Puff pastry Christmas tree
Ingredients
Story
For this recipe you can use pesto from the supermarket, or you can make homemade pesto. For our homemade pesto, see http://www.friendsandforks.nl/recipe/spaghetti-squash/.
We used a rectangle puff pastry, so we flipped the other half on top of it. If you don’t have a rectangle shaped puff pastry, you can also use a round or oval shaped, but you might need 2 of them, so you can put the one onto the other.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Spread the pesto evenly on a layer of puff pastry directly on a baking sheet on your oven tray, then sprinkle some grated cheese on it and cover it up with another puff pastry (or the half of the rectangle like we did). Slightly press with your fingertips.
Now, what you need to do is to cut the pastry into a tree shape. First of all, in the middle of the length, draw two parallel lines with the tip of your knife, so that you define the width of what will be the tree trunk in the center. Now, with your knife, you’re going to cut a triangle (the tree shape) and not forget to leave a piece of pastry attached for your tree trunk bottom. Don’t throw away the parts you just cut out. Cut a star out of the leftovers and put it on top of the christmas tree! Once you’re done with this step, you’re going to cut the tree branches, starting from both parallel lines in the center of your triangle, to the outside of the triangle, but without cutting through the center of the tree (the trunk remains as a whole).
And finally, using your fingers, twist each branch upside, taking care that both pastries extremities keep together more or less. The twisting will make appear your cheese & pesto stuffing on the edges, this is perfectly normal. In the end, brush your tree with egg wash (only the yellow part of the egg), and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Mmmm it’s so yummy, crunchy and soft at the same time!!! Happy Holidays, everyone!
