Disaster Pasties (or wholemeal cheese and onion pasties gone wrong!)

After last night's bake off, me and Miss T decided to get back in the kitchen today and get baking again. I often feel a little home sick when we are away from home, but I hadn't banked on missing my kitchen so much whilst we were away in the Summer. Then last weeks European bakes were way too ambitious for us to even contemplate but what could go wrong with this week's pasties.

Well rather a lot we discovered. I had lots of stoneground wholemeal flour to use up so I wondered what a pasty might be like using wholemeal flour. So that's what we did. Not sure if the wholemeal flour was the culprit or just that I'd never made a pasty before so didn't have a clue what I was doing but they turned out rather disastrous. I don't think I helped matters by trying to make them more healthy by using half rapeseed oil and half butter for the fat content of the pastry.

My 'disaster' pasty

The pastry wouldn't hold together well so I ended up making a squidged together patchwork pasty. I couldn't bear doing anymore like that so the rest became little open tarts instead. 

Here's the recipe anyway if only to serve as a reminder of what NOT to do. Although the filling did turn out quite tasty. 

Ingredients for pastry:

300g stoneground wholemeal flour

75g butter

75g rapeseed oil

Pinch salt

4 tbs ice cold water

Method for pastry:

I made the most of my new kenwood food processor to blitz together the flour, butter, and oil to make breadcrumbs then adding in the water and salt to make a dough. A quick knead to bring it together and then I popped it in the fridge for around 15 minutes.

Ingredients for filling: (sorry I don't have quantities as this was a bit of a random throwing things together experiment)

Boiled potatoes chopped into chunks

Parsley

2 small red onions

Grated emmental cheese 

plus 1 egg for glazing

Method:
1. Make your pastry as per above instructions (or rather don't follow that recipe if you want good pasties - find another recipe that is better!)
2. I used my food processor to finely chop the onion and parsley. Miss T helped take the stalks off the parsley first.

3. Mix together the grated cheese, potatoes, finely chopped red onion and parsley and your filling is ready.
4. This is where things really went pear shaped. Ideally I guess you'd now roll the dough into several circles, fill them and then fold over and crimp the edges. I struggled to roll the pastry without it breaking up.

So we made a single pasty and then moved onto a salvage plan and made the little tart type things. It meant I had a beaten egg left over as we didn't need to glaze the little tarts so I mixed the leftover filling into the egg and we made a kind of yummy cheese and onion potato cake made entirely of the leftovers. This was cooked on the hob for a few minutes each side.

eggy potato cake made with the leftover egg

Back to the disaster pasties...I baked the big pasty and the little tarts in the oven for 45 minutes at 180C but then put the oven up to 200C for the last bit of cooking time to make sure the pastry was cooked.

Miraculously the single pasty we made had somehow held together. It doesn't look particularly appetising but the little tarts actually tasted nice.

The wholemeal pastry might well have been a disaster but I liked the fact that it did taste healthy. I wonder if, with a few tweaks, it might work. Perhaps using all butter in it instead of oil? or perhaps adding an egg? I have no idea about these suggestions - so if anyone does know what might help please do let me know!

Regardless of the disaster, me and Miss T had fun together in the kitchen which is what cooking with kids should be all about.

Linking up with Mummy Mishap's Great Bloggers Bake Off:

And Raisie Bay's Kids in the Kitchen: