Meals for Under £10: Savoury Eccles Cakes

THIS week we have pastries that you can serve where you’d normally have sausage rolls or pies.

We’ve all heard of Eccles cakes – but these are a different and delicious savoury version.

Thanks to Peter Sidwell of Simply Good Food TV for the recipe.

You’ll need:

250g plain flour

125g cold butter, cubed

A pinch of salt

1 tsp of lemon juice

2-3 tbsp of cold water

For the filling

150g The Cheshire Cheese Co. Cheshire cheese

90g California prunes

2 shallots, sliced

2 tbsp of red wine vinegar

Method:

Place the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, add half the butter and, using your fingertips, run into the flour to form a crumble-type texture. Add the remaining cubes of butter, lemon juice and half the water.

Turn the bowl out on to a work surface, slowly mix together. Add water as you mix until you have a soft ball of dough with chunks of butter. Leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Slice the shallots and place in a saucepan with vinegar. Heat to a boil, then leave to cool.

Grate the cheese. Add prunes, chopped, drain and add to the bowl before mixing.

Roll the pastry into a rectangle, fold from the top to the middle and from the bottom of the first fold. Then roll out again into the same sized triangle and repeat the fold. Finally, roll the pastry out ½cm thick, using a 10cm cutter, cut out as many clean circles as you can.

Divide the cheese filling evenly between all the circles of pastry. Gather the edge of the circle of pastry and squeeze together to seal in the filling, then turn the folds underneath the Eccles cake and roll out a little to flatten it.

Repeat with all the other pastry circles, transfer to baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Brush with beaten egg, make two little cuts in the top of each cake and bake at 180C for 15-20 mins until golden and flaky.