White Christmas Parfait

This pudding – in the grand tradition of Australian iced Christmas desserts, sliced straight from frozen, gets an evocative mix of childhood and adult flavours bang-on. If you want to leave the alcohol out, just replace it with a few teaspoons of vanilla extract. It is wooingly sweet, so have a bowl of berries on hand to spoon over for serving.

Ingredients
15g Copha or coconut oil
100g white chocolate
100g glace cherries, halved
25g desiccated coconut
25g Rice Bubbles

Rum and raisin mixture

3 egg yolks (from 60g eggs)
50g castor sugar
300ml double cream
50ml rum
100g raisins

Meringue
3 egg whites
75g castor sugar

Method
1. To make the White Christmas, melt the copha or coconut oil with the chocolate, then stir in the cherries, coconut and Rice Bubbles. Pack this into a small container lined with non-stick paper and freeze so it forms a slab you can chop up.

2. For the rum and raisin mixture, beat the yolks and sugar until smooth. Boil the cream in a saucepan then pour half over the yolks and whisk well. Pour this mixture back in with the cream and whisk until almost boiling. Immediately pour the custard back into the bowl, whisk again for a moment to reduce the heat then mix in the rum and raisins. Leave this to cool then chill.

3. To assemble, line the inside of a one-litre pudding basin with a sheet of non-stick paper and set aside. Have another mixing bowl ready and an electric whisk (hand-held is easiest here). Stir the egg whites and sugar in a saucepan over a moderate heat until piping hot and opalescent. Then immediately scrape the whites into the mixing bowl and beat while hot, on a high speed, until a soft, slightly liquid meringue is formed. Fold this gently through the custard. Cut the White Christmas into small pieces and stir these in. Pour the mixture into the lined basin and freeze for 24 hours.

4. To serve, simply upturn, peel off the paper and cut into wedges as it freezes with the texture of soft ice-cream.