I've been making homemade turnovers for some time now, usually simple triangle shapes, but I wanted to make something special for Valentine's Day this year and made them in the shape of heart. However the problem of this shape are leftovers. So I took the small leftover piece of puff pastry dough, put a little filling inside and closed it on the top. I didn't expect much but it turned out perfect.
That was the time when I realised the possibilities of puff pastry. Why should I stay with regular turnovers? Those are good for breakfast but are too big for simple snacking. I started making these great pastry purses.
They are so easy to make and very quick if you are in a hurry.
Ingredients:
1 puff pastry (usually comes with 2 sheets)
1 egg
1/2 cup of flour (for working with the dough only)
filling according to your taste (I used homemade apple preserve and fresh mango)
Directions:
First important thing to do is to take out the puff pastry from your freezer and let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes. It should defrost pretty fast and then you can start working.
Take the first sheet of puff pastry dough and put it on a floured surface. Use a rolling pin to make the sheet little thinner and then cut it into perfect squares. Once you have the squares ready you need to pull out each corner of each square to make the corners little larger as they will close the purses when they are filled.
When you have all squares ready put a filling in the middle of each piece. I chopped preserved apples and fresh mango and really recommend these two fillings, they were absolutely delicious. If you don't have preserved apples you can make a quick replacement - peal and cut apple into 4 pieces, put it into water with a little sugar and bring to boil. Cook for couple minutes until the apple softens, then let cool and chop exactly as you would do it with the preserved apples.
Now when there's filling in each square you can start closing them. Here you'll need 1 beaten egg in a cup and kitchen brush. Take one corner of the square and lay it over the filling, then coat it with the egg. Now take the opposite corner, lay it on top of the first one and coat it with egg. Take the third corner lay it on top of the second one and coat with egg. Finally do the same with the forth corner and coat it again with egg. You don't need too much of the egg coating, all you need is a really thin layer, just enough to be the "glue" for the corners.
As soon as you filled the entire baking sheet with ready-to-bake apple and mango purses you can put them into the oven pre-heated to 393 F and bake them for approx. 18 minutes. I usually check them after the first 15 minutes to make sure they're not too dark already.
And voilà - here are our delicious fruit purses!
It's a good idea to let them cool and put them into a closed container. That way they should stay soft for couple days, but I don't really know that as we always eat them very fast :) They really are delicious!
