Phil's apple strudel with salted caramel fudge sauce

Thursday 17 October at 2:32pm

Today Phil’s doing a twist on the classic using this season’s bumper apple crop to make a show-stopping dessert, and Anton Du Beke will join to give us his baking verdict - will it be a 10?!

Apple strudel with salted caramel fudge sauce

Serves: 6

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

Apple strudel

For the pastry

375g plain flour, not strong flour

2 tbsp any oil

1 medium egg, beaten

2 pinches salt

200 mls cold water, roughly

Or if you prefer you can use 6 sheets of filo pastry.

For the filling

6-8 eating apples (not granny smith), peeled and cut into small wedges

roughly 6-8 tbsp fresh brioche or breadcrumbs

2-3 tbsp of marmalade

zest of 2 lemon

120g light brown sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

50g melted butter or oil

Salted caramel fudge sauce

120g unsalted butter

150g castor sugar

275mls double cream

1 tbsp black treacle

salt to taste

dash lemon juice

2 tbsp vanilla extract

Method

Pastry

Mix the flour, oil, egg, salt and water together, then knead into a soft dough, leave to rest for 1 hour. Or if you prefer you can use 6 sheets of filo pastry.

Apple strudel

Pre heat the oven to 200° C, Gas 6
Place the apples, crumbs, marmalade, lemon zest, sugar and cinnamon into a bowl and mix very well
Cut the dough in half, the other half will freeze okay. (It's difficult to make the dough in smaller quantities) then roll out an oblong shape about 40cm x 20cm using a touch of flour.
Next, lay a tea towel on the work surface and dust well with flour so the dough will not stick. Pick up the dough and stretch carefully, letting it fall away from your hands, so its own weight is doing the stretching, carefully teasing the dough apart. Don’t worry too much about a few holes, the secret is to get it nice and thin.
Once you get to roughly the size of the tea towel, lay the dough onto the tea towel. Cut away any thick end pieces of dough and discard.
Brush over 3/4 of the melted butter and spread out nice and evenly
If using filo pastry lay a clean tea towel down ready to stack your layers of filo. Stack 3 sheets of filo pastry on top of each other. Do this twice using all 6 sheets. Overlap the long ends by about 3 to 4 cm or to fit your tray. You should end up with a
Next spoon the apple mixture along one side of the pastry, leaving around 2cm clear at each end. Starting at the apple end lift the tea towel and use it to roll over the whole pastry and roll into one big strudel, making sure the end seal is underneath the finished roll.
If it doesn't fit then you can cut in half and place on a baking sheet, seal the ends by folding and / or pinching the pastry and brush with remaining melted butter.
Bake in the pre heated oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat and cook for a further 20 minutes. The top will crisp and brown nicely.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool
Eat warm with sauce and clotted cream

Salted caramel fudge sauce

Make the sauce by placing the butter, salt, sugar, treacle and cream together into a saucepan and bring to the boil, whisk well until you have a thick sauce
Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice and vanilla extract