Nowhere does blueberries quite like BC, and at the moment it is the season, so I am loving all the local bakeries with their blueberry pies – bursting at their golden, cross-hatched pastry seams with molten purple sweetness. Because they are in season, and plentiful, they are also very easy to come by: big, heaving punnets of the super fruit setting you back just a few bucks.

I wanted to create a cooked dessert/bake with the blue beauties, but it being so hot, couldn’t be faffed with pastry proper. Plus, I love ground almonds with any kind of soft fruit, so I came up with this incredibly easy pudding recipe which is somewhere between a clafoutis, sponge cake and a pie. I used half shop-bought ground almonds and half whole, skin-on blitzed-up almonds to give a bit of texture and rusticity, and the result is rather lovely – the squidgy, ever-so-sweet fruit melding with the sponge and the crunchy almonds. I popped some basil leaves into the mix as well, because Mr Choi grows the fruitiest, most fragrant basil I’ve ever tasted and I think it goes just lovely with the sweet blueberries, giving them an extra flavourful edge.

This recipe makes a whopping big pie, because I was using our massive cake tin (sorry, no ruler to measure it yet), so if you have a more diminutive vessel it might be worth halving the quantities. Or you could make two and pig out! I really like this with sour cream or yoghurt rather than cream as the blueberries are so sweet I think they benefit from slightly piquant dairy.

600-800g blueberries
Five big, fragrant basil leaves
4 eggs, at room temperature
Soft butter, for greasing
120g caster sugar – I like golden caster
180g ground almonds (option: you could use 90g finely ground, 90g blitzed whole, skin-on almonds for a bit of crunch – as I did)
20g flour
Sour cream or creme fraiche, to serve

Preheat the oven to 180. Grease a big cake tin or flan dish with softened butter and place the basil leaves on the bottom of it. Pour over the blueberries and put to one side. Combine the flour and ground almonds. In another bowl whisk the sugar and eggs until frothy – for about 3 minutes. Gently fold in the flour and almonds, keeping as much air in there as you can. Now pour this on top of the blueberries, let it settle for a couple of minutes, and cook for 35-45 minutes – until the batter is golden and the blueberries’ liquid is bubbling up the sides of the tin.

Remove the tin from the oven and run a palette knife around the edge to loosen the pudding. Leave to stand and cool a little for five minutes, then put a big plate on top of the tin and flip it upside down to plate it. This is nice served warm, with a big dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche, or kept in the fridge and eaten cool and squidgy at any time of the day. Hell – it’s got blueberries in it so you can happily have it for breakfast! NB – don’t put it in the fridge until it’s cooled to avoid condensation.