I was looking forward to making this sweet pastry treat.  I’ve only ever seen and them in their large form but never made them.  Infact I have near forgotten about them until I saw the label of for them on an empty shelf in Sainsbury’s then on Bake off.  I like making pastry, but it is not something I do that often, especially puff pastry. I like the process of rubbing in the butter into the flour, something about it takes me back to my childhood when I used to help my mum bake. This pastry however, was a little more complicated than the simple shortcrust you make for your mince pies.

There’s not a lot of ingredients for this challenge which potentially makes this less prone to failure, I hope.  The only problem that I can foresee is if the yeast doesn’t rise or the butter doesn’t chill enough between turns.  For these reasons I am going to take extra time, to ensure everything goes smoothly.  First off the yeast…

This pastry starts of a little like bread dough because of the yeast.  Instead of using my hands I used the ol’ Kenwood for this pastry, as there was going to be so much happening in the kitchen this week I wanted to eliminate more mess. Good idea in theory, but it never really plans out that way when you’re trying to a multitude of baking takes at one time! With the flour, yeast salt mixed together in the bowl the warm water and melted butter is added, and it was left to knead/mix for about 8 minutes.  Once the smooth dough was formed I shaped it into a bow and left it to rise in a clean bowl, in what I hoped to be the a good rising spot in the kitchen.

Bish, Bash, Butter!
While the dough was rising it was time to take out some unwanted tension and stress out on the butter.  The recipe calls for a 18cm/7in square of butter, but after a few hits with the rolling pin, there was very little that was square about butter.  Using a ruler as scraper and leveller I eventually managed to make a square, to roughly the right measurements before it was too soft. Then it was back in the fridge until the pastry was ready.

Teacher knows best?
After an hour or so the dough had risen to almost double its size, which was great. I finally seems like I have found a spot in the kitchen that rising dough likes to sit!

In the recipe on the BBC site the dough needs to be emptied and rolled out into a 20cm/8in square, so unlike bread you don’t need to knock out the air. The next step was to diagonally place the butter square on top of the dough square and fold in the corners creating an envelope.

I am going to have to disagree with the Hollywood on this one. With these measurements, there was no folding of corners happening, there was simply not enough dough. So I swiftly removed the butter, stuck it back in the fridge, while I rolled out the dough a little more. Now that it was rolled out to an adequate size the butter could be placed as before and wrapped nicely it the dough.

Roll & Fold
The next step was to roll it into a rectangle while keeping the envelope sealed, tricky but not as hard as I thought it might be. The rest of the process was pretty simple and the same as rough puff/regular puff pastry.  Folding the top third of the pastry over the middle and the bottom third over the top of the first third. After all the folding it done the pastry is then wrapped in clingfilm and placed in the fridge to rest for at least 30 min, until the butter has had time to harden up again.

This rolling and folding process has to happen 3 times in total, remembering to turn the pastry before rolling it. It’s a really nice pastry to work with, with each rest in the oven it proves a little more making it airy, fluffy and light.

Things get fast!
The final fold on the pastry is the same as before but this time with the addition of sugar.  I wasn’t really sure as to the amount needed, but seeing I needed to sprinkle sugar over pastries the whole thing another 2 times I gauged it by eye.  I put enough onto the layer so that I could still fold it comfortably but not too much that it all came out when folding it. With the final fold made, the more precise rolling out needed be done.

Pinchess & Perks
This whole process had to be done pretty quickly so that the butter didn’t melt to much before the pastries are formed and put snuggly into the pre-greased muffin tin. The sugar folded pastry needed to turned once more, rolled out to 40×30 cm and then cut into 12 equal squares.  It all very well to say squares but the corners can be a little tricky so I tidied up some of the edges with the use of the pizza cutter!

Once all the squares were cut the corners need to be pulled up to the centre with the diagonal corner. Then pinch them gently together so that they end up forming a shape similar to a four leaf clover.  This then needs to be placed into the case. When I had 12, (almost) equally sized parcels sitting in the muffin, they were sprinkled with sugar again and left to prove again for 30mins, while the oven heated up. Those little off cuts ended up being my chef’s perks. While the pastry parcels were on the final rise, I cooked them in the warming oven…yumm!

When the 30 minutes were up, it was time for a final sprinkle of sugar and into the oven for 30-40 minutes.  I kept a close eye on these pretties while they were in the oven and I didn’t want a singe-fest happening again like the mini pear pies.  After they had been in the oven for about 25 minutes I covered them with a sheet of tin foils and left them in for another 8 minutes.

Its worth mentioning that the bottoms of some of the pastries were more dome shaped than others. I think this is because I didn’t push the pastry down into the mould enough, I just placed it in gently. This didn’t detract from the flavour, just the presentation, but I can live with that.

Decadence, pastry-fied!
There is no other way to describe these pastries than sublime.  They were crispy light and fluffy,  little like croissants but a little more decadent. It would be easy to make a few additions to the flavours especially adding a little spice to the sugar. I reckon cinnamon would work really well, especially if I can figure out how to incorporate some apples without making the pastry soggy. Improvements or not, I have a feeling I will definitely be making these again!