Hello!
For people who know DH, he’s generally very calm and collected about things. And when I say things, I also mean in his reaction to food. Its really rare that I’ve seen him enthusiastically appreciate food and ask for more. The most superlative acknowledgement coming from him so far has been ‘its good’; meaning that its really good. Initially it was frustrating, but now I just understand that its his way of appreciating things – and not everybody oohs and ahhs and goes ‘woowww’ like me while eating something nice 😛
So imagine my surprise when he said ‘delicious’ for this one and asked for more ! He had 3 pies in one shot. This recipe is really easy, mainly because I’m cheating with store-bought frozen pastry sheets. That worked out beautifully for me in terms of convenience, because I made the filling of cranberry-blackberry-orange jam from scratch. So its definitely doable on a weekend, or when you have some time on your hands.
When you bite into this, the flaky, buttery puffed pastry layers give a beautiful crispy exterior, which give way with a crunch to the soft pillowy inside, and then you have a burst of sweet-tart berries, sending you to taste heaven!!! No kidding, this is really yummy.
Read on for the recipe!
Ingredients
- Puffed Pastry sheets – 1 packet
- Any filling of your choice (you can even use store-bought fruit preserve).
- Oil for frying
See recipe for the Mixed Berry-Orange Jam that I made as a part of my Pannacotta recipe.
Instructions:
- Thaw the puff pastry sheets for atleast 20 mins. The packet instructions said 10 mins, but after 10 minutes the sheets were still stuck together and un-pliable. So I had to wait another 10 for them to thaw fully so that the dough was pliable.
- After the pastry sheets become soft, separate them into individual sheets, how many ever you can.
- Take one individual sheet, use some atta flour, and roll it out like a chapati. (Remember the sheets are already rolled out, so no need to go crazy here!)It does not need to be very thick, medium thickness is fine. I haven’t tried it, but I assume if you make it too thin, you may not get enough layers in your final pie.
- Use a round bowl to cut out a neat circle from the dough. You can bunch up the remaining pastry sheets, roll it out and repeat the above steps for more pies. This way, the puff pastry sheets are not wasted.
- Spoon around 1-1.5 tsp of the jam filling into the circle.
- Now fold into a semicircle, as pictured above.
- Seal the edges carefully by pressing down with a fork, or pinching the edges with your hands. Make sure it is well sealed so that the jam filling does not escape into the hot oil and splutter while frying.
- Now, heat oil in frying pan on medium heat, and get it to get to a good temperature. This took me about 8-10 minutes. I don’t have a cooking thermometer, so I just dropped a small bit of pastry dough into the oil – if it comes up immediately and doesn’t brown too quickly, your oil is just right. If oil is too hot, outside will brown , and inside will remain uncooked and doughy. We do not want that. Neither do we want the oil not sizzling enough.
- Fry your fruit pies – 2 or 3 at time, depending on your frying pan. Fry on a medium flame, allow it 1-1.5 minutes and keep flipping until golden brown. You can see the pastry layers puff up 🙂
- Remove to a colander, and use food-grade tissues to blot out excess oil.
- At this stage, allow these to cool for 10 mins or so.
- Meanwhile, get about 1/2 cup of sugar, and blitz it with some vanilla essence in the mixer, until it resembles a fine powder.
- Now, remove this to another cup, and slowly add milk with a tablespoon and stir well, to form an icing consistency. Not too thick, but not too runny. Should coat the back of your spoon.
- Drizzle this over the warm pies and let it cool for another 10 minutes.
Dig in and enjoy!!!
a burst of flavor 