Ways with Puff Pastry - Chicken Pie & Danish Braid

At my Baking Essentials class, I mentioned that we made puff pastry - over a kilo of it each! Here is the finished product after all turns had been completed: When I finished turning and resting my pastry, I thought that the logical thing to do with part of it was to make dinner. I dug out Heavenly D'lites by Weight Watchers, and found a recipe for an Old Fashioned Chicken and Corn Pie, which was accompanied by a mouth-watering photograph that was irresistable. The top photo shows the results of my efforts. To make this pie, you will need: 600g skinless chicken breast fillets 500ml water 1/2 cup dry white wine 2 crumbled chicken stock cubes 1 cup frozen peas 2 chopped carrots 2 tablespoons cooking oil 1 chopped onion 3 tablespoons plain flour 150ml light evaporated milk 440g can corn kernels, drained 1 sheet thawed commercial puff pastry (or a piece of your own homemade puff pastry :) )

Put the chicken, water, wine and stock cubes in a fry pan, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Reserve one cup of the stock, and chop up the chicken into 1cm chunks.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius, and spray a 20cm pie dish with cooking oil spray.

Cook the peas and carrots in the microwave for two minutes and drain. Heat the oil in a fry pan, and cook the onion in it until soft, then stir in the flour and cook for a further two minutes.

Remove the fry pan from the heat and stir in the evaporated milk and reserved stock. Return the pan to the stove top and cook over a medium heat until the mixture thickens and boils. Stir through the chicken, corn, peas and carrots, and season with salt and pepper to taste, if desired.

Pour the chicken mixture into the oiled pie dish, and place the pastry over the top. Seal the edges of the pastry with a fork and trim off the excess. Decorate the top of the pie with pastry shapes, if desired. (I used a rooster sugarcraft cutter for this purpose.) Lightly spray the top of the pie with cooking spray, and bake for 10 minutes before lowering the oven temperature to 180 degrees Celsius and baking the pie for a further 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the cooked pie from the oven and allow to cool slightly before cutting and serving with a side of mashed potato. I had leftover puff pastry, so I made a small Danish braid filled with pear and hazelnut praline paste, and a snail mini Danish filled with praline paste:

It was fun to use my puff pastry for things other than those made or demonstrated in class, even though I am eyeing up the Diplomat torte for a future project. As for the rest of the pastry, it's a work in progress as to where it will end up.