Platinum Pudding finalists announced ahead of Queen’s Jubilee

Recipes from five amateur bakers have been selected from 5,000 entries

(BBC/PA)

The finalists for the Queen’s Jubilee Platinum Pudding competition have been announced – and includes a crown-shaped Victoria sponge.

Earlier this year, Buckingham Palace launched a nationwide competition to find a pudding fit to celebrate the Queen’s 70th year on the throne.

Now, recipes from five amateur bakers have been selected from nearly 5,000 entries.

The Duchess of Cornwall and Dame Mary Berry will announce the winner during a special BBC One programme, The Queen’s Jubilee Pudding: 70 Years in the Baking, which airs on 12 May.

Only the first names of the finalists have been revealed, these are: Shabnam, Susan, Sam, Jemma and Kathryn.

Shabnam, who sees the Queen as a role model, said she wanted to make the “perfect cake” to celebrate Her Majesty’s reign.

Her entry is a rose falooda cake, which originates from Mumbai. Shabnam said: “My falooda cake is a humble cake of the people, and by qualifying I felt I was representing people from all walks of life, their struggles, journeys, their hopes and aspirations, and I hope it is inspiration for anyone really, that you can achieve anything if you just believe in yourself.”

Sales manager Susan from Scotland has created a four nations pudding, which includes Scottish berries, Yorkshire rhubarb, Welsh cakes and Irish butter and cream.

Susan said: “The Queen’s Jubilee is the one time that we can all be together to celebrate our queen and how she’s represented us during her selfless 70-year service to our country. So I wanted my pudding to represent us as one nation.”

Sam, a lawyer from Warwickshire, submitted a crown-shaped Victoria sponge bundt cake that includes a Dubonnet jam, as she read this was the Queen’s favourite tipple.

Copywriter Jemma has created a lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle for the Jubilee. The pudding is a tribute to her grandmothers, as one taught her how to bake and the other’s signature dish was a trifle.

Jemma says she based the flavour on the dessert the Queen served at her wedding to Prince Philip: lemon posset.

The final baker is Kathryn, a composer from Oxfordshire, who has submitted a passionfruit and thyme frangipane tart.

Kathryn noted that it also commemorates her grandmother, who continued to work as an NHS nurse during the pandemic before she died in April 2020 at the age of 84, as it is a variation of her favourite cake.

Additional reporting by PA