After a little break while I switched over to this new blog, the monthly Bake It! Club is back! Thank you to those of you who contacted me to ask if I was going to continue with it – I wasn’t sure if it was worth carrying on with, but even if just a couple of people enjoy it then I am more than happy to keep going. Those of you who have no idea what I’m on about, here is a post explaining all about Bake It!

This month I thought I’d do things a little differently by choosing a theme instead of just one recipe, then if people aren’t keen on the recipe they can still join in with something similar. I’m still including a recipe though for those of you who want to try it out. So, the most appropriate theme for me this month seems to be ‘Back to School’. Grace started back this week and as we were talking about school dinners I started to think about what I ate when I was at school and all those ‘traditional’ puddings. Did you enjoy school dinners or were you subjected to lumpy custard and slimey cabbage?

I have fairly positive memories of school dinners, but then I will eat pretty much anything! When I think of school puddings, steamed sponges with custard and jam roly poly immediately spring to mind, so I chose to share the jam roly poly recipe from the traditional baking section in my book. It is a quick and easy pudding to make, tastes delicious and is a warm, filling pud for the colder weather that seems to be approaching. I used strawberry jam in mine but you could experiment with different jams and fillings.

 

Ingredients

250g self raising flour

125g shredded vegetable suet

Pinch salt

5-6 tbsp cold water

3-4 tbsp jam

1 tbsp milk

Caster sugar to sprinkle

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking parchment or greaseproof paper. I use one of those Teflon mats as the jam can leak out and get stuck to the paper.
  2. Sift the flour into a large bowl and mix in the vegetable suet and salt.
  3. Gradually add the water, a tablespoonful at a time,and mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes together to form a soft, but not sticky, dough. You can do this in a food mixer if you prefer.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a rectangle, approximately 20cm by 30cm. You can always fold over or trim the edges to neaten them up if you need to.
  5. Put the jam in a small microwaveable bowl and heat on full power for 20-30 seconds to make it easier to spread, then spread it all over the dough, leaving a 2cm border all around.
  6. If you want to neaten the edges by folding them then moisten the edge with a little milk and fold the edges over.
  7. Starting at one of the short edges, roll up the dough, brushing a little milk onto the end border to seal the join together.
  8. Place the roly poly onto the prepared baking sheet, join down, brush with milk and sprinkle with caster sugar.
  9. Bake the roly poly in the centre of the oven for 30-35 minutes until it is golden brown.
  10. Leave to cool for 5 minutes (the jam will be VERY hot) then serve with custard.

Proper school dinner grub!

As always, blog your wonderful creations, grab a blog badge from the sidebar (you may want to update your badge if you have an old one as it links to my old blog) and add your pictures to the Flickr group. I will add a linky post on 26th September so you can put up a link to your blog post.

Happy Baking! x