Serves 6, 15 minutes preparation, 1 hour cooking
It is so simple to make this sweet and comforting retro classic at home any night of the week. Serve with hot custard for the perfect warming pudding.
Ingredients
- 50g salted butter, cold and cut into chunks, plus extra for greasing
- 250g self raising flour, plus extra for rolling
- 1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out or ½ tsp vanilla essence
- 50g shredded suet or vegetarian suet
- 150ml milk
- 100g raspberry or plum jam
- Custard, to serve
Method
- To make the oven nice and steamy for a super fluffy jam roly poly, put a deep roasting tin that is two thirds full of boiling water onto the bottom shelf of the oven. Make sure that there’s a shelf directly above it then heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.
- Tear off a large sheet of foil and greaseproof paper (about 30 x 40cm). Sit the greaseproof on top of the foil and butter it.
- Tip the chunks of butter, flour and vanilla seeds/essence into a food processor then pulse until the butter has disappeared into the mixture. Tip into a large mixing bowl, stir through the suet and pour in the milk before working together with a butter knife until you get a sticky dough. You may need a drop more milk, depending on your flour.
- Tip the dough out onto a floured surface, quickly pat together to smooth, then roll out to a square roughly 25 x 25cm. Spread the jam all over, leaving a gap of a few cms along one edge, then roll up from the opposite edge. Pinch the jam-free edge into the dough where it meets, and pinch the ends roughly, too, to seal it all.
- Once rolled up, carefully lift onto the buttered greaseproof paper, join-side down (you might find a flat baking sheet helpful for this), loosely bring up the paper and foil around it, then scrunch together along the edges and ends to seal. The roly-poly will puff quite a bit during cooking so don’t wrap it tightly. When it has been wrapped lift the parcel directly onto the rack above the tin of water and cook for 1 hr.
- Once cooked, take the pudding out of the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes before unwrapping, then carefully open the foil and paper and thickly slice to serve with hot custard.