The great British classic the sausage roll always goes down well as a party snack. But they can become predictable so why not mix things up a bit with a Christmassy twist of cranberry and chestnut?
Ingredients
2kg Gloucester Old Spot pork mince
150g breadcrumb
200ml milk
1/2 bunch sage
65g dried cranberries (roughly chopped)
65g cooked chestnuts (roughly chopped)
Salt & pepper for seasoning
Puff pastry (pre-rolled sheets, if not pre-rolled, roll to 5mm thick)
2 eggs (beaten well)
Method
1. Pre-heat oven to 180°c.
2. Measure 120ml of milk.
3. Mix all other ingredients together in a bowl apart from the milk and eggs.
4. Add the 120ml of milk to the bowl and mix well.
5. Fry a small amount of mix to check consistency and seasoning.
6. If the cooked mix is too dense, add a little more milk.
7. Once you have a well-seasoned and textured mix, place mixture into a piping bag. (If you don’t have a piping bag you can use a thick plastic bag with the corner cut off.
8. Place the pastry sheet in front of you with the longest edge closest to you.
9. Leaving a 3cm gap on the edge closest to you, pipe the sausage mix in a line (about 4cm thick) along the puff pastry sheet.
10. Brush the 3cm edge with beaten egg.
11. Fold the 3cm edge over the piped sausage meat and brush the top of the pastry roll with beaten egg.
12. Continue to roll the sausage meat until the pastry has joined the other side and has overlapped by 2-3cm (using the egg brushed edges as ‘glue’).
13. Trim the pastry so that you have a neat roll.
14. Place the roll into the freezer for 1hr to firm up.
15. Once firm, cut the sausage roll into lengths you require (2cm for small snacks or 12cm for something more filling).
16. Brush all of the sausage roll in beaten egg and place onto a lined baking sheet.
17. Bake at 180°c until the pastry is golden and puffed. Cooking time is dependent on the size of the rolls you have cut, but for the smaller 2cm size we recommend 25-35 minutes in the oven.
