July is the month when the British fruit bowl stops being decorative. Strawberries are properly ripe, raspberries arrive by the handful, and blackcurrants — the most underrated of the soft fruits — hang in dark clusters that strip off a bush in one satisfying rake. Come home from a pick-your-own with three kilos and you need a plan. Here are the ones worth using: cold puddings for hot afternoons, jam in batches small enough to make on a weeknight, and drinks that sit in the fridge door waiting for company.

Choosing berries, and looking after them

Raspberries and strawberries are picked ripe in this country, which is why they taste of something and why they last about five minutes. Buy or pick what you will eat within two or three days. Blackcurrants are tougher: a week in the fridge, or freeze them on a tray and bag them up.

Wash fruit only when you are about to use it. Wet berries collapse and fur.

• Strawberries: rinse quickly, hull with a small knife — a shallow twist, not a deep cone — and pat dry on a tea towel.
• Raspberries: tip onto a plate and pick out anything bruised or mouldy. They rarely need washing.
• Blackcurrants: strip the berries from the stems with a fork. If you are cooking them, don't bother topping and tailing.

Check the base of the punnet before you buy. A stained bottom means fruit that has been sitting in its own juice.

No-cook puddings for a hot day

When the kitchen is unbearable, cold puddings do all the work for you.

Eton mess

Crush 400g strawberries with a tablespoon of caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon; leave for 20 minutes until syrupy. Whip 300ml double cream to soft peaks, fold through broken meringue and most of the fruit, and keep it rough — the whole point is rubble. Spoon into glasses, top with the rest of the strawberries, and eat within the hour, before the meringue dissolves.

Raspberry fool with lemon

Crush 300g raspberries with three tablespoons of sugar and a good grating of lemon zest. Fold into 300ml lightly whipped cream or thick yoghurt, but only half-heartedly: you want streaks, not a uniform pink. Chill for an hour.

Cold summer pudding

Line a pudding basin with slightly stale white bread, crusts removed. Macerate 700g mixed berries with 120g sugar and a squeeze of lemon overnight, then spoon the fruit and juice into the basin, cover with more bread, weigh it down with a saucer and a tin, and chill for six hours. Turn out onto a plate. Left overnight, the fruit releases plenty of juice without ever seeing a pan.

Small-batch jam that actually sets

Jam fails for two reasons: too much water, or not enough pectin and acid. Strawberries have little of either; blackcurrants and raspberries have plenty. Keep batches between 500g and 1kg of fruit — any larger and the pan never returns to a rolling boil quickly enough, which is what sets jam.

1. Sterilise your jars: wash them, then about 15 minutes in a 140C oven, or a hot dishwasher cycle. Pot jam while the jars are still warm.
2. Put fruit and sugar in a wide, heavy pan. For blackcurrants, equal weights of fruit and sugar and no added water. For strawberries, 800g fruit to 1kg jam sugar, or granulated sugar plus the juice of a lemon.
3. Heat gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves, then boil hard. Blackcurrant takes 10 to 15 minutes; strawberry needs closer to 20.
4. Test for a set: chill a saucer, drop on a teaspoonful, wait a minute and push it with your finger. If it wrinkles, it is ready. A thermometer reading of around 105C tells you the same thing.
5. Pot hot, seal, and label. It keeps for a year in a cool cupboard; once opened, keep it in the fridge.

A jam set to a soft, spoonable wobble is better than a stiff one. Overcook it and you get a paste that refuses to spread.

Drinks for the fridge door

Blackcurrant cordial

Simmer 500g blackcurrants with 500ml water for ten minutes, mash, then strain through muslin overnight. Don't squeeze the bag or the cordial clouds. Add 300g sugar to the liquid, heat until dissolved, and bottle. Dilute one part to five with sparkling water or tonic. It keeps about a fortnight in the fridge.

Raspberry shrub

Mash 250g raspberries with 250g sugar in a bowl, cover, and leave for 24 hours. Strain, then stir in 250ml cider vinegar. It keeps for months and gives a sharp, faintly vinegary lift to soda water, gin or anything sparkling. A tablespoon per glass is plenty.

A strawberry jug

Hull and halve 400g strawberries, add a sliced lemon, a cucumber peeled into ribbons, and a handful of mint bruised in your hand. Cover with lemonade, or a mix of soda water and elderflower cordial. Add ice and let it sit for ten minutes before pouring.

Freezing what you can't use

Spread clean berries on a tray in a single layer, freeze until solid, then bag them. They won't thaw to anything you would serve raw, but they are excellent in jam, crumbles and smoothies. Cordial freezes well in ice cube trays too — two cubes per glass of fizzy water makes a lazy version of the same drink.

A plan for the next fortnight

If you have more fruit than you can keep up with, work in this order:

1. Eat the raspberries first. They are the most fragile by far.
2. Make one batch of jam with the blackcurrants, which set most reliably.
3. Cook or freeze anything left within 48 hours of picking.
4. Make cordial with the second wave and keep a bottle in the fridge door for the rest of the month.

July berries reward speed rather than skill. Buy slightly less than you think you want, use it within a few days, and let the fruit do the work. If you are new to preserving, follow a reliable preserving guide or the jar manufacturer's sterilising instructions exactly — getting that step wrong is the one thing that can spoil a good batch.

Photo: Miguel Á. Padriñán / Pexels