Cheese and tomato finger puffs

Serves:

Ingredients

• 2 sheets puff pastry, thawed
• 1 tbspn tomato passta
• 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
• 1 egg, beaten lightly

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

Spread the tomato across one sheet of the puff pastry, making sure to cover all the edges.

Sprinkle the cheese across the tomato-covered sheet of pastry. Gently lie the second sheet of pastry on top of the cheesey pastry.

Using a sharp knife, gently cut the pastry in half and then cut each half into twelve strips.

Lie the strips on a baking sheet, being sure to give each enough room to puff up in the oven.

Brush the pastry strips with the beaten egg and sprinkle a little more cheese across the tops and then place into the hot oven to bake for approx. 15 mins or until the pastry becomes golden and puffed up.

Remove from the oven and serve hot or cold.

Notes

• While these puffs are great cold – and make a nice lunch box filler – they are even better hot! I find that at least half of every batch I make gets eaten while they cool.
• Make sure that these pastries are completely cold before you store them or they will become extremely soggy.
• I use tomato passata because it is basically pureed cooked tomatoes, but you could use tomato paste or tomato sauce – you will just get a much stronger and saltier tomato flavour with these. Which may not be a bad thing!
• Once you conquer this basic model of finger puffs, you could start adding all sorts of ingredients into the mix. I love pesto puffs!
• This recipe was created by Ella Walsh for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder.

Serving Suggestions

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