Nutella Roly Poly

I don’t know about you but I don’t think you can beat a good old-fashioned stodgy pudding on a cold, wet, wintry day. Spotted dick, treacle tart or sticky toffee pudding with buckets of custard is simply heaven on a plate. My personal favourite is jam roly poly. It reminds me of school dinners back in the days when you got what you were given whether you liked it or not!

I really fancied making a jam poly this weekend for Sunday pudding but my pain-in-the-posterior son doesn’t like jam so I racked my brains to think of something that would work as well but that he would like. The answer was simple, Nutella!

It was a bit of an experiment, especially since I haven’t made a suet pudding for donkey’s years but I’m pleased to inform that it was bloody gorgeous!

Ingredients:

• 8ox self-raising flour
• 4 oz shredded suet (I used Atora vegetable suet)
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 1 tbs caster sugar
• Approximately 150ml cold water
• 5 tbs nutella

 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C /160C fan
2. Mix a;l the dry ingredients together in a large bowl
3. Slowly add the cold water until a soft dough is formed.
4. Knead until smooth then roll into a rectangle , 10 x 8 inch
5. Spread with the nutella
6. Roll up from a short end
7. Place in a lined loaf tin
8. Bake for 30 minutes.

 

 

Related articles

• Suet Pastry (bakeclubs.wordpress.com)
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Chocolate Dense Cake

This may not be the prettiest of cakes but what it lacks in looks, it more than makes up for in taste. I’m not really a lover of chocolate cake, I much prefer lemon cake or carrot cake or better still a biscuit or 3! I make the exception, however, for this one. It is rich, sweet and deliciously dense! Yummy!

I made this cake to take to my sugarcraft class last night. I take them a cake or cookies every week to have with a cuppa whilst they work. Usually I have written the recipe up on this blog so when they ask for it I can simply say “Check out my blog”. I was in so much trouble last night when I confessed that I hadn’t actually written this up. So this one is for my sugarcraft ladies so that they can stop moaning at me!

It is not my recipe but one of Nigella Lawson‘s, the domestic goddess herself. Nigella is my inspiration when I’m after something scrummy and I have adapted and developed so many of her recipes over the years, I have lost count. This cake is simply divine. It is gorgeous cold or served warm straight from the oven with a dollop of ice-cream which is how my son had it last night. It is also really easy to double up so you can have one fresh and one for the freezer.

Ingredients:

225g butter

375g soft brown sugar (Nigella says muscavado but I find it a bit too treacle-like so used a mixture of that and soft brown)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

100g dark chocolate melted

200g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

250ml boiling water

 

Method:

1. Grease and line a loaf tin.
2. Preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until well mixed
4. Beat in the eggs, chocolate and vanilla until mixed but not whisked.
5. Fold in the flour and bicarbonate a spoonful at a time, alternating with the boiling water.
6. This will result in a VERY wet batter
7. Pour into the loaf tin
8. Bake at 190C / 170C fan for 30 min.
9. Reduce the temperature to 170C/ 150C fan and bake for a further 15 mins
10. The cake will be squidgy in the middle when tested and will fall back in on itself on cooling. This what helps to make it so dense. It also gets better with time!

 

Related articles

• Mars Chocolate Marshmallow Cake (sugarandspicebaking.com)
• Forever Nigella #23 – Nostalgia (thebotanicalbaker.wordpress.com)