pan and allow it to stand for 15 minutes before turning it out onto a plate. Serve with plenty of double cream, ice cream, or custard.

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