Showing posts with label #SundaySupper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #SundaySupper. Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Pork Prawn Wonton Soup


Well-seasoned pork and prawn parcels are boiled in rich pork broth for a deliciously warming wonton soup, a favorite of locals and visitors alike in Singapore. The added green vegetables make this a full meal.

I’ve been traveling to Singapore rather regularly since 1981 when my father moved to Jakarta and it was a convenient stopover on a very long trip from the United States. (And if you've read my About me, you know I've had my own homes there as well.) One of my favorite childhood friends lived there with her parents and, if they were in residence when I was coming through, I was welcomed into their home like a second daughter. During our teenage years, her mother was at a loss to connect with her obstreperous daughter so I think my visits came as a relief, finally, a young person who would actually converse with her without raised voices and animosity. I’m pleased to say that my friend came around when she gave birth to her first daughter and her mother was once again raised to oracle status - Woman Who Knows All. Singapore was safe, even back then, and we were allowed to roam free, taking taxis and buses into all the seedy corners of the little city-state, eating at scruffy outdoor stalls, enjoying the spectacle on Bugis Street and drinking chilled Tiger beer.

One of my favorite breakfasts – yes, breakfasts, as folks in Southeast Asia tend to eat noodle soups for their morning meal as well as lunch or dinner – was wonton soup. The tender wonton skins are filled with a mixture of pork and prawns (or sometimes just pork) with seasonings and boiled in a rich pork stock, then topped with shredded vegetables. Sprinkle in some chili peppers and another dash of soy sauce and you’ve got yourself a filling bowl of savory goodness. To make the dish even more filling, often extra fresh egg noodles are added in addition to the wontons. This is a dish that turns up on our family table fairly often. Try it and you’ll see why.

This week, my Sunday Supper family are taking a virtual Asian foodie holiday and sharing Asian dishes.  This great event is hosted by Amy of kimchi MOM, whose photos cause me to drool every time I read her blog. Make sure you scroll down past my recipe to see all the great Asian-inspired dishes we have for you today.

Ingredients
For the wontons:
12 1/2 oz or 355g ground or minced pork (not too lean)
4 3/4 oz or 135g, peeled and clean, prawns or shrimp 
1 medium bunch green onions (Some will go in the soup.)
Generous 2 in or 5 cm piece fresh ginger (Some will go in the soup.)
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1 egg white
1 teaspoon salt
1 red chili pepper (optional)
50 fresh wonton skins (These are sold in most Asian markets. If you can’t find them fresh in the refrigerated section, ask for help. If turnover isn’t great, they are often put in the freezer to extend their shelf life. Just thaw in the package and use as fresh.)

For the soup:
2 1/2 quarts or 2.4 liters pork broth or stock
Fresh ginger
Green onions
1 red chili pepper (optional)
Assorted green vegetables, thinly sliced or shredded – cabbage, lettuce, asparagus, snow peas, etc.
Soy sauce to taste

Method
Peel your ginger and slice half into thin sticks for the soup and mince the other half finely for the wonton filling. Chop your red chili peppers, if using, and divide the pile in three. Two bigger ones for the pork and broth, a little one for garnish. Cut half of the green onions into 1 inch or 2cm pieces for the soup and chop the rest finely for the wonton filling and set a couple of teaspoons aside for garnish.




Finely shred or thinly slice your extra vegetables for serving with the soup.



Put the stock on the stove and simmer slowly with the sticks of ginger, the long pieces of green onion and one of the bigger piles of chopped red chili pepper, if using.

Use a sharp knife to finely mince your peeled and cleaned prawns or shrimp. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine your ground pork and minced prawns with the minced green onions, ginger and minced red pepper, if using, along with the Chinese wine, sesame oil, sugar, egg white and salt.

Mix very thoroughly to combine.



Line a clean plate with cling film and set aside.

Take six wonton skins out of the pack at a time, keeping the rest covered with a damp cloth to keep them from drying out. Lay them out on a clean work surface and brush each a pastry brush dipped in cold water.

Add a scant teaspoon of the meat mixture and start folding the wonton skins in, first from the bottom corner to the top, then the sides and finally fold the top down, to create a little package.



Place your wontons on the lined plate and repeat the process until all the pork/prawn mixture is finished or you run out of wonton skins. If you need a second layer on your plate, cover the first with cling film.


(If you have extra wonton skins, you can cut them into pieces and boil with the wontons and serve. If you have a little extra filling mixture, it can be added to the simmering broth and whisked to break it up into little flavorful bits.)

If you are serving everyone at the same time and won’t have any leftovers, you can now put all the wontons in your broth and turn the heat up to a gentle boil. Add the vegetables just before serving so that they are just cooked but still crunchy.

If you know that you will have leftovers, you don’t want to add the wontons to the broth because they will continued to suck up your broth as they sit overnight in the refrigerator, getting mushy in the process. So, use a metal strainer submerged in the broth to cook several at a time.

Add a few shredded vegetables when the wontons are cooked through and you are almost ready to serve up that bowl. Cook them for just a couple of minutes.



Pour the contents of the strainer into a bowl and top with more broth. Garnish the soup with some green onions, sticks of ginger and red chili peppers. Serve with soy sauce, allowing each person to add a drizzle to suit his or her taste.



Enjoy!



Here's the whole round up of Sunday Supper's Asian recipes!

Small Bites
Soupy Goodness
Big Plates
On the Lighter Side
Cheers!
Oodles of Noodles


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Sunday, August 16, 2015

Mother’s Ruin (Gin) Punch


Originally created by master bartender Philip Ward, Mother’s Ruin Punch is a refreshingly light tasting punch made from gin, grapefruit and lemon juice, vermouth and sparkling wine. My version serves one.

Lately, I’ve been rediscovering the deliciousness of grapefruit juice in cocktails. My libation of choice when I was in Texas this summer was Deep Eddy’s Ruby Red Vodka with a capful of Campari, topped up with club soda. While in the south of France visiting friends in July, their “house” cocktail was a concoction of grapefruit cordial with sparkling rosé wine, served over ice. And now, Mother’s Ruin Punch. It’s supposed to be mixed up in greater quantities and served, as the name implies, as punch from a punch bowl but is easily adapted to serve one. For the original recipe, check out this link on Food and Wine.

This week the Sunday Supper theme is Back to School and everyone is bringing you recipes for great lunch box fare or quick dishes that are perfect for a busy school night. I couldn’t resist going in another direction to bring you a delightful cocktail that is as celebratory as it is refreshingly delicious. For many parents, it’s been a long hot summer, full of keeping children busy and barbecues and campouts and sleepovers and late night snacks and summer book assignments and ball games and lazy mornings. But you made it through! Tuck the children into bed and treat yourself to a special cocktail.

Do you have any special rituals for the first day of school? My baby graduated from university in May so this is the first year since 1995 that I won’t be sending anyone off to school. It’s bittersweet, friends, bittersweet.

Ingredients for one cocktail
Several cubes ice
1 tablespoon simple syrup (I used simple syrup made from demerara sugar.)
1 1/2 oz or 45ml gin
1 1/2 oz or 45ml fresh grapefruit juice, plus thinly sliced grapefruit, for garnish
3/4 oz or 22.5ml fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz or 22.5ml sweet vermouth
About 1/2 cup or 120ml chilled sparkling wine or Champagne

Method
Cut a couple of thin slices off of your grapefruit for garnish and then juice the rest of the fruit.

Tuck one of the grapefruit slices in a tall glass then add in several cubes of ice.

Pour in the simple syrup, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, vermouth and gin. Give it a good stir, adding another cube or two of ice and a second grapefruit slice.



Top up with sparkling wine.


Enjoy!

Many thanks to our hosts this week, DB from Crazy Foodie Stunts and Caroline from Caroline’s Cooking. We hope you find lots of recipes that make Back to School more enjoyable and fun!

Getting Started On School Days
Ideas for the Lunchbox
After School Snacks and Beverages
School Night Suppers
Sweets to End the Day




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Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cherry Lemon Jam

Cherry lemon jam is made with juicy summer cherries and fresh lemon, cooked down with lemon zest and sugar. It's the perfect jammy marriage of sweet and sharp, as delicious on a piece of buttered toast as spooned over cold vanilla ice cream or stirred into a pot of natural yogurt.

Food Lust People Love: Cherry lemon jam is made with juicy summer cherries and fresh lemon, cooked down with lemon zest and sugar. It's the perfect jammy marriage of sweet and sharp, as delicious on a piece of buttered toast as spooned over cold vanilla ice cream or stirred into a pot of natural yogurt.


One of my pet peeves is waste. That’s not to say that I don’t throw out my share of things in the refrigerator that somehow manage to work their way to the back, get forgotten, and grow legs on occasion, but it makes me sad when that happens. Especially when it’s something I really love to eat.

Here in Dubai, where temperatures rarely fall below an average low winter temperature of 57°F or 14°C, growing cherries, which require a chill time of 700-800 hours in order to flower and produce fruit, is just not an option. So all of the cherries that appear in our supermarkets are flown in at great expense from countries that enjoy near or freezing temperatures in winter.

As you might guess, those costs are passed on to consumers and cherries are crazy expensive to buy here. So one of my favorite summer rituals is buying and eating my not inconsiderable weight in cherries when I am in the States on holiday.

As I packed up to head back to Dubai this summer – and if you follow me on Instagram you know I mean that quite literally – I still had a big bowl of cherries on the kitchen counter. There was just no way I could leave those behind! So I got out the cherry pitter and went to work. Jamming is so much more satisfying than packing suitcases!

Food Lust People Love: Cherry lemon jam is made with juicy summer cherries and fresh lemon, cooked down with lemon zest and sugar. It's the perfect jammy marriage of sweet and sharp, as delicious on a piece of buttered toast as spooned over cold vanilla ice cream or stirred into a pot of natural yogurt.

Jam making is really easy, with the right tools.
A digital scale and a thermometer are going to simplify the process. One of the secrets to easy fruit jam, that is jam that sets, is to add something acidic, like lemons which have natural pectin, and to cook the fruit with an appropriate amount of sugar until it reaches a temperature of 220°F or 105°C.

Since the amount of sugar depends on the weight of your cooked fruit, I’d like to suggest you buy a digital kitchen scale. < Amazon affiliate link to the one I use, but, honestly, any scale which can toggle between metric and imperial measures will do, giving you the freedom to use recipes from all over the world. (You can measure by volume but weighing is a lot less messy.)

If you don’t have one, may I suggest you get a thermometer as well? < Once again, that's an affiliate link to mine - costs about $14 and I use it ALL THE TIME. A thermometer takes the stress and worry of “will it set?” completely out of the jam making equation. Reaching the proper temperature hasn't failed me yet.

Ingredients
A bunch of cherries (mine weighed 2 lbs 5 oz or 1050g unpitted, with stems, 2 lbs 1 1/2 oz or 950g without pits and stems)
2 small lemons (about one per pound or half kilo of other fruit)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon salt
Sugar - an amount equivalent to 3/4 the weight of your cooked cherries and lemons and their juice – this batch was 2 lbs 2 1/2 oz or 978g – so I used 3 1/2 cups or 734g sugar

Method
Sterilize your jars and lids and put them at the ready, metal teaspoon in each, canning funnel perched in one, before you begin. Sterilize your ladle as well. The amounts given above made two pint jars and one half pint.



Pit your cherries and put them in a large non-reactive pot. (If you have a scale, go ahead and weigh the empty pot first and make a note of the weight for later.) Grate in the zest of your two lemons.

Cut the peels and pith (the white stuff) off of your lemons with a sharp knife. Remove all the seeds and chop the flesh into small chunks.

Scrape the chopped lemons and any juice on the cutting board, into the cherry pot.





Add the extra two tablespoons of lemon juice into the pot.

Cook the pitted cherries and lemons, covered, over a medium flame for about 15 or 20 minutes, until they have released some juice and the cherries have softened.

Use a potato masher to mash them lightly, leaving some cherries whole.

Measure your cooked fruit, juices and all, by volume or weight and then do a little math. Add 3/4 that amount of sugar, along with the salt.

My calculation looked like this:
Pot weighs 1300g empty.
With cooked cherries and lemon, it weighs 2278g.  2278-1300 = 978g.
Weight of cooked fruit and juice = 978g x .75 = 734g or about 3 1/2 cups sugar to add

Cook the fruit, sugar and salt over a medium to high heat, uncovered, till the mixture starts to thicken. Stir frequently and set your thermometer in the pot. Cook quickly until the temperature reaches setting point for jam: 220°F or 105°C.



Quickly ladle the hot, sweet jam into your prepared jars and screw the lids on as tightly as you can manage.

Turn the jars upside down and leave to cool. The scalding cooked fruit further sterilizes the jars and as the jam cools, a suction forms and the lids are firmly sealed. The little circles on the lids should pop in and keep the jam safe for consumption for many months. If any of the seals don’t create a sufficient vacuum and the circles don’t pop in, store those jars in the refrigerator.



Enjoy!

Food Lust People Love: Cherry lemon jam is made with juicy summer cherries and fresh lemon, cooked down with lemon zest and sugar. It's the perfect jammy marriage of sweet and sharp, as delicious on a piece of buttered toast as spooned over cold vanilla ice cream or stirred into a pot of natural yogurt.


This week I am delighted to be hosting Sunday Supper with my friend and fellow blogger, Heather from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks. It’s our goal to encourage everyone to Save Summer Harvest with a number of methods, and in keeping with the mission of Sunday Supper, to enjoy the bounty of summer around your family table for months to come.

Canning
Dehydrating
Fermentation
Freezing
Infusing
Pickling
Preserving in oil or butter

Food Lust People Love: Cherry lemon jam is made with juicy summer cherries and fresh lemon, cooked down with lemon zest and sugar. It's the perfect jammy marriage of sweet and sharp, as delicious on a piece of buttered toast as spooned over cold vanilla ice cream or stirred into a pot of natural yogurt.


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Posted by at 3:28:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, August 6, 2015

Saving Summer Harvest

Farmer’s markets, overproducing gardens, neighbors who surreptitiously leave zucchini on your front porch, herb beds out of control! If you are so blessed, how do you deal with a bounteous summer harvest? Come this Sunday, #SundaySupper is here to help!

On Sunday I am cohosting Sunday Supper with my friend and fellow blogger, Heather from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks because the theme is one we are rather fond of, Saving Summer Harvest. If you’ve been reading along for at least a year, you might recall that I cohosted the same event last summer. And if you've been around even longer, you'll remember that Heather hosted it in 2013 when I shared my spicy sweet tomato chutney recipe (photo above) and she made Mixed Berry Rhubarb Jam! If you are scared of preserving your own produce, or think it is just too hard, this is the Sunday Supper for you!

Heather's Spring Conserve with strawberries, rhubarb, pineapple, raisins, and nuts from 2014


While I was growing up, my grandmothers and all of their contemporaries canned and froze and made preserves all summer long, usually fruit or vegetables from their own gardens. I’ll be honest, it looked like a lot of hard work (because it was!) so I avoided it for many years, until it occurred to me that I could do small batches, what my friend Kelli of Kelli’s Kitchen calls nano-canning. Well, I didn’t have a name for it back then, but two or three or five jars instead of 20 seemed do-able. Another turning point for me was learning how to vacuum seal my jars without actually using the hot water bath. I know this technique has its naysayers but for anything with a high sugar content and/or some acid like lemon juice or vinegar, it works just fine. Especially since, if you are making it on a small scale, it will get eaten relatively quickly.

How do you Save Summer Harvest?
There are myriad ways of preserving produce: salting (think capers and anchovies), smoking (red peppers ground into paprika), infusing (chili oils or fruit vinegars) not to mention canning (which could include sugar, salt and vinegar, all of which are great preservatives), dehydrating (for herbs and fruit), freezing (for most anything!) and the ever popular pickling, whether by fermentation or the addition of an acidic liquid like lemon juice or vinegar. And let’s not forget straight fermentation without which we would have no blue cheese or Camembert, wine or beer!  Last but not least, some ingredients can be preserved by enclosing or covering them in fat, for instance, potted shrimp, duck confit, compound butters, pestos and roasted peppers.

And while I’m sure that list seems long, I’ve left a few out, some which are ancient, like burying ingredients, for instance century eggs which are enclosed in mud which causes them to ferment rather than spoil, or more modern techniques like vacuum packing.

Waste not, want not
The one goal all these methods have in common is to make the best use of what we can grow or buy when it’s in season and make it edible into the next, so we don’t have to waste anything. And that’s what we are going to help you do on Sunday.

Please check back then when the links to these great Saving Summer Harvest recipes will go live and I’ll be sharing my own cherry lemon jam.

Canning
Dehydrating
Fermentation
Freezing
Infusing
Pickling
Preserving in oil or butter

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Posted by at 3:14:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Queijadas de Sintra #IsabelsBirthdayBash

Queijadas de Sintra are sweet cheese tarts with a hint of cinnamon, a traditional dessert from a town high in the hills outside of Lisbon. In Portugal they are made with fresh cheese or queijo fresco. This version is made with ricotta. 

[Shhhhh! Get behind the sofa! I can't stop giggling!!! Is she here yet?!! Any minute now...]

 Surprise, Isabel! Happy Birthday! 

Today I’m sharing this sweet treat from Portugal to celebrate the birthday of someone very special, my friend, Isabel, otherwise known as Family Foodie, founder of the Sunday Supper Movement. Back in December of 2012, when Isabel sent me a private message on Twitter inviting me to join Sunday Supper, I emailed her right away to accept. I had heard such great things about the supportive community and was delighted to become a part of it. Her mission, the goal of Sunday Supper, is to encourage families, one home at a time, to gather again around the family table for mealtime. Under her passionate leadership and with a great team of willing workers, the movement is spreading around the world.

One thing for certain is that our online Sunday Supper family also comes together every week, each bringing a dish or drink to share. Isabel's recipes are often favorites from her early childhood in Portugal or recreated memories from summers spent there as she grew up, as well as family traditions learned from her mother. In fact, if you search her blog for the word Portuguese, 12 pages of recipes show up and, boy, does she love her chorizo! I couldn't resist trying to create a Portuguese dessert in her honor.

Today many of her Sunday Supper family members are gathering again on this rare Tuesday, dishes in hand to wish Isabel a very happy birthday, so make sure to scroll down to the bottom to see the whole list of deliciousness we are bringing to the surprise party.

Many thanks to Terri from Love and Confections for organizing this great celebration!

Ingredients
For the pastry crust: (Best made one day ahead, if possible.)
1 cup or 125g flour
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup or 60ml cold water – or as needed. I added about one teaspoon more.
Good pinch salt

For the filling:
1 cup or 250g ricotta
2 egg yolks (preferably from large eggs)
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 level tablespoons plain flour
Good pinch salt

Method
Cut your butter into the flour with the pinch of salt, until you have sandy crumbles.

Add in the cold water and mix it in with a fork until it just starts hanging together. Mine still had quite a bit of dry flour so I added one teaspoon of water more and then it was perfect.

Knead the dough for a couple of minutes and then wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for a minimum of several hours or preferably overnight.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and grease six holes in your non-stick muffin pan. I also cut six small circles of parchment to cover the bottom, as more insurance that the tarts will release.



Roll your dough out very thinly, on a sheet of cling film, covered with another sheet of cling film. This helps make sure it won’t stick to your work surface.

For a normal sized muffin pan, your circles of dough needs to be about 4 3/4 in or 12cm across. Make a template or find something round in your kitchen that’s about that size. As you can see, I used the top of a plastic container.

Cut around the template and remove the dough in between the circles.



Ease each circle into a greased muffin pan hole. Pop the pan in the refrigerator while you get on with the filling.



To make sure there are no lumps whatsoever, push the ricotta through a metal sieve.

Add in the sugar, the two egg yolks, the cinnamon, the flour and the good pinch of salt.



Whisk well to combine. Spoon the filling into the pastry cases.



Bake in your preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the tarts are just cooked, perhaps still just a little jiggly. They’ll firm up further when they start to cool.



Remove them from the muffin pan and cool on a wire rack.



Enjoy!




Parabéns, Isabel! Desejo-te tudo de melhor hoje e todos os dias! Obrigada por criar um grupo que se tornou como uma segunda família para mim. Nós te amamos!

Join us in celebrating Isabel's Birthday with all the delicious food and drinks her #SundaySupper family prepared!

Birthday Drinks
Birthday Appetizers
Birthday Main Courses
Birthday Desserts

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Sunday, July 19, 2015

Chaussons aux Pommes


Crisp apples, with lemon or lime juice and zest and just a bit of sugar, cook down into the best chunky applesauce, the perfect filling for puff pastry chaussons or slippers. 

Le Marché du Petit Robinson  – the twice-weekly market - was but a block and a half away from our house just south of Paris in the ville of L'Haÿ-les-Roses. Every Wednesday and Saturday morning, starting just before 8 a.m., the neighbors would start to filter past, the elderly pulling their two-wheeled shopping carts, the younger set pushing their children in strollers, all on their way to the market. Some days the girls and I would join them, even if we didn’t really need anything because 1. It was an outing and moms with toddlers can always use an outing, especially when the weather is grey and 2. There were always tasty items to snack on and fresh produce to peruse once we got there.

We drooled over shiny fruit and the soft cheeses, often helping ourselves to the little chunks of artisan saucisson or spicy olives that were proffered for tasting but our favorite stall was always the baked goods. There were hefty seeded loaves as big as your head and almost as heavy; rustic baguettes with their crunchy exteriors and chewy interiors full of holes and flavor; pain aux raisins, spirals of buttery pastry filled with raisins and brushed to a high gloss with a sticky sweet glaze and last but never least, little puff pastry “slippers” which had been filled with chunky applesauce and baked till fluffy and golden. If you arrived early enough some were still warm!

When I read that the theme for this week’s Sunday Supper was Farmstand Foods, I couldn’t resist trying to recreate the little chaussons or slippers. Just the aroma of them baking in the oven brought me back! Isn’t it funny how smells can evoke such strong memories, perhaps even more than photos will do?

Two years ago for a similar Sunday Supper theme, we celebrated farmer's markets and I posted a number photos from a French market for those who wanted to drool a little. This seems like a good time to share them again, along with my cherry clafoutis.

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, I’ll be headed back to France for a visit and you can be certain that I’ll be browsing as many markets as I can find along my road trip route from Nantes to Chinon and down to Bordeaux!

Follow along with me on Instagram! 

My recipe was adapted from this one on Meilleur du Chef.

Ingredients
For about 1 1/2 cups or 395g applesauce or compote, as it is called in French:
1 lb 4 oz or 560 g apples – three large apples
Zest plus 2 tablespoons juice from fresh lemon or lime
1 rounded tablespoon or 15g butter
1/4 cup or 50g sugar (plus more to taste)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

You may not use it all of the applesauce in the chaussons, but it is also delicious eaten straight from the bowl with a spoon.

For the chausson crusts:
11 1/3 oz or 320g readymade puff pastry dough

To brush on before baking:
2 tablespoons milk

Method
Zest and juice your lemon or lime and put the zest and juice in a bowl that will be large enough to hold your apples, once peeled and chopped.

Peel, core and chop your apples into chunks. Add them to the juice bowl, as each one is done and stir well. This will stop the apples from turning brown.



Pour the apples into a small pot that has a lid and add in the sugar, butter, vanilla and salt. Stir well.

Cook over a medium flame, covered for the first 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. There is no need to add liquid, as the apples will release their juice.



After the apples start to soften, you can remove the lid and lower the flame. Let the apples cook until the liquid is just about gone and you have a thick, chunky applesauce. You can mash gently with a fork but make sure to leave some chunks.

Allow to cool and taste to see if you need a little more sugar. I didn’t add any but I like things tart.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with baking parchment or a silicone mat.

Meanwhile, line your clean work surface with cling film and make a template out of paper. I used a very large coffee mug and traced the two halves of the base about an inch and a half or three centimeters apart, then connected the halves to create an elongated shape that is not quite oval, but rather a circle that’s been stretched in the middle. (Actual dimensions: 10 x 14cm or 4 x 5.5 in) You can make a simple circle, instead of the traditional “slipper” shape, but you won’t have as much room for filling.

Roll out your puff pastry on the cling film big enough to accommodate at least six of your template.

Lay the template on the puff pastry and cut around it with a sharp knife, taking care not to cut all the way through the cling film.



Remove the excess puff pastry from around the cut pieces. (You can bake these bits after the chaussons, rolled in a little cinnamon sugar for a sweet snack.)

Brush the puff pastry that remains with a little water around the edges and add a healthy spoon of applesauce in the middle of each.



Fold one side over and gently try to remove all of the air inside as you seal the edges together.



Transfer the chaussons to your prepared baking sheet. If they are stuck down, lift the cling film from under them to help them release.

If you have a pastry cutter, you can make a decorative edge but this is completely optional.



Lightly score the tops of the chaussons with a sharp knife, making sure not to cut all the way through. I use my negi cutter for this job but any very sharp knife or a lame will do.

Brush the tops with a little milk and bake in your preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until golden and puffy. They are super puffy when they first come out.



Then they deflate a little.



Allow the chaussons to cool somewhat before biting into one. That applesauce is going to be hot!



Enjoy!

Many thanks to our Sunday Supper host for the Farmstand Food event, Colleen of FoodieTots, ably assisted by veteran host, DB of Crazy Foodie Stunts.

Appetizers, Sides and Salads
Entreés
Desserts




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