Friday 17 January 2014

Pear, dark chocolate & marzipan strudel

by Bex

Today's Florence Finds' January Joy prompt is bake some bread.  The bread baking in this home is done by the Mr who is currently away.  You can see his recipe here.  I, however, am the keen sweet baker ;)  I promised I'd share this recipe we made for dessert on Christmas day and here it is, the amazing strudel!  Recipe (adapted slightly) from BBC Good Food magazine.

Serves 8-10 (not 6, it's so rich, you don't need a massive piece!)
Ingredients:
knob of butter
5 pears, peeled, cored & chopped
4 tbsp light muscovado sugar plus extra for sprinkling
1 tbsp Amaretto
100g ginger biscuits, crushed (I'd add a bit more to mop up some of the moisture and add more ginger flavour)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
100g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
100g marzipan, rolled/chopped into 1cm pieces
85g melted butter
250g pack of filo pastry (at least 6 sheets)
icing sugar and cream to serve

Method:
Melt a knob of butter in a large frying pan, add the pears and 1 tbsp sugar, and cook for 5 mins. Tip into a bowl and leave to cool.  Then add the Amaretto, biscuits, cinnamon, chocolate, marzipan, and 2 tbsp sugar and mix well.

Lay a sheet of filo onto a sheet of baking parchment, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with a little sugar.  Top with a second sheet of filo and keep going until you've used all the pastry.  Pile the filling down one of the long sides of the pastry, then roll it up to form a sausage.  Make sure it's seam-side down, then tuck the ends under tightly.  Roll up in the parchment, wrap tightly in foil and freeze.


Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.  Put a tray in the oven to heat.  Unwrap the strudel and place, seam-side down and still on its parchment, onto the tray.  Brush with melted butter and sprinkle over 1 tbsp sugar.  Bake for 35-40 mins, or until golden and crisp.  Leave to cool for 10 mins, then dust with icing sugar.

Ours definitely needed to be left in longer - the filling was still quite runny but the marzipan hadn't melted, and although the ends were fine, towards the middle it was still cold and had some solid bits of chocolate remaining.  When we re-baked the leftovers the next day, we wrapped individual portions in foil and it came out beautifully, a much thicker filling, all melted, merged and delicious and still crispy on the outside!  If making this again I would bake it for at least an hour, ensuring it doesn't burn by covering in foil if the outside starts to become too brown.

  

Serve with pouring cream.



3 comments:

Nita said...

Just looked again as a reward for getting through work. Still looks amazing. Still want to lick the screen. (As an aside, any suggestion on type of pear to use? I'm thinking a firmer one, like Conference, does that sound right??)

Bex said...

Yes, it was conference pears I used as they weren't specified. Enjoy it when you get the chance to make it! :) x

Lisa-Marie said...

I'm so glad you posted this, I've been thinking about it since you mentioned it!

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