Sweet and Savoury Puff Pastry Bites

Puff pastry is always a great thing to use if you want to whip up a really tasty, quick and easy bite to eat. Its a good idea to have a roll of ready made puff pastry in the freezer so you can make something last minute.

My friend Rosie had some puff pastry that she needed using up, so we made these little puff pastry bites. We made both sweet and savoury ones, and they're good as you can put pretty much whatever takes your fancy inside!

We made a selection of, Banana with chocolate chunks/ peanut butter, raspberry with chocolate chunks, and Gouda cheese with spiced chutney.

Recipe: (makes 14)

- 1 pack of ready rolled puff pastry

- Little bit of milk for glazing

Fillings:

(You can choose any combinations you like, or whatever you have in the cupboard/fridge!)

- 1/2 Banana

- Chocolate chunks

- Nutella/ Peanut Butter

- A few Raspberries

- Chocolate chunks

- Gouda cheese, cut in to little cubes

- A few tsp of Chutney/ Pickle

To make:

- Lay out the puff pastry and cut the pastry in half and then in to strips. You should have 14 rectangular shapes. Lightly score a mark to half the rectangles so you can see where to fold them in half. 

- Put your chosen fillings on to one side of the pastry and then fold over the pastry to make a little parcel. With the back of a fork press down along the edges to seal the parcel. Brush with some milk.

- Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 200c, until they are golden brown on the top and bottom. Allow them to cool a little before serving as the filling will be very hot!

- Enjoy the sweet parcels with ice cream or custard as a pudding. And the cheesy parcels work well with a little salad as a starter or light main course.

- Enjoy!

The puff pastry cut in to 14 rectangles

Two of the fillings

The finished golden brown parcels

xXx

Cheeeeesy Twists

There are two things that will always taste fantastic together, and they are cheese and pastry! I love making cheese biscuits using my Granny's recipe, but this time I decided to try something a bit different and use puff pastry instead of short crust. 

I love cheese straws, but I have never made them before as I usually buy them so I thought I would give it a go. It turns out that they couldn't be much easier to make! They tasted delicious and were gobbled up in a day so make sure to make a large batch if you have lots of mouths to feed!

Recipe: (makes 30 small straws)

- 1 x packet of ready made puff pastry (unrolled and unthawed if frozen)

- 3 x good handfulls of grated Cheddar cheese and Parmesan 

- 2 tsp Poppy seeds

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 200c and grease 2 baking sheets.

- Unroll the pastry and scatter with a good hanfull of the grated cheddar and parmesan cheese. Then fold the pastry in half and roll out until it becomes the thickness of a £1 coin. 

- Using a large sharp knife, cut the pastry in to long, thin strips and then cut those in half to make about 30 small strips. 

- Twist each pastry stip 3 times and then lay on the baking sheet. Once all are twisted, put some more grated cheese on top of each one and then sprinkle over the poppy seeds.

- Bake in the oven for about 6-7 minutes until golden brown on the top and bottom. Keep an eye on them though as they will burn quickly. 

- Enjoy warm if you can, if not keep them in an air tight container and eat at the earliest opportunity! You won't be able to resist!

Photo how to:

Grated cheddar and parmesan

The folded pastry with the cheese inside, ready for rolling out

Cutting the pastry in to strips for twisting

The twisted cheese straws on the baking tray

These are the finished cheese straws hot out of the oven!

Mmmmmm

xXx