5oz Caster sugarI found that if you have not-very ripe plums (which you tend to get around this time of year) you'll want to put them in a few minutes before the apples. It's a bit of a judgement call though; if they're in for too long it starts turning into jam.
3floz water
8oz Cooking apple peeled, cored and chopped
8oz Plums, chopped
1tsp cinnamon
couple of drops of vanilla essence
Simmer the water, sugar and flavouring for ~5mins, then add the fruit and cook until the apple is just soft. Drain it well before using or your strudel pastry will get all stodgy.
Dough
8oz plain flourI had quite a bit of trouble making strudel dough; having unsucessfully tried a couple of recipes from the internet I nearly gave up. In the end I found a recipe in the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book, which works perfectly.
1 egg, slightly beaten
~4tblspns lukewarm water
2tblspns oil
Some melted butter
Mix the flour with a pinch of salt in a bowl, then make a well in the centre. Pour oil and egg into the well. Add the water slowly whilst stirring throughly to make a soft, slightly sticky dough. Once it's binding together remove from the bowl and knead on a floured surface for about 15 minutes. You really do have to knead it for a long time - It will go silky smooth - don't stop until it does! Leave to stand under a bowl in a warm place for about an hour. Don't skip that step: you have to leave it for a while for all the gluten to bind, otherwise it will rip more easily when you're stretching it. Which is very upsetting.
I did the actual dough stretching in two batches as the it gets quite large and difficult to handle. If you have a large surface or table which you can get all around (and don't mind flouring) then you could do one giant lot.
Roll out the dough out nice and thin into an approximate rectangle. Now take off any rings, watches, bangles or other adornments and flour your hands. Lift the dough onto the backs of your hands with your hands together in the centre, and stretch it from the centre outwards in gentle pulling motions, trying to keep it approximately equal thickness throughout (well, except the edges, you can trim those off later...). It's difficult to describe but it's actually quite intuitive once you get some dough in your hands. Apparently you should be able to read a newspaper through the dough when it is done, it's not too hard to get it that thin if you're careful. Once you think the limit of thiness is reached then leave to stand for about 10 minutes. Then chop off any thick edges (you can try ot make it a bit more of a rectangle), and lightly brush with melted butter. Dollop the filling along near one of the long edges. Now roll the whole lot up around the filling, a little like a swiss roll, brushing a bit more melted butter on top after each roll. Throw in the oven on a lightly greased baking sheet at ~200C for ~25 minutes, until the top is nicely browned. Best served warm.
