Cheese and Sundried Tomato Palmiers

So when a glorious three day weekend  stretches out in front of you promising to bring with it warm sun drenched days, you know that you need to make the most of it.  By making the most of it I do mean sitting in the garden with potent fruity drinks and scrumptious nibbles with friends and family.  What you don’t want to be doing is spending your whole day in the kitchen making the nibbles and that’s where this recipe will serve you well.  It has an amazingly high return for remarkably little effort. I’ve used a sun-dried tomato pesto, cheese and basil filling, but you really could use almost anything.  I’ve used sausages removed from their casings, you could try it with basil pesto and feta, a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon or jam, and I’m really interested in trying it with lemon curd, but enough of my rambling,  get out there and enjoy that sunshine!

To start take:

• 1 roll of puff pastry (of course if you make your own it will be delicious, but your effort to enjoyment ratio will be greatly diminished)
• about half a jar of sun-dried tomato pesto
• 200gm of cheese (I used a mature cheddar, but use whatever takes your fancy)
• a few basil leaves

Lightly dust the surface you are working on with flour and then roll out your pastry to roughly 30m by 40cm-ish.

Smear on the sun-dried tomato pesto leaving  a 1 centimetre border around the edges of the pastry.

Top the tomato with the cheese and the basil.

Taking the length of the pastry, roll one half of the pastry to the middle and then repeat with the other side to create something akin to a book scroll. Wrap the (sc)roll in cling film and place in the refrigerator for about an hour. Then preheat your  oven to 180°C.

Remove the pastry from the fridge and thinly slice into palmiers.  How thick or thin you slice them really does boil down to taste, but I aim for slices that are between 0.5cm to 1 cm thick.

Place your pamiers on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown!  Enjoy.