A tray of pumpkin pasties cooling down.

Pumpkin Pasties

This week’s recipe is for pumpkin pasties, a savoury pastry that’s also great for hallowe’en and I even teach you how to do the pastie tap :-)

Ingredients

1/2 a small pumpkin/orange fleshed winter squash or 2 1/2 cups canned mashed pumpkin

2 1/2 cups of chopped mushrooms of your choice

1 cup of chopped bacon or ham

1 tablespoon of minced onion

2 eggs

salt & pepper

10-12 sheets or flaky or puff pastry

This recipe makes 45-50 pasties. Halve or quarter the ingredients to make fewer pasties

Method

Dice your pumpkin and boil or steam it. Mash and measure out 2 1/2 cups.

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees C or 425 degrees F.

To make the filling for your pasties take your pumpkin, and season with salt and pepper.

Add the mushroom, bacon, minced onion.

Beat one of the eggs and mix everything well.

Beat your remaining egg.

Take your pastry and cut it into small circles about 4 or 5 inches across.

Place a spoonful of filling on one side of each circle.

Brush the edges of the circle with the beaten egg and fold over.

Press firmly all the way around with a fork then fold the edges over to seal.

Make a few holes in the top to let the steam out.

Brush the top with beaten egg.

Place on a tray covered in baking paper and bake in the over for 15 – 20 minutes. You can tell if they’re cooked if they sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom.

Place on a wire rack to cool.

Nom yourself silly.

Rainbow foam

Rainbow Foam

Rainbow foam is a dramatic and fun way to serve jelly (jell-o) as a dessert on special occasions.

Whether you’re celebrating a birthday, Christmas or relaxing on a balcony watching the mardi-gras parade go by, it’s a really fun dessert treat.

Ingredients

5 or more 3oz/85gm packets of flavoured gelatine (jell-o) in different colours and flavours

Method

Mix each of your jellies/jellos but use 1/4 cup less than the instructions call for.

Put them in the fridge until they are half set. You can mix all the jellies at once but leave the ones you don’t need straight away out of the fridge so they don’t completely set until you need them).

Take the first colour and whisk until frothy. Pour into a mould orĀ glassĀ and set completely in the fridge.

Add the other colours, one at a time in the same way.