Overview:
By: Antonia
Meal Type: Lunch, Snack
Cook time: 20 Minutes
Servings: 12 Pies
Thank you to Antonia for this recipe, perfect for picnic season, high tea, cold summery suppers & hungry tums in the school holidays!
Little Sausage meat Picnic Pies! - "These moreish little pies are very versatile and make a nice change from sausage rolls. They are delicious eaten hot, fresh from the Aga range cooker but are also good eaten cold – perfect for a picnic. I’ve kept the filling fairly simple to please my young family but you could add other ingredients to the sausage meat: dried apricots, or roasted peppers, for instance."
A versatile recipe that has been scribed and tested by community member Antonia, who is a hard working mum with two boys. Her recipes are trialed in her much loved Aga range cooker and devoured by her family, allowing Antonia to provide accurate tips and advice on how to make the dishes a success! Go check her work out! She is a country girl, happily surrounded by an excitable Lab, her dear husband, two boys and the Cotswolds.
Ingredients:
You may need...
- A deep muffin tin
- A circular cookie cutter
Method:
1.Heat the oil in a frying pan on the floor of the roasting oven whilst you chop the onion and finely dice the apple. Fry the onion for a few minutes on the simmering plate before adding the apple and thyme. Cook until softened but not brown. Set aside to cool.
2. Once slightly cooled, mix the onion and apple mixture into the sausage meat and combine. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin tin. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface to 3mm thickness. Using a cutter slightly wider than the holes in the muffin tin, cut discs out of the pastry and use them to line the holes. Using a slightly smaller cutter, cut an equal number of discs to use for the pie lids.
4. Add 1-2 teaspoons of sausage filling to each case and top with the pastry lids – brush a little water around edge of each lid to seal together with the base. Gently press the edges together around each pie. Using a sharp knife, cut a small cross in the top of each pie.
5. Brush the tops of the pies with beaten egg.
6. Bake the pies on the floor of the roasting oven for 18-20 minutes (see tip), or until the pastry is nicely brown and the filling piping hot.
7. Cool in the tin for a couple of minutes before using a small palette knife to ease the pies from the tin. Eat immediately or leave to cool on a wire rack.
Tips for cooking these in your Aga range cooker from Antonia - The roasting oven is hottest at the back and on the left hand side. For evenly baked pies, turn the tin half way through cooking.
Note - Heat will be more 'even' if you have an e-cook Electrikit conversion, but always good to rotate!
Cooking the pies on the floor of the roasting oven ensures a lovely, crisp pastry with no soggy bottom. It is best to use a good quality tin with a thick base - the pastry may burn if the tin is too thin. The pies can also be cooked on the grid shelf on the bottom runners – they may need a couple of minutes longer.
