This is the third summer in which my allotment has rewarded us with a glut of blackcurrants. The vigorous bushes grow alongside redcurrants and white currants, bordered by strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, rhubarb and loganberries.

We call it the summer pudding patch and this year's strange weather seems to suit all these fruits perfectly. The rhubarb has never been so prolific, sending up chunky stalks with big crinkly leaves. It has been hard to keep up with the strawberries. The currants are starting to plump and swell, and I've just picked enough blackcurrants to make the first summer pudding of the year.

These tart berries are crucial to this summer treat but remember them, too, for perking up fruit salads, for fools and pies, in jam to help to set other soft fruit and in sweet and savoury sauces. In summer pudding, their juicy sharpness provides an essential counterbalance to the sweetness of strawberries and blackberries, with raspberries bridging the gap between the two.

Whoever invented summer pudding was a genius. Not only does it provide a marvellous way of combining gluts of soft, seasonal fruit, but is a very satisfactory way of using up stale bread. Some people like to cook the fruit to a mush but I prefer to blanch it, one fruit at a time, in boiling water, just long enough to heat it through, soften the fruit and release the juices. It is then piled into a bread-lined pudding basin, covered with a bread lid, weighted and chilled overnight so the juices seep through the bread, staining it a dark, purply pink.

The moment of truth arrives when the pudding is turned out on to a plate. What you don't want is for the weight of the fruit to cause it to collapse slowly, falling down like an unruly sock. One good tip, which I picked up in the kitchens of the Connaught when Michel Bourdin was its celebrated chef de cuisine, is to dissolve leaf gelatine in the juices. This holds the fruit in a very soft almost-jelly, giving just enough support to hold everything steady. Any unstained patches are easily disguised with a dribble of juices and the pudding looks particularly spectacular if the top is decorated with a tumble of redcurrants or a few halved strawberries, with more around the pudding. The best accompaniment is a big jug of Jersey pouring cream and maybe a glass of champagne.

Summer pudding must be made 24 hours in advance but will keep in the fridge for up to 48 hours. If you can't find thin-cut bread, which I failed to do, medium-cut is acceptable for a large pudding, but I'd recommend slicing your own for the individual ones. M&S spelt bread has exactly the right semi-stale texture that makes thin slicing easy; don't attempt it with fresh bread.

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