Pastry Experiments

Hello all, I've been experimenting. You don't have to follow this one if you don't want to, but I have to admit, although it looks burnt (and it is a bit because I was washing up and forgot about it) it tasted amazing!! The original idea came from my flatmate, Catie - and you could say her idea influenced me!

First things first... please note that all of these ingredients were leftovers in my fridge and apart from the tomato puree and pastry, you can use ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Ingredients:

Olives, any kind, any flavour oil, whizzed
Salami or Pepperoni
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Leftover Vegetable Chilli (see Thursday 5th September post)
Tomato Puree
Jus-Rol pastry


You will need: a shallow baking tin - even a cake half tin will do. Sprinkle a little flour on the tin, this will stop the pastry sticking completely to the bottom.


Method:

Roll out the pastry onto your tin. If it doesn't fit, tear off extra bits from the corners and make it up to the sides of the tin. Pastry like this molds like clay, so it's very easy to use. Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Jus-Rol comes pre-rolled, but if you are using a block of pastry (actually, like I did), all you need is a rolling pin with some flour on it and a sheet of baking grease-proof paper so that you can roll it out fully. You'll want your base at least 1cm thick at it's thinnest.

Pinch the edges of your pastry so that there is a small wall all the way around. This will keep any ingredients from running off the sides.

From the tube, squish out some tomato puree and spread with a knife. Try use a butter knife or even a spoon, just in case the knife cuts into the pastry. Make sure the puree covers the entire base, like a pizza.

Now - on top of this, you can add anything, like I said. Anything you like. So I added the leftovers of my chilli, with some olive paste, leftover salami and some cherry tomatoes.

Put the entire thing in your now hot oven on the middle-high shelf for around 20-30 minutes. Check about 20 minutes in, some ovens are different time wise. Your pastry at the edge should be golden brown when it's ready. If you do put meat on it, make sure it's cooked before you take out the oven.

I hope you all enjoy it and don't burn it like me!!


TIP: You can use this idea with a sweet pastry too! Instead of savoury ingredients and tomato puree... use nutella and bananas instead!
Kirsty x

Chocolate Tiffin

Happy New Year everyone!!

This was something I made for my friends' Hogmanay party last night. It wasn't initially for them, but my friend and flatmate made a Maltesers one earlier on and I thought, I can do a dairy-free version. And I managed it!

Chocolate Tiffin, serves 8 (at least). Takes about 15 minutes to make, if that!

You need: a small square tin, buttered.

200g chocolate, broken into small pieces (I used 2 x 100g bars of Tesco plain chocolate, 30p each)
100g butter
230g biscuits, broken into small pieces (I used Hobnobs - completely dairy free as made with oil)

Optional: currants, raisins, sultanas, cherries, marshmallows, golden or maple syrup. Plus, you can always put an extra layer of chocolate on top once the tiffin has cooled in the fridge for a few hours.

Method

Melt the butter on a low heat on the hob, one melted, break the chocolate into small pieces (easiest to do by breaking it up while in the packet - same with the biscuits) and throw into the pan. Remember to continually stir the chocolate as otherwise it'll burn.

Once melted, take off the heat, throw in the biscuits and stir well. Once all covered in chocolate, spread out in the square tin with a spoon. Stick it in the fridge for about 4 hours and ta-dah! Done! Cut into small pieces and serve! It's really rich because of the plain chocolate, and exactly what we needed at 11pm before the bells for a bit of extra energy!

Again - no picture sorry, it was eaten too quickly!



I hope you all had a good night!!