Jubilee Pudding recipe: how to make Queen’s Platinum Jubilee trifle, BBC competition winner - ingredients cost

The lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle answered Fortnum & Mason’s challenge to create an original pudding
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The winner of the Platinum Jubilee Pudding competition has been crowned: the official pudding of the Queen’s Jubilee festivities is Jemma Melvin’s lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle.

The trifle beat - which beat out 5,000 other deserts, and was inspired by both the 31-year-old copywriter’s grandparents as well as Her Majesty – will go down in British royal culinary history alongside coronation chicken and Victoria sponge.

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After deciding to compete after a friend’s suggestion, the competition winner described the experience as “surreal.” Melvin said she hopes her winning recipe will be made by bakers across the UK to mark the Queen’s 70 years on the throne after beating off four other inventive bakers in the final stages.

Here is everything you need to know about it.

What is the recipe?

Melvin’s trifle consists of lemon curd Swiss roll on the bottom, St Clement’s jelly, lemon custard, amaretti biscuits, mandarin coulis, fresh whipped cream, candied peel, chocolate shards and crushed amaretti biscuits,

Her dish was named the winner of BBC One’s The Jubilee Pudding: 70 Years In The Baking after a unanimous decision by the judges, who included Dame Mary Berry and Monica Galetti.

The winning recipe is available online via BBC Good Food, Fortnum & Mason and The Big Jubilee Lunch.

Jemma Melvin with her lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle that beat 5,000 desserts to become the official pudding of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations (Photo: PA)Jemma Melvin with her lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle that beat 5,000 desserts to become the official pudding of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations (Photo: PA)
Jemma Melvin with her lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle that beat 5,000 desserts to become the official pudding of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations (Photo: PA)
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Speaking about the inspiration behind her winning trifle, Melvin explained: “This particular trifle is a tribute to three women: it’s my Gran, my Nan and the Queen herself.”

She added: “My Grandma taught me to bake, she taught me all the elements, everything from scratch.

“My Nan’s signature dish was always a trifle; we used to call her the queen of trifles. And the Queen had lemon posset at her wedding.”

How much will it cost to make?

The Big Jubilee Lunch Charity teamed up with royal grocer Fortnum and Mason to challenge members of the British public to create an original and celebratory cake, tart, or pudding that met the criteria of being fit for a queen, having a memorable story and tasting good while being “achievable” for home bakers.

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Melvin has said she hopes “everyone across the country” will make her dessert”, and that she’s made the recipe “really accessible”.

But as the cost of living crisis rages on and inflation and other economic factors push up the prices of everyday food items, how viable is creating the pudding at home?

To find out, we used Tesco as a price benchmark, opting for the cheapest product available and using the BBC recipe’s recommended “shortcuts”, such as using ready-made lemon curd and custard.

We’re also dividing prices by the amount of an ingredient used. For example: 1kg of flour is 40p, but since we’re only using 100g of it, we’ve listed it as costing 4p.

(Photo: BBC Food)(Photo: BBC Food)
(Photo: BBC Food)

For the swiss rolls

  • Four eggs - 56p
  • 100g caster sugar - 16p
  • 100g self-raising flour - 4p

For the mandarin coulis

  • 4x 298g tinned mandarins £2.80
  • 45g caster sugar - 7p
  • 2 arrowroot sachets - 40p
  • 1/2 lemon - 15p

For everything else

  • 300g lemon curd - £1.40
  • 1 packet lemon jelly - 70p
  • 500ml custard - 50p
  • 100g Amaretti biscuits - unavailable at Tesco, but £1.49 from Waitrose
  • 50g white chocolate chunks (for the “jewelled chocolate bark”) - 23p

TOTAL COST - £8.50

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The BBC recipe claims to serve 20 people, so when we divide £8.50 by 20, we get a per person cost of around 43p.

This estimation is of course giving the ingredients list the benefit of the doubt, dividing prices by how much of an item is used.

If you had to stock your kitchen by getting everything, it gets much more expensive - £27.84 at ASDA for example.

But cost and an availability of items are not the only barriers to making the recipe at home.

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Following the BBC’s recipe and making every component from scratch will take an estimated time of up to three hours.

You will also need to have in your kitchen two Swiss roll tins measuring approximately 24cmx34cm, and a trifle dish with a capacity of approximately 3.5 litres.

What were the other finalist desserts?

Finalists Kathryn, Jemma, Sam, Shabnam, and Susan all travelled to London to make their puddings in what Dame Mary Berry described as Fortnum & Masons’ “very smart” tea room.

Monica Galetti of MasterChef: The Professionals, journalist Jane Dunn, former Bake Off champion Rahul Mandal, pastry chef Matt Adlard, and culinary historian and author Regula Ysewijn were among the judges.

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Shabnam, who described the Queen as a role model in her life, believed she had the "perfect cake" to commemorate the monarch’s long reign.

She said her Mumbai-inspired rose falooda cake recipe symbolised the Commonwealth and how Britain had evolved into a multicultural society.

Susan, a retired sales manager, said her four-nation pudding, which includes Scottish berries, Yorkshire rhubarb, Welsh cakes, and Irish butter and cream, was inspired by the United Kingdom coming together.

Sam, a lawyer from Warwickshire, submitted a jubilee bundt cake based on the classic Victoria sponge but shaped like a crown and incorporating a Dubonnet jam, which she read was the Queen’s favourite tipple.

Kathryn, an Oxfordshire-based composer and oboist, believed her passion fruit and thyme frangipane tart is ideal for the Queen’s historic celebration because it is a "light summery pudding."

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