Queen’s Platinum Pudding Marks Platinum Jubilee Celebrations 2022

Queen Elizabeth II will mark her 70th year as a monarch with two of Britain’s most auspicious traditions: pudding, and allowing a public with a taste for degeneracy to not just decide what that pudding is, but create it from scratch.

As part of this summer’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the royals have partnered with Fortnum and Mason and former Great British Bake Off judge Mary Berry on a “platinum pudding” competition. Designed to emulate the coronation chicken created for Elizabeth’s ascendance to the throne in 1953, the pudding should, according to the competition rules, comply with the following criteria:

• Taste “just right.” A bit of a given.
• Be perfect for home bakers. This is a most delusional country, so a pudding for the royals must not be in any way fancy, regal, or anything like that.
• Tell a memorable story. A shame that there is no memorable source material from recent and historic royal exploits out there.
• Be fit for the Queen.

Entries must be anonymous, not use the kind of fancy restaurant tekkers that will definitely be deployed for everything else eaten for this celebration, and also be “genuinely original.” This is British pudding tradition, part of British baking tradition, after all: an entirely sui generis endeavour with absolutely no connection to or theft from the colonies of the British Empire.

Entries must also be, well, a pudding. Fortnum and Mason have had a bash at defining pudding, which appears to rule out cakes but not pies, while also allowing sponge batter — which could make a cake if baked — only if steamed to make a sponge pudding. This rules out a strong contender: Chocolate fudge cake from Pizza Express Woking. Here are some more early front-runners:

• A jelly iPad displaying a scene from the Crown.
• A spun sugar Range Rover in honour of Prince Phillip.
• Elizabeth sponge pudding (which may well actually win.)
• Spotted Andrew.
• Gorgeous Porchie’s peach pudding and pie.
• A trifle with one layer missing for Harry.

Most of the entries for the competition will never be tasted at all, which can only add to the potential for people taking the piss. More soon on the platinum pudding.