Baby bear claw sausage rolls your way

Sausage and indeed any pig-based food products go down very well with my children and their friends. Be it pigs in blankets, sticky honey and mustard chipolatas, or the great sausage roll, they love them all. These are especially well received as they involve fashioning pork and buttery puff pastry into baby bear claws.

INGREDIENTS

plain flour, for dusting

500g puff pastry, chilled

8 good-quality chipolatas

pinch salt

1 egg

EXTRA FILLING IDEAS:

wholegrain mustard

sweet chilli sauce

onions, caramelised

cheese, grated

dried cranberries

dried apricots, finely chopped

apple, grated

bacon, cooked and chopped

chives, finely chopped

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 220°C and line 2 baking trays with non-stick greaseproof paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll the pastry out to about the thickness of a pound coin and to a 45 x 20 cm rectangle. Cut the pastry in half lengthways so that you have two thin strips measuring 45 x 10 cm. Take 4 sausages, cut a hole in the end of the casings and push the meat out directly onto the centre of one of the pastry strips. Continue until the whole strip of pastry has a line of sausage down the middle, leaving a 2cm gap from each edge. Repeat for the other strip of pastry with the remaining chipolatas.

Add whatever extra fillings you think your crowd will like. Grated apple goes down very well with younger ones and wholegrain mustard and bacon with the older. Add the salt to the egg and beat well. Paint the egg wash down one long edge of each piece of pastry and fold the opposite long edge over to meet it, pressing down to seal. Cut the pastry into 5 cm pieces, making 8 sausage rolls from each strip. Place the rolls on the baking trays, then use scissors to snip four 1 cm-deep cuts into the sealed pastry edges to make the ‘claws’ on each one. Egg wash over all of the rolls completely. When all the rolls are ready, bake for 20 minutes until well risen, golden and cooked through. Serve warm or cold to baby bears.

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