Christmas Ice Pudding

From Jamie’s Great Britain (Michael Joseph/Penguin hardback, stg£30)

“Puddings you can make ahead of time and leave in the freezer until you need them are great. Especially around the holidays, which is when I tend to make this one. I see this dessert as a sort of cross between a summer pudding and an arctic roll, so it hits a lot of those retro buttons. Because it's an assembly job, anybody at all can make this - so if you've got someone at your house who won't muck in because they say they can't cook, put them to work on this!”

SERVES 10

2 x 500ml tubs good-quality vanilla ice cream of
1 x 1 kg panettone
125ml sweet sherry
3 heaped tablespoons good-quality raspberry jam
25g shelled pistachios
75g tinned cherries, drained
40g glace clementines (or other glace fruit), thinly sliced
2 clementines, I peeled and sliced into rounds, the other left whole
200g good-quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), bashed up.

Get your ice cream out of the freezer so it can soften a little while you get things ready. Line a 2-litre pudding bowl with three layers of clingfilm. Use a serrated knife to slice four 2cm-thick rounds of your panettone, then cut them in half.

You'll have some panettone left over, so keep this for another time (I love it sliced and toasted). Arrange six of the slices in a single layer around the bowl and push them down if they overlap. Drizzle some sweet sherry around the sponge so it soaks in. then use the back of a spoon to smear the jam over the sponge.

Add 1 tub of ice cream to the bowl and use the spoon to spread it around in a thick layer.Sprinkle in the pistachios, cherries and glace fruit, then layer the Clementine slices on top. Add the other tub of ice cream. Spread it out, working quickly so the ice cream doesn't completely melt.

Put the rest of the panettone slices on top of the ice cream, make sure there are no gaps, then drizzle over some more sweet sherry and cover the bowl tightly with clingfilm. Put a plate on top and press everything down, then freeze overnight, or longer.

When you're ready to serve it, put the bashed-up chocolate into a bowl and get it over a pan of simmering water on a really low heat. Leave the chocolate to melt while you unwrap your amazing winter bombe and carefully turn it on to a beautiful serving dish.

Add a few gratings of clementine zest to the chocolate, and when it's nicely melted, pour it over the top so it oozes down the sides and looks delicious - from this point, you've got around 10 minutes before the chocolate freezes and gets hard, so get serving.