Cranberry puff tarts
What can we do with leftover cranberries and cranberry sauce? Well, quite a lot. I normally keep fresh cranberries in the fridge (up to a month) or freeze them. Home-made cranberry sauce can be kept in a sterilised jar for months (in the fridge). Either way, I try to use them up by Valentine’s day – I make mince pies, crumbles, pie, muffins, cheesecake or fruitcakes with them. These yummy, super easy and vegan cranberry puff tarts can be baked using fresh cranberries or cranberry sauce (in this case just follow the recipe from step 2). They are perfect nibbles with a glass of fizzy during the winter festivities, or serve them as pudding with custard after a nice Sunday lunch or roast dinner. I used gluten-free puff pastry but normal pastry would work too.
Ingredients
Method
- Make the cranberry sauce: put the cranberries, sugar and orange juice in a pan and cook for about 10 minutes, until you get a thick sauce. Add the vanilla. Taste and adjust the sweetness to your liking. Set aside to cool.
- Heat the oven to 190°C. Lightly oil a shallow muffin or mini pie tin.
- Unroll the pastry and cut out 6-7cm wide squares. Place these into the muffin holes, then sprinkle some sugar in each. Add a teaspoonful of the cool cranberry sauce, then sprinkle again with sugar and scatter some almond flakes on top, if used.
- Fold opposite corners of the square together, creating an envelope shape. (They don’t need to be sealed).
- Bake (in the middle of the oven) for 8-12 minutes, until puffed and golden. Be careful the edges burn easily!
- Let them cool on a wire rack, then dust them with icing sugar before serving.