No-bake berry delight: Sue Ade offers fruit-filled summer pudding recipe

Fruit filled no-bake summer pudding has a taste as pleasing as its name.

• Photos

Photos By Sue Ade

Plump, ripe, sweet berries make an eye-popping statement when turned into a colorful summer pudding dessert. Buy berries in season when prices are good and quality is at its peak. Besides the berries, you'll need sugar and bread to make your own dazzling centerpiece.

I've been looking at recipes for the classic English dessert for years but never actually constructed one before, thinking perhaps it was more difficult to make than the recipes had implied.

Certainly, by its appearance, the dessert looks complicated and time-consuming.

So, summer after summer, the season got by me, and by the time I considered making summer pudding in earnest, not only had the berry season peaked, but also the price of fresh berries was creeping upwards.

Fortunately, it's July, and fresh berries are plentiful, especially this month, National Blueberry Month.

Blueberries, as well as other berries, like raspberries, blackberries and strawberries are bursting with vitamins, minerals and fibers and are rich in antioxidant properties.

Raspberries, for instance, contain 10 times more antioxidants than tomatoes, and strawberries possess seven times the antioxidants found in apples or bananas. (Antioxidants are thought to help protect our bodies from cell damage and possibly some diseases.)

Summer pudding, a sweet feast for the eyes, as well as the palate, is very simple, even fun, to prepare.

And, feel free to judge this dessert by its cover - it's beautiful on the inside, too.