Shortcrust Pastry For Roly Poly Pudding

Our answer

Nigella's Roly Poly Pudding (from NIGELLA EXPRESS) is a short-cut version of a British classic dessert. Instead of a pastry dough made with suet, it is made with ready-made store-bought shortcrust pastry (pie dough). In the UK you can buy shortcrust pastry in two forms, as a block to roll out yourself or in a sheet already rolled out. For this recipe using the block that is ready to roll out is slightly easier.

We understand that in Australia it is most likely to be already rolled out in a sheet/slice and that a 1kg package of 5 sheets is quite common. This means that one sheet is around 200g and would be suitable for the pudding. The dough should be thawed if it is frozen. The extra 15g weight of one sheet should not make a difference to the way the pudding cooks, but you can trim it slightly if you prefer and you may need to roll the sheet slightly more to make it thinner and to fit the dimensions in the recipe. In the US store-bought pie crust usually comes rolled out in circles and you will need one pie crust from a standard refrigerated package of 14.1 ounces (the package contains two crusts). For this it is easiest to fold the dough into a rectangle - fold the topmost part down to the centre and the bottom up to the centre then fold the left hand edge over to meet the right hand edge (like you are closing a book). Roll this rectangle out on a lightly floured surface to the dimensions given in the recipe.