Rich Tea Biscuit Dessert

Finally Lundulph and I managed to get our acts together and have a dinner party. I've been wanting to do this for ages, but there have been so many other things to sort out. Tonight was Bulgarian night and I had made Shopska salad for starter. This is a fairly regular salad with tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce with grated feta cheese on top. I added roast peppers and radishes to that. Traditionally it should have onions and coarsely chopped parsley. This is not really suitable for the season, but I couldn't think of a more Wintery starter.

The main course was my moussaka, made in the small colourful terracotta pots. That went down very well indeed.

And for dessert, I made the following dessert, which I don't remember the original name of.

Ingredients

250 g strawberry jam
1 packet of rich tea biscuits (Marie type) of 300 g

Method

1. If not already smooth, put the jam in a deep container and blend until completely smooth. It should be slightly runny.
2. Tear off a piece of aluminium foil, large enough to wrap the packet of biscuits completely and place on the work surface.
3. Take out all the biscuits, discarding any broken ones.
4. With a knife or spatula, spread a little jam on one side of a biscuit and place somewhere on the aluminium foil. The layer should be half the thickness of the biscuit itself, don't be stingy.
5. Take another biscuit and spread jam on one side as before, then place with the dry side on top of the previous biscuit.
6. Repeat with the rest of the packet, save one biscuit. Note that after you've stacked about 10 of them, the tower will be a bit unstable, so I suggest you start on a new stack.
7. Now comes the sticky part. Take each stack and lay down one next to the other, so that a long sausage forms. Place the last dry biscuit at the end that has jam on it, then quickly rinse your hands and roll up the aluminium foil, making sure the biscuits stay in place and close to each other. There may be need to give the whole thing a squeeze at the ends, then also make sure to roll it between your fingers to make the jam go back between the biscuits, as it'll run down one side once you start putting it together.
8. Put standing up in the fridge overnight.
9. When ready to serve, unroll the aluminium foil and with a sharp large knife cut through at an angle to get stripey slices.
10. I served with dairy ice cream and it worked rather nicely.

This holds rather well for days. The dry biscuits will soak up quite a bit of the jam and the whole thing should become fairly solid and easy to cut. Of course other jams will work just as well, but they should be of a strong colour so that the stripes come out.