Puff Pastry Ideas

There’s a concept in aesthetics called The Uncanny Valley, where a person’s affinity for human replicas increases up to a point, then demonstrates a sharp drop as the lifeless lifelikeness becomes unsettling.

Eddie Izzard has a similar concept in his Circle of Cool: if you’re not careful you can end up circling too far round and you start looking like a d*ckhead.

I have my own version regarding food. I haven’t got a name for it yet, but I know it when I see it. In Izzard terms, you have average looking food, nice looking food, tempting looking food, aaaaaaand then we tip over into offputting: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.

Banoffi Pie versions are especially guilty. It’s not a complicated dessert, it’s a pastry shell, caramel filling, banana, coffee cream.

“Oh but what if I just make the base out of crushed digestives, or, no, hang on, chocolate digestives!? Mixed with sugar. And butter, of course. And then make it sweetened whipped cream on the top, or maybe replace it altogether with a layer of chocolate ganache, with a little drizzle of chocolate sauce, and a bit of caramel sauce as well, and then sprinkle some…”

So yes. You don’t need to throw a hundred things at a dish to make it taste nice. Sometimes less really is more.

Which brings me on to this week’s post. Puff Pastry. Aaaaand that’s pretty much it. A bit of sugar, but basically it’s just a celebration of the simple pleasure of puff pastry: the crispness, the flakiness, the buttery crunch. You don’t need a lot else. The classic French patisserie item of Palmiers is precisely this, and they have retained their popularity for decades. I’ve decided to look at what you can do with a batch of puff pastry. And by batch I mean a roll of pre-rolled puff pastry from the supermarket.

*gasps and clutches pearls* You know you were going to do it – I thought I’d get in there first.

Make it yourself by all means. Have at it. Fill your boots. Me? I’m too busy and life is too short. Oh,  I’ve made puff pastry myself in the past, and no doubt will make it again in the future, but there are no medals going for three days work – yes, three days, because if you were going to make it from scratch you’d want to make it properly, wouldn’t you? And I can’t be doing with ingredient snobbery. You’ll find no organic/free-range/grass-fed commandments on this blog – that choice is between you, your bank balance and your family. It’s none of my business and I wouldn’t dream of preaching. All the pastries you’re going to see in this post were made with supermarket puff pastry. And not even the all-butter one! And yes they are delicious.

So, ranting aside, with a little imagination, you can celebrate the glorious layering of puff pastry in a number of ways by baking it in shapes that take advantage of the way it transforms in the oven. Each of the following can be enjoyed as is, in the manner of palmiers, but you can also add just a couple of ingredients to dress them up: fresh fruit, whipped cream, icing sugar, ice-cream.

The designs that lie flat (toasts, fans) have slight differences between each side and can be used with the reverse side showing if a level surface is required. The shapes involving twists in the pastry are best displayed as cooked.

• To make Toasts and Bows, click HERE
• To make Fans 1, click HERE
• To make Fans 2, Twists and Butterflies, click HERE
• To make Flowers, click HERE

I’d love to hear how you get on, if you’d like to pop back and leave a comment, but no pressure.

Most importantly – have fun!