Jam Roly Poly

I love it when I find out about a famous dessert that I’ve never heard of.  For me, this inspiration often comes from my lovely English husband who has introduced me to such pleasures as Eton Mess and Spotted Dick (tastes better than it sounds).  So when he found out that I had never tried, let alone heard of, Jam Roly-Poly, I felt compelled to give it a go on a cold and miserable Sunday afternoon.

A recipe like this is great to have up your sleeve as you would have most of these ingredients on hand the majority of the time.  It’s also pretty fast to pull together and doesn’t take too long in the oven.  Some other versions you might see involve steaming for 2 hrs, which sounds like a lot of hard work to me.

Use any jam that you like, or even a mixture of a few.  I used strawberry, only because it’s my favourite.  A few cracks will form on the top of the pudding, but this is all just part of its rustic appeal.  The taste is a bit like a moist, sweet, jammy scone.  Also known as delicious.

Ingredients

1 cup plain flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

60g cold butter

3 tsp sugar

1/3 cup milk

4-5 tbsp jam

Custard or ice cream to serve

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a tray with baking paper.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.  Grate the cold butter in and use your fingertips to blend it with the flour into fine crumbs.  This should take about 8 minutes.  Go with it.

Add the milk, and bring the dough together into a ball.  Flour a work surface and roll the dough out to about 20cm x 30cm.  Spread the jam over, leaving about a 2cm gap on one of the long sides.  Starting on this long side, bring the dough over into a swiss roll shape, smoothing any cracks in the dough as you go.  Blend the edges of the seam together and place, seam-side down, onto your lined baking tray.

Place into the oven and bake for 15-20 mins.  Allow to rest for 10 mins before cutting into thick slices and serving with custard or ice cream.  Or maybe even both.