Savory Butterfly Pastries

I had a pastry dough left in the freezer that needed to be used to free up some space. After coming across this recipe from Z'oeuf peux pas, I decided to give it a try, myself!

This time, I followed the recipe and just used mustard and grated cheese. This method, however, offers a wide variety of options to vary flavors. Not only is it super easy to make, but it looks very beautiful as well.

---

RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 pastry dough
• mustard
• grated cheese

  Procedure

1. Cut dough into a square if it is round by trimming the curved edges.
2. Spread a layer of mustard on the dough.
3. Sprinkle grated cheese on top.
4. Roll two edges towards each other until they meet in the middle. 
5. Put in the freezer for an hour.
6. Slice into 5 mm pastries.
7. Bake at 180°C for 10 to 15 minutes.

Plum Pockets

After having used about half of our stash of plums from my uncle's garden, I had some more to use up. I found some old pastry dough squares laying about in the freezer, so I thawed them and made some pockets.

I brushed the dough with melted butter, filled it with cut and sweetened plums, and stuck the whole thing in the oven.

Unfortunately, the plums leaked A LOT of juice, and I had soggy bottoms... But they were still yummy enough nevertheless~

Vegan Plum Tart

My mom wanted to have a get-together with some people. At first, she asked me to make some pasta, but then, since she was going to make another main dish to bring along, she said I could make dessert. My dad chipped in that we had a box full of organic plums from my uncle's garden that was sitting in the fridge. So plum tart it was.

This being my first time making tart with fruit other than apple, I did a quick Google search. It would seem that plums are often paired with an almond paste thing, which I was not ready to deal with. So I decided to incorporate a couple of ideas from a few sites, and some of my own ideas into this tart.

---

First, I gathered ingredients. Due to time constraints, I used store-bought pastry dough, which contained margarine instead of the customary butter. I used the plums, and a homemade vegan custard, the recipe of which I will provide in another post in a few days.

---

To prepare the plums, I cut each in 4, and sprinkled the whole thing in sugar. I let that sit, mixing occasionally, while I pre-baked the crust and made my custard. Then, I simply drained the plum pieces using a large strainer, and keeping the liquid for later.

---

I spread a thin layer of custard on the crust, and let it cool a bit so it could set. Then I first made concentric circles of plums, skin-side down. I went back around and filled the gaps between the circles with another layer of plum pieces, this time skin-side up.

---

Baked for 30 mins at 200°C. The plums shrank a little in the oven.

After letting it cool, I nuked some of the drained plum juice with some sugar in the microwave to make a glaze, which I went and brushed on the plum pieces using a spoon. 

---

As you can probably tell, I'm playing around with my post format. If you would be so kind, please let me know in the comments what you think about it~