Here’s a Christmas recipe from the vault, a tried and true method to turn Christmas Pudding into something delicious for those post Christmas Day meals.
The recipe is yet another great Jamie Oliver invention. It’s his Christmas Pudding Strudel, a lovely way to reinvent Christmas pudding leftovers and make something really yummy and quite special. It’s basically layers of filo pastry, filled with grated apple, pear or quince, crumbled Christmas pudding and a surprise chocolate centre.
You may have left overs to make the strudel…or you can buy a pudding at the supermarket on special after Christmas!
Ingredients
12 sheets filo pastry – if frozen, thaw. I mention in my original post that perhaps you could use less filo, as 12 layers is a little too much
125 g butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100 g demerara sugar + more for dusting when serving
4 ginger nut biscuits
400 g leftover Christmas pudding
3 apples or pears or 2 quinces or a mixture of the three
50 g good-quality chocolate, roughly chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 160 degrees C fan forced. Lay out 6 sheets of filo pastry on a clean tea towel, overlapping each by an inch or so, so they cover the tea towel.
The filo should cover the tea towel 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 50 g of the sugar, then crumble over your ginger nut biscuits to add crunch. Carefully layer the rest of the pastry sheets on top and brush again with butter.
Use your hands to crumble the Christmas pudding into a bowl then grate in the fruit, everything except the cores. (Jamie says to use the cores – I don’t think you need them.) You want to have about the same amount of grated fruit as you’ve got pudding. Add about 2 tablespoons 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 Christmas pudding, down the short side nearest the overhang.
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 nonstick baking tray. Brush it all over with butter then sprinkle over a little more sugar. If it looks a bit rough, you could wrap an extra layer of filo round it before cooking to make it neater. Bake in the hot oven for about 40 minutes until crisp and golden. You may get a split once cooked – I agree with Jamie that that would add to the rustic effect!
Leave to cool, then use a serrated knife to cut the strudel into 5 cm slices.
Note: This recipe makes quite a large strudel –the photos here are of half the strudel.
The Quirk and the Cool 