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!

Treacle Tart

I made this classic English dessert back in August before I started my blog, but I included the recipe I used on another post for my other blog, An American Gal's Survival Guide to Life In England, so if you are interested in making one, click here to view the recipe. Treacle Tart is best served with clotted cream, but if you are making this in the U.S., clotted cream is unlikely to be available, so you can either serve with a rich, chilled vanilla pudding or a creamy vanilla-bean ice cream.

Enjoy!

Easy Xmas Mince Pies

Mince pies are everywhere in England during the holiday season, and they are practically's D's favorite thing, so I decided to try my hand at baking them in the kitchen. To save some money and time, I bought ready-roll shortbread/shortcrust pastry from the refrigerator section in the supermarket, and 2 jars of Sainsbury's "Luxury" mincemeat.

Although the term 'mincemeat pies' did actually include beef during Victorian times, nowadays they are almost always made without any meat and contain only suet (which is a type of vegetable fat that has a low melting point) as a substitute. The mincemeat also usually contains dried raisins, sultanas, dates, and candied fruit peel, often marinated or 'matured' in brandy to give it richness. If you are not in England, you can find recipes for making home-made mincemeat on the internet and start from scratch, or give jars of mincemeat as holiday gifts.

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Roll out the pastry on a well-floured surface to about 3mm (1/8") thickness. Using a 3" round pastry cutter, cut 12 rounds out of the rolled pastry and place one round in each hole of a muffin or bun tin sprayed with oil or lightly buttered. You can use either a 'bun tin', or a regular muffin/cupcake tin like I did, in which case, the pastry rounds won't reach the top of the tin.

2. Next, scoop about 1 heaping teaspoon of mincemeat into each pastry cup.

3. Roll out the remaining dough again and cut out 12 stars using a 3-inch star-shaped cutter, or if not available, cut a 2nd disk for the top using a slightly smaller round cutter and use a fork to poke a set of vents in the top of each pie.

3. Bake at for about 20 minutes, or until pies are golden brown.

Leave pies in tin for 2-3 minutes after baking, then turn

out onto a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Dust pie tops with powdered sugar (icing sugar) and serve.

Merry Christmas!!!

Toad in a Hole

I was planning on using a recipe for Toad in A Hole that I saw in a Gordon Ramsey cookbook, but it turned out that my maternal grandmother, Helen, had her own recipe that she's used before, so I opted to try hers out instead. I added a few sprigs of chopped, fresh rosemary to the batter in my grandmother's recipe to give the dough some extra flavor, and it was great! We ate it with some simple steamed veggies for dinner tonight (carrots, corn & peas or broccoli work best).

Toad in A Hole (serves 4) - total cooking time (includes prep): 1 hour

1 lb/400-500 grams Vienna sausages or Cumberland sausages (6-8 sausages)

1 Tbsp oil

1 cup flour (don't pack down)

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup milk

2 eggs

small sprig of rosemary

Sift flour and salt together in a bowl and add in milk. Beat 2 eggs until frothy and mix into batter. Stir in rosemary. Let batter stand for 30 minutes. Fry the sausages for 5 minutes in the oil. Remove sausages from pan and place in a 9" x 12" baking dish. Preheat oven to 400F/200C. Pour batter over sausages and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350F/180C and bake an additional 10-15 minutes longer or until batter is puffy and browned. Serve at once--the sausages will be nestled in holes in the puff pastry.

Leftover Turkey & Mash 'Cottage Pie'

If any of you in the U.S. have leftover turkey and mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving, like I do, then this is the perfect recipe! I got inspiration from this recipe on CD Kitchen, but modified it a bit, and made it today in about 15 minutes + baking time. My version is below:

Turkey & Mash 'Cottage Pie' (Serve's 4-6)

Ingredients:

1/4 c. butter or margarine

1/4 c. plain flour

1 pouch dry Lipton Onion Soup Mix

3 cups water

1 pouch dry Turkey Gravy w/parsley & sage

2 cups cooked turkey or chicken, cut up into bite sized pieces

1 (10oz) package fresh or frozen chopped mixed vegetables (ideally onion, celery, and carrots)

3/4 c. frozen peas

Any loose leftover stuffing or glazed pearl onions

2-3 c. mashed potatoes

Directions: Preheat oven to 350F/180C. In a large saucepan over med.-high heat., melt the butter, then add the flour and stir constantly for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Mix onion soup mix, gravy mix and water thoroughly in a large bowl and add to flour mixture in pan. Stir until thickened. Mix in vegetables, turkey, peas, stuffing and onions (if using) and heat through.

Pour mixture into a lightly greased casserole dish (8 x 8 x 2 worked for me) and spread mashed potatoes evenly across the top. You can spray a little olive oil over the potatoes or drizzle a little melted butter if you like, then bake the dish for 30 minutes, or until bubbling. You can also crank up the heat and broil the potatoes for the last few minutes to give them a golden brown crust.