Cornish Strawberry Puffs or Toffee Strawberry Half Moons

Wallowing luxuriously in a pool of delicious organic cream are simple Sweet Cornish Pasties. Cornish Pasties are usually savoury with a meat and potato filling but here they have been transformed into a little bite of heaven filled with fresh strawberries and baked in a caramelly sauce that coats the pasty with crunchy deliciouness only found in your dreams!!!

I have been eyeballing this recipe for many a year. It was published aeons ago in an issue of Australian Vogue Food...a wonderful magazine that I can't find in Maine anymore...boo hoo!!

Pre-heat your oven to 450F...nice and toasty
INGREDIENTS: Makes three PUFFS
PASTRY
2oz/2 tablespoons butter
1 cup/4oz of unbleached white flour
1 egg beaten
a little milk
Fresh Strawberries
SYRUP
2 cups/16 fl oz water
1 cup sugar
1 oz/1 tbsp butter
METHOD:
1. Rub the butter into the flour.
2. Add the beaten egg.
3. Add a little milk, a very little milk in my case, to help form a soft dough.
4. Roll out the dough, it will be sticky so have a lot of extra flour on hand to help unstick, to about 7" circles as above.
5. Place a few slices, about 7, of strawberries as above on one half of the circle...put a dabbling of milk around that semi circle of the dough and fold over the strawberries and gently press to stick
8. For the syrup...boil water, sugar and butter together for about 7 minutes until it begins to thicken.
9. Pour the syrup into cast iron pan or other metal receptacle, and put into your 450F oven until it is bubbling happily.
10. Remove carefully from the oven...boiling syrup is a horror to get on your skin!!!...gently place your three pasties into their caramel bath and return to the oven.
11. In 10 minutes baste the pasties with caramel.
12. In another 10 minutes baste again...and then another 10 minutes you should be done, the caramel should have greatly reduced and be bubbling like Billy-o.

The first batch I did the caramel got to the hard crack stage and was really good, the second batch I took them out too early and they were at the chewy stage but I think that may also have had a lot to do with the extremely humid weather we were having then....so it is a bit finicky knowing when to remove them just don't let the caramel BURN...so long as it is not burnt the pasties will be GREAT!!!

You can eat them hot bathing in a pool of heavy/double cream or wait 'til they are cool and crunchy...they are literally toffee covered pasties with a little delight of strawberries in their centre!!! YUMMMMM!!! I have not seen a recipe like this before where you bake in basically simple syrup but I have to tell you I really like it.
Happy Baking!!!