christmas pudding strudel with chocolate ~ jamie oliver

I have so enjoyed watching the series Jamie Oliver’s Family Christmas on BBC Food. As a mega fan of the rock star chef, I find his recipes accessible, innovative and always tasty.

Here he does a phyllo pastry strudel using your leftover Christmas pudding.  In my case I had made 2 puds this year, one bigger one and a smaller one, and decided to dedicate the entire small one to the making of this dessert.

I’m not going to give an exact recipe but rather talk you through how to make this very simply but fabulous pud.

For one strudel you will need about 3 – 4 layers of phyllo pastry. Leftover xmas pudding (about 400gms), half a packet of ginger biscuits crushed. About 80gms of good quality dark chocolate. Brown sugar for sprinkling and melted butter to brush down the pastry.

If you have not yet discovered the joys of working with silicone baking sheets and non stick plastic baking paper (which you can cut into any shape to fit your baking pans and can line bread and cake tins), then I strongly suggest you look into procuring some of this.  Not only does it prevent your baked goods from sticking to the surfaces they are on, but it makes cleaning up so much easier. I also find that the additional layer helps prevent burning, it fascilitates a really golden and even bake.

Pre heat the oven to 180C.  Place a sheet of phyllo down and brush the entire surface with melted butter.  Place another sheet on top of that and repeat.  Lightly sprinkle some brown sugar over the surface of the buttered phyllo then scatter over the crushed ginger biscuits.  Break up the Christmas pudding and spread evenly over the surface. Cover the pudding with 1 or 2 layers of phyllo pastry (I used 2) and brush each layer with butter again. On the one end place the chocolate which you have broken into squares or chunks in a line (this will land up being the middle part of the dessert once you have rolled) and roll the edge of phyllo tightly over it.  Continue to then roll the whole sheet up to form a thick log.  Tuck the ends of the log underneath to prevent all the bits leaking out.  Brush the whole log with butter and sprinkle over some more brown sugar and bake for 40 minutes until golden brown.

When you cut this the middle chocolate bit comes oozing out.

Its crispy, rich and tastes like Christmas. Splash over some fresh cream or add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to turn this into more of a decadent treat.

I think that broken up Christmas cake would also work, but I would then grate in an apple or 2 to give it a bit more moisture.

Yum!