Festive Strudel from Jamie Oliver

I saw Jamie make this recipe on one of his TV shows over the holidays, so I saved a carton of Christmas Pudding to make it after the holidays were over, but never got around to posting the results. My effort did not turn out as pretty as Jaime's, but it was still totally tasty, and every little scrap was eaten. If you don't have any Christmas pudding left from the holidays, you can either make your own batch from a recipe I found here, or hold onto this recipe until next year....

Ingredients (Serves 8-10)

12 sheets of filo pastry (approx. 250g/8oz.)

125g butter (4 T.), melted

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

100g demerara sugar (brown cane sugar)

4 ginger biscuits (Ginger Snap cookies), crumbled

400g (12 oz.) leftover Christmas pudding

3 apples or pears or 2 quince, or a mixture of the three

50g (about 1 bar) good-quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into squares

Icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar), for dusting

Ready-made vanilla custard, to serve

Method: How to make festive strudel

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Lay out 6 sheets of pastry on a clean tea towel, overlapping each by an inch or so, so they cover the tea towel. They should cover it completely, with just a little overhang at one of the shorter ends. Work quickly so your pastry doesn’t dry out and brush some melted butter all over it. Sprinkle over the cinnamon and 50g of the sugar then crumble over your ginger biscuits to add a nice bit of crunch. Carefully layer the rest of the pastry sheets on top and brush again with butter.

2. Use your hands to crumble the Christmas pudding into a bowl then grate in the fruit. You want to have about the same amount of grated fruit as you’ve got pudding. Add about 2 T. of sugar, and mix it all together to break up the pudding a bit more. Sprinkle this all over the pastry so it’s roughly covered, leaving the overhang clear. Place the chocolate in a row on top of the Xmas pud, down the short side nearest the overhang.

3. Fold the overhang over the chocolate and pinch it up, then lift up your tea towel, and use it to help you carefully roll up your strudel. Tuck the ends under to seal it and transfer to a large non-stick pan. Brush it all over with butter then sprinkle over a little more sugar. Bake in the hot oven for about 40 minutes until crisp, golden and gorgeous looking. It might split a bit and look slightly rustic, but Jaime likes it that way. You could wrap an extra layer of filo round it before cooking if you want it to look a bit neater. Once cooked, leave to cool then use a serrated knife to cut the strudel into 5cm slices. Dust these with icing sugar and serve with ready-made custard from the fridge. Yum!