Filo Pastry Parcels!

It's been so long since I last posted! I'm quietly confident that no one has really missed these posts, but I enjoy writing them, and they're a good record of how my bakes go.
I've been itching to give my favourite hobby some attention, but with work, hunting for grad schemes, running etc etc I've been struggle to find the time to bake at all, never mind to sit down and write about it!

Seeing as it's been well over a month, I have a few bakes in the bag that I can write about now, and I've decided to start with these filo pastry parcels!

Salted Caramel and Apple, Pear, Almond
and Dark Chocolate, and Rhubarb and Ginger Parcels!

For my first attempt at these filo parcels I simply had to have a go at making my own filo pastry, and it was nothing short of disastrous! The first recipe (from a chef I wouldn't dare call out) called for flour, salt, water and olive oil. Surely this would be a simple enough dough to bring together? Apparently not. I tried to follow this recipe twice, and both times adding the oil broke the dough down into a gloopy mess that no amount of kneading was fixing. No amount of research could shed any light on why this was happening...

The next day I followed a different recipe, which I found much easier (Paul Hollywood to the rescue!). Although this recipe used a few additional ingredients, it was well worth it. The dough came together like a dream. After resting and chilling the dough in the fridge, next came the rolling out part.

Filo pastry is notoriously thin, and I thought I'd cracked it. I split the dough into equally weighted balls, and rolled them out into sheets. However, when I assembled the bases of the parcels by layering sheets of pastry on top of each other, I quickly realised I had not rolled the pastry thin enough (for a second attempt at these parcels I used shop bought filo pastry so I could compare it to my own, and just as I thought it was far too thick). 

Caramel Apple Filo Parcels
(with a homemade filo pastry and
salted caramel sauce!)

I was excited to try out a few different flavour combinations for these parcels too! The combinations were salted caramel and apple, rhubarb and ginger, and pear, almond and dark chocolate! The first of the three were definitely my favourite, even if the caramel did make the pastry go a little soggy. 

The edges of the parcels are brushed with oil
to encourage them to brown.

When handling filo pastry you need to take extra care to ensure the sheets don't dry out. This was something that kept slipping my mind. I found the easiest way to keep the pastry from drying out was to cover the sheets with a damp tea towel when they aren't being used.

I really enjoyed making these parcels, and hopefully I get the chance to try making my own filo pastry again soon!

Gibby x