Tony Jackman’s apricot jam rolypoly. (Photo: Tony Jackman)
Maybe your mom, or your mom’s mom or perhaps your great grandma, used to make this pudding. It’s so simple, so easy to make, yet because it is rolled up like a Swiss roll, and because as it cooks it slowly puffs up with pride and joy, there’s somehow something special about it.
Who doesn’t love apricot jam? It may be available elsewhere in the world but in South Africa it is a part of our sweet baking culture. Millions of cakes have been spread with a layer of apricot jam before being sandwiched and iced. Even more millions of spoonfuls of apricot jam have been spread between slices of bread and packed into children’s lunchboxes.
This pudding will take you back to your parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods. As you eat it, you’ll picture your mom at gran’s apron tails at the kitchen table, waiting with wide eyes for the moment when her mom would say, here, have a taste.
Of apricot jam, right off the knife she’s used to spread it on the dough.
This was one of my friend Sandra Antrobus’s favourite desserts. Think of someone like her — who was so important to you but isn’t there any more — when you make this pudding.
Tony’s jam rolypoly
(Serves 4 to 6)
Ingredients
2 cups / 500ml cake flour
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp caster sugar
125g butter (a quarter of a brick), at room temperature
2 large eggs, beaten
4 Tbsp milk
Enough apricot jam to spread on the dough
2 cups boiling water
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and stir in the salt. Stir in the caster sugar.
Add the butter in one lump and use your fingertips to work it into the dry ingredients until you have a lightly crumbly mixture.
Beat the eggs and stir them in with a wooden spoon, then add the milk and beat it in until just combined. The dough should be quite firm, like a bread dough.
Sprinkle flour on a work surface and roll out the dough fairly thinly with a floured rolling pin.
Using a knife, spread apricot jam all over the dough, quite generously.
Roll it up slowly and carefully from one end to resemble a Swiss roll. Grease a large bread tin or other suitable pan with butter and place the roll in it.
Boil a kettle of water and pour 2 cups of it into a small bowl or jug. Add 1 cup of sugar and 2 Tbsp butter and stir well until the sugar has entirely dissolved.
Pour the sauce over the roll of dough in the bread tin. If there’s too much sauce, reserve the rest for later.
Bake for an hour at 180°C. Half way through, add the remaining sauce and continue cooking.
Serve hot, with custard, cream or ice-cream. DM
Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023
Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.
This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.