Friday Pie-Day: The Story of the Party Pastries

One December morning, Hungry Jenny thought it would be a rather lovely idea to bake some savoury Christmas treats. It would be a nice change, she thought, to balance out all the cookies and cakes baked to share out amongst family, friends, colleagues, fellow aikido guys and the like. But what to make? It was inevitable of course, that pie and pastry would come into the equation, and thus, the Party Pastry idea was born...

What Hungry Jenny didn't realise though was that these devilish Party Pastries were a lot more to deal with than she thought...

As Hungry Jenny went to prepare her Party Pastries, she decided upfront to make her own pastry. With the ratio of good to bad pastry-making being something like 1:10, this was clearly her route to Party Pastry success.

Note ratio: bad pastry-making outweighing the good.

The smug Hungry Jenny was also feeling rather smart for recently buying a large tub Stork - a large tub of soft margarine, best used for cakes.

Note cakes: not pastry.

Whilst rolling out the shortcrust pastry she had made, she was rather surprised to find that it was quite soft and springy. Was it not meant to be a bit firmer? Perhaps so, she found, when the pastry refused to cooperate to fold over in a pasty way without breaking. A bit of extra flour kind of sorted that out.

Catering for both meat and veggie eaters, Hungry Jenny simultaneously cooked the different fillings in two pots at the same time. Now there's a messy sight for unsore eyes. It is worth mentioning at this point, that Hungry Jenny tends to overestimate the amount of ingredients to use. (These are usually adjusted when it comes to writing up the recipes by the way, so, er, you're still pretty safe to follow them)

Evidently, Hungry Jenny was suddenly left with a mountain of filling, with not enough pastry to go around. Fear not, for she had pre-empted this - she'd already taken out from the freezer some ready-made puff pastry that she had made a few weeks back.

But there was another challenge calling Hungry Jenny. How was she supposed to know how much of a faff it would be to prepare the pastries for partying in the oven? I mean, all she had to do was stamp out a round, carefully spoon a tiny bit of filling into the centre, dab around the edges with egg, fold it over to seal, press the edges together, and egg-glaze all over.

There were about 50 of them to do by the way.

And yet, there still was not enough pastry to go around. Tired and prepped-out, Hungry Jenny decided to do what she should have done at the start. She went to the supermarket and bought a pre-made pack of pastry. (And a few spare ones to stick in the freezer for good measure)

With horrid flashbacks of the long two hours it took to make and prepare the first batch, Hungry Jenny took a different approach. Stamp out, glaze, top with filling. Half the amount of steps.

Goodness me, Hungry Jenny only seems to learn the long way how to do things the easy way. At least Hungry Jenny was able to find lots of hungry mouths to devour the resulting total of 80-odd pastries. That's the plus side of having to continuously bake til all the filling is used up!

Unfortunately, Hungry Jenny would not know where to begin if you asked her how to work out the ratio of filling to pastry to make these particular Party Pastries - but at least she can share with you how to make the rounded pastries that she will stick to in the future...

Veggie Party Puff Pastries

Print-friendly recipe

Makes about 15 bite-sized pastries:

Half a sweet potato, diced
100g chickpeas
Small handful spinach, chopped
Half a parsnip, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
250g puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

1) Lightly boil the sweet potato for 5-10 minutes.
2) In a separate pan, cook the shallot, parsnip and chickpeas over a low heat. Add the spinach after 5 minutes, then mix in the sweet potato.
3) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
4) Roll out your pastry and stamp out some shapes.
5) Glaze with beaten egg and add a bit of filling to the centre of each pastry.
6) Stick in the oven for about 15 minutes.


Turkey Party Puff Pastries

Print-friendly recipe

Makes about 15 bite-sized pastries:
50g lean minced turkey
Small handful dried cranberries
2 new potatoes, peeled and diced
Half a parsnip, diced
1 tiny carrot, diced
1 shallot, chopped
50ml hot stock
250g puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

1) Fry the onion and potatoes for a few minutes.
2) Add the turkey, followed by the rest of the veg.
3) Pour in the stock and leave to simmer for a few minutes.
4) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
5) Roll out your pastry and stamp out some shapes.
6) Glaze with beaten egg and add a bit of filling to the centre of each pastry.
7) Stick in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.