This recipe, if you can really call it that, came from an idea I spotted on Facebook.
Mine didn't quite look quite as regular as the originals!
But fun to make and very tasty.
What's not to love about a frankfurter in puff pastry?!
They are quite easy to do although the markings are a bit fiddly.
With the pastry trimmings I made a few eerie Eccles cakes.
This is also from an idea I also spotted on Facebook, from the wonderful Nancy Birtwhistle.
The recipe is in her excellent book "Green and Easy Kitchen".
You can see the recipe here.
Mine were slightly over baked but tasted good nonetheless.
Ingredients
For the sausage rolls
1 pack ready made, ready rolled puff pastry. Bring to room temperature for about 15 minutes.
Mine was a circle so hence the trimmings.
½ pack of snack frankfurters, so 5 frankfurters
Method
Cut each frankfurter into three pieces. Mine were about 9" long so three 3" pieces.
Unroll the pastry and cut 15 squares about 3" square.
Plonk a square of pastry squarely over the end of a piece of sausage and ease the corners down over it to look like a ghost.
Cut two eyeholes and a mouth in each one. To do this I used a piece of plastic straw. I cut one end flat to pinch out round holes for the eyes. I slashed an angled cut to make holes for the mouth.
Place the spooks on a baking sheet and bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and crisp.
Makes 15 scary sausage rolls.
For the Eccles cakes (my quantities are very approximate)
Pastry trimmings (if you have any)
2 tblsp currants
a splash of elderflower liqueur or cordial
2 tsp caster sugar
boiling water
milk and demerara sugar for sprinkling
Method
Put the currants, sugar and cordial/liqueur into a small bowl and mix together. Cover with boiling water and set aside for the currants to plump up.
Gather all the pastry trimmings together and form into a ball. Roll out as thinly as possible and cut into as many circles as you can using a 3" cutter. Re-roll trimmings to use as much as possible. I managed to get 6 circles from mine.
Put a scant teaspoon of currant mixture onto each circle and gather it up like a sack/purse. Squeeze the edges together and put the gathered side underneath on a worktop or board.
Flatten and roll out thinly so that the currants are visible through the pastry.
Cut holes for the eyes and mouth as for the sausage rolls.
Brush each one with milk and sprinkle demerara sugar over.
Bake at 180° fan for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
Makes as many as you can from your trimmings.
*Nancy says in her book that the Eccles cake is 500 years old. Really? So I looked it up.
There is an interesting piece about it that you can read here.
I am undecided whether it is true or made up! However, just in case the link disappears I am sharing the text here, it's too fascinating to lose it:
The very first recorded instance of the Eccles cake was during the time of The Crusades, the year being 1191 when Richard The Lionheart was besieging the port city of Acre. It is in fact an ancient Turkish dish which was named after one of Saladins generals Beha-ed-Dineccles. Due to its excellent properties of keeping fresh in hot weather, because of its high content of raisins and sultanas which were in plentiful supply it was an ideal food wrapped in pastry for the Muslims who were under siege in Acre. Towards the end of the siege with ammunition running low within Acre, Beha-ed-Dineccles men started throwing these at the Crusaders who noticed when they hit their shields and the ground they burst open to reveal the ingredients. The Crusaders who were running low on food started picking these up and eating them. They called them Eccles cakes after the general Beha-de-Dineccles and the recipe was brought back to England after The Crusades with lots of people through the years claiming it was they who invented the recipe, when in fact it is an old Turkish dish and not connected with the town of Eccles at all.
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