Karen Wright: Quick and easy bakes for a delicious day out
From time to time, I am asked to work on the demonstration stage at food festivals. Most festivals are held during the summer months although here in Wakefield we celebrate our special crop, rhubarb, in February.
In France there are festivals to celebrate the most unusual things, a potato festival, a sausage festival, a donkey festival to name just a few!
This coming Sunday I am travelling to Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire to the festival there. It is being held in the grounds of Princess Anne’s estate which does sound quite fancy. I have three slots on the stage and after some consideration I have decided to do a pastry slot, a cake slot and a cooking slot. It is always tricky deciding what to do, it must be something that can be made in a limited time, which is generally about forty minutes although it is possible to manage this with the crafty use of ‘the one I made earlier’.
I like to choose things that are within the reach of most people by using ingredients that are often in the store cupboard or are readily available at the local shop. For the pastry slot I am using shop-bought puff pastry. I am making two things: a big sausage plait and some dainty fruit desserts. This is what I did to make the desserts:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees or 180 fan. Unroll the pastry and slice into eight rectangles by cutting in half vertically and then across four times horizontally. Brush all over with beaten egg and then using a knife, score a margin about a centimeter inside to make a sort of picture frame effect. Then, using any soft fruit (I used a mixture of blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and apricot) fill in the middle section of each pastry leaving the margin exposed. Place on a lined baking tray and bake for about twenty minutes until the margin is puffed up and golden. Remove from the oven to cool and then dust with icing sugar.
These little fruit slices look very elegant, are child's play to make and can use up any fruit that maybe getting to the mushy stage. Why not give them a try, or if you wish you can use the whole sheet of pastry, score a wider margin and fill the centre with fruit and bake in the same way, Bon Appetit!