It has been a week of scrolls bonanza. I made two batches of jam scrolls in just a few days and they were nearly instantly gone. The second batch was an absolute winner. They were filled with a wild blackberry jam I made out of hand-picked berries my husband so kindly picked on his trip to Nannup last Saturday.
The berries were so beautiful and the jam so delicious that it prompted us to take another trip, this time together, to pick more berries.
I could tell you tales of how beautiful the wild blackberry bushes are, and how much leisurely fun it is picking berries off of them, but! it would be a big fat lie! The bushes are sort of shabby and tell you what!, picking berries off of them is like fighting with a dragon or a medusa with fifty thousand tentacles that stab your skin, grab at your clothes and get you all tangled up and pricked, and after two hours of fighting with the medusas you end up with a container full of berries. However, it is all worth it in the end.
The scrolls on these photos are the first batch of the jam scrolls and are filled with another homemade jam (shop bought jams are perfectly fine to use too!). It happened to be a home-made jam because I simply didn’t have any jam left in the pantry, however, had some frozen berries in the freezer. There was half a packet of raspberries and half a packed of cherries, I mixed them together, added sugar and simmered them into a jam. The cherries were on the bigger side and would have been too large for doughnuts (that's what jam was originally for) and so I blended the jam with a hand blender to get a smoother consistency and to make it easy to pipe it into the doughnuts.
When I make jam I follow simple instructions my Mama gave me years ago; to every 1 kg of berries add around the same amount of sugar. The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of berries or other fruit that is used to make jam. Once the berries are simmering, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the consistency becomes thicker, then add a few drops of lemon juice. Lemon juice serves as a thickening agent and as well well as acting as a jam setter, it prevents bad bacteria overgrowth once the jam is jarred.
The foam will appear on top of the simmering jam, it is best to scoop it out as the foam collects all the scummy bits that no one wants in their jam. Also, when I was a kid the foam was something I loved to lick off the spoon!
Ingredients
1 sachet active dry yeast
4 tbsp sugar
1 cup lukewarm milk
100g butter, softened
1 egg, lightly whisked
1/2 tsp salt (don’t add salt if using a salted butter)
450-500g plain flour (I use unbleached bakers flour)
1/2 cup jam
1 egg for egg wash, lightly whisked (optional)
Icing sugar for dusting
Method
In a bowl of stand mixer with a dough hook attached, or any other large mixing bowl if you haven’t got a stand mixer, whisk yeast, sugar, milk, egg and salt. Add 450g of flour and knead into a dough. If your dough appears to be too soft then gradually add more flour and knead well between each time you add it. Since quality of flour varies from one brand to another you might need slightly less or more of it and there for I suggest starting with lesser amount.
Once your dough is ready and is elastic to touch after you have kneaded it for a few minutes, place it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover and set aside for 1 -2 hours or until it has doubled in size. Gently deflate your dough by pushing it down with your hand, shape into a ball and place onto lightly floured bench and allow it to rest for a few minutes. Allowing your dough to rest will give it time to relax and in turn it will be much easier to roll the dough out without it pulling back. If your dough still pulls back after the resting, give it a few more minutes to rest on the bench.
Roll the dough out into a rectangle about 30cmx40cm. Spoon the jam across the rectangle and even it out with the back of your spoon. Gently roll it into a log and using a sharp knife cut into 6 equal size pinwheels (you might want your scrolls a different height in this case them a size according to your preference).
Arrange the pinwheels into lined with baking pepper 24cm baking pan making sure to leave a few centimetres of space between each piece as they will rise and fill in the space. Set the pan in a warm place and allow to rise for about 40-50 minutes or until nearly doubled in size
At this point preheat the oven to 180C fan forced.
Once the scrolls have risen sufficiently, brush them with egg wash and bake for 30-35 minutes. If the scrolls are browning up too fast, place a piece of baking paper over the top half way through the baking.
When fully baked, remove scrolls from oven, slightly cool before removing them from the tin and continue cooling on a cooling rack. Enjoy dusted with icing sugar or as desired.
