6 turnovers
Pastry: readymade or make a pastry according to a recipe
- This recipe uses 2 sheets of prepared gluten and dairy free Puff Pastry from CHOICES bread shop (no soy).
Filling Ingredients
- 3 soft, ripe pears
- 2 ½ cups water
- 1 vanilla bean pod
- 2 tsp Maize cornflour
- Extra ¼ cup water
Meringue Ingredients
- 2 egg whites
- ½ cup castor sugar
- Beat egg whites until stiff. Gradually beat in the sugar for about 6-10 minutes.
- Pipe onto the pear turnovers if desired
Method
- Preheat oven to 2000C.
- Have pastry at room temperature
- Line an oven tray with baking paper
- Peel pears
- Dice into roughly 1 cm squares
- Add pears and whole vanilla bean pod to a saucepan
- Add 2 ½ cups of water and bring to the boil
- Boil the pears until the liquid reduces to almost none (about 15 minutes)
- Stir periodically
- Take the vanilla pod from the pears
- Combine the cornflour with the ¼ cup water and stir this through the pears to thicken
- Remove the mixture from the stove and cool slightly
Assembling the turnovers
- Sprinkle extra plain GF flour over a clean bench & place 1 sheet of Choices Puff pastry on the floured surface
- Cut out 2 x 15cm diameter circles of pastry
- Take the left over pastry from this sheet and knead it together. Roll it out to the same thickness as the remaining sheet and cut 1 more 15cm diameter circle.
- Repeat with remaining pastry sheet to have 6 pastries
- Place each pastry on the baking sheet in 2 lines of 3
- Divide the pear evenly among the pastries but spread the pear only on one half of the circle leaving a small edge of exposed pastry to join with the other side
- With a pastry brush or finger, wet the exposed pastry edge with a little water
- Fold the pearless half of the pastry over the pear and press the edges of the pastry together
- Gently press a fork around the edge or crimp with fingers to ensure it is sealed
- Cook for 10 minutes at 2000C in a normal oven, then fan force the oven for a further 15 minutes of cooking
- Eat as is…. or pipe some meringue mixture on the edge for extra sweetness