This one will surely take you back in time. Remember these at family affairs, on the buffet table alongside the cheerios on toothpicks and mini sausage rolls?
Vol-au-vent is a charming and simple use of puff pastry or mille feuille, first appearing in France in the late 19th century. It later became classy finger-food around the world, even reaching the distant shores of New Zealand.
Simple to make, easier to buy, you have plenty of options these days: from making the puff pastry yourself, to purchasing pre-made puff pastry at your supermarket, to buying pre-baked vol-au-vent cases off the shelf ready for filling. You can add hot or cold fillings to the vol-au-vent.
If you buy pre-made puff pastry and have an urge to do the baking yourself follow this simple method:
Ingredients:
- puff pastry
- egg wash for brushing
Method:
Roll out the puff pastry to a thickness of 3 mm using a round pastry cutter. Choose the diameter you want and stamp out 2 circles for each vol-au-vent. Place the first cut out circle of pastry on the baking paper on a tray and brush it lightly with egg wash. Take a smaller pastry cutter and stamp out a hole in the second circle and place on top of the first circle sitting on the tray. Repeat this until you have all that you need. Then, lightly brush each unbaked vol-au-vent.
Place in a 215°C preheated oven, no fan, and bake for 15–20 minutes, until you obtain the colour you desire. Let cool, before filling.
These can be filled with pesto, gravlax or baba ganoush, or you can make a mushroom or batata and cream sauce for hot fillings. Pop in half a cherry tomato with a basil leaf or a slice of smoked chicken with cherry tomato chutney. The vol-au-vent is your vessel, the filling is your imagination.
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