Cheat’s sour cherry strudel with lemon cream

8 sheets ready-made filo pastry
50g butter, melted
2 pink lady OR granny smith apples, peeled, cored & cut into 1cm dice
680g jar pitted morello cherries in light syrup, drained
60g walnuts, toasted
40g currants
1 tablespoon Frangelico liqueur OR kirsch 55g caster (superfine) sugar OR soft brown sugar
3 teaspoons plain (all-purpose) flour
1/2–1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

TO SERVE

Icing (confectioners’) sugar, to dust
1 quantity Lemon Cream (recipe below)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) fan-forced.

To make the strudel, lay a sheet of the filo pastry on a large baking tray lined with a sheet of baking paper, and brush with a generous amount of the melted butter. Lay another sheet on top, and repeat. Continue in this way until all the filo has been used. Set aside.

Combine the apples, cherries, walnuts, currants, Frangelico, sugar, flour and cinnamon in a medium mixing bowl, and toss gently with clean hands to mix the ingredients evenly.

Tip the mixture across the centre of the filo sheets, leaving a 7cm border on each side. Fold both sides inwards, then roll into a sausage to enclose the filling. If it’s a bit of a mess, unwrap the pastry, pop all the bits that have fallen out back into the centre and have another go, as the filo is fairly robust.

Carefully shimmy the strudel so that it’s positioned across the centre of the baking tray, then brush the surface with more of the melted butter. Bake for about 30 minutes until
a deep golden brown, so all the layers are cooked through. Leave to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Dust with icing sugar just before serving with your choice of dolloping cream.

Lemon Cream

Makes about 300ml

300ml thickened (whipping) cream
30g pure icing (confectioners’) sugar or icing (confectioners’) sugar mixture, sifted
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

Method

This is your most basic, most neutral-tasting cream for dolloping on desserts and decorating cakes. Make sure you don’t overwhisk this, or you will split the cream and be on your way to making butter. The only way to remedy this, unfortunately, is to start again from scratch.

Combine the cream, icing sugar and lemon zest in a medium mixing bowl, and whisk by hand or with an electric mixer until medium or stiff peaks form. Medium peaks make a nicer texture to dollop and provide moisture to slices of cake. Stiff peaks are more fitting for icing cakes and piping with, as the shape stays put.