A no cook pudding Mary says, but it’s easy and impressive looking – sounds good to me!
Reading through the recipe, it’s easy, but you do have to make part of it the evening before required! I’ve had intentions of making this on numerous occasions, but when I go to the cupboard to get the ginger biscuits out which are the main ingredient in this recipe, they’re never there, they’ve always been eaten!
In total you need 425ml whipping cream for this recipe. I didn’t have any whipping cream, so hoped the double cream I had would turn out ok. Half the cream (I measured out 215ml) was put into a bowl and whisked until if formed fairly stiff peaks. Into a small bowl I measured out 4tbsp brandy. It was time to open the ginger biscuits (225g) My packet was just under the required weight, so perhaps I wouldn’t need all the brandy! Each biscuit had to be quickly dipped into the brandy and then one side covered in cream. The next biscuit was then dipped quickly in the brandy and sandwiched to the first one, with some more cream put on the other side. It started quite well, I had the biscuits and cream in one hand, slowly stacking them up, but I soon came to the conclusion that there was no way that I would be able to stack a whole packet of biscuits up and hold them. After about the fifth biscuit, I retrieved a serving dish and laid the biscuits down on their side. I then assembled another 5 biscuits before adding these to the serving tray. Once they had all been used up I drizzled the remaining brandy over the top. By now I had a long roll which had to be covered in cling film and placed in the fridge overnight.
The next morning the rest of the cream was whipped up and used to cover the roll completely. A little was kept back so that I could pipe rosettes down the length of the roll using a piping bag. The top should then have been decorated with slices of stem ginger, but I’d had enough of ginger recently so missed this part off.
It was such a warm day that I had to put the roll back in the fridge as I feared the cream would melt. When it was time for the Cream Roll to be served, I must admit it did look rather stunning, even though it was simply 3 ingredients. To serve Mary says to cut the roll in diagonal slices. Once I had cut it this way, I could see why, you could see all the stripes or layers formed by the biscuits. The biscuits by now had absorbed all the brandy and had gone lovely and soft. Even though I was absolutely full of a summer cold when I made this I could taste the ginger, but also, wow, a hit brandy certainly took me by surprise and sent me off in a coughing fit. My husband loved it, I must admit I wasn’t that keen, I think the brandy was a little too over-powering (I’m not a lover of brandy anyway). My lovely neighbour over the road thought it was gorgeous, she even added more brandy. It was a dish very similar to something that her grandmother made years ago, so it brought back some happy memories for her, which was nice.
It is as Mary says very simple, but I agree it was also very stunning.
Self Raising Flower 