Sacristain
Cook Time 1 hour
Servings makes 24
Ingredients
8 x square sheets of all butter puff pastry, defrosted
Caster sugar, for dusting
Pastry Cream
375ml milk
1 vanilla pod, scraped
5 egg yolks
½ cup (100g) sugar
50g cornstarch
40g butter
Method
For the pastry cream, heat milk and scraped vanilla beans and its seeds in a pot and warm through until it almost boils.
Meanwhile in a large bowl add egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch and whisk until pale and fluffy.
Add a ladleful of the milk to the egg mixture and whisk. Add back into the saucepan and return to the heat. Slowly heat and continuously whisk until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and gradually mix in butter and place in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap directly on the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming. Cool in the fridge.
Once completely cool, remove vanilla pod skins and whisk again until smooth and glossy.
For the puff pastry, if using a store bought place two sheets on top of each other so it is double thickness. Cover both sides of the puff with a generous amount of sugar and roll out to a square 300 mm x 300 mm.
To assemble, cover the bottom half of the sheet of pastry with the pastry cream - about 1.5 cm thickness. Then fold down the top layer of pastry to cover the bottom and so the pastry finishes flush at the bottom.
Measure with a ruler along the bottom and top of the pastry starting from one end 30 mm increments, make a small mark with your knife at each point.
Then cut from top to bottom so that you have a strip of pastry, continue cutting until you’re out of dough - my fave piece to eat is the end piece that is prob way too big compared to the others, you can call this your “test piece”.
Holding the top of the pastry where the fold is still twist the other side until the entire piece is uniformly twisted in shape.
You can now freeze these and they are good for almost week like that or you can bake them straight away
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper and place sacristains on it - leave 2-4 cm between each pastry as they will expand.
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown.
