Wrapped in Pastry

Wrapped in Pastry by Leigh Drew was released at the most perfect time for me, just before Mothers Day. My fellows were totally aware that I was planning on buying this cookbook and bought it for me as a gift. The man ordered a signed copy and was stunned when he received a personalised signed copy addressed to him with a message to "cook with no fear". The message had us in stitches of laughter as nothing could be further from the truth!

We had a fairly quiet day on Sunday so I jumped straight into making some of Leigh's recipes. I don't have a lot of experience with pastry making although I do love eating it. Ready made puff pastry sheets are usually  my preferred option for when the pastry cravings hit. I started with lemon and passionfruit tarts which used a sweet shortcrust pastry. The pastry was a breeze to put together although rolling it out after the resting period took me a while. The lemony filling required little effort and as I don't own any tart cases, I made mini tarts using a muffin tray to make the cases. They were really lovely with a wonderful tangy flavour from the lemons, just my type of sweet.

I wasn't quite up to the challenge of making another type of pastry that day yet I really wanted to try the chickpea, leek and mushroom pies. My solution was to make individual pot pies, placing the filling into ramekins and popping a puff pastry lid on top. They were a perfect way to get my boys interested in chickpeas which they aren't usually that keen on. I think the flavour of the leeks in the delicious creamy filling won them over.

I had already tried Leigh's sausage rolls a few days after she posted the recipe as a sneak peek. I've been a big fan of the where's the beef sausage roll recipe for a long time and love how simple it is to put the filling together, the only problem is that it's not suitable for people with nut allergies. This was the first vegan sausage roll recipe I was attracted to that didn't contain nuts so I had to try it. Even though they took considerably longer to make, it was worth the effort as they tasted fantastic and entirely different to ones we are so used to.  

Wrapped in Pastry has a great mix of sweet and savoury vegan recipes, with gluten free options for the sweet and regular shortcrust pastry. It only contains 20 recipes so I won't be posting any of the recipes on my blog as I would like to support an Aussie vegan cookbook author, instead I encourage you to order a copy from Aduki.