Tonight’s offering chez SmartCookieSam was meant to be a filo pastry topped chicken pie. Only the chicken I’d got out of the freezer was still frozen solid in the middle. That’s tomorrow night sorted, then. I had to think of something else instead.

It had to be a quick trip down to the local petrol station which has a Co-op attached to it. I had a sheet of ready made puff pastry in the fridge so I bought pesto sauce, a ball of mozzarella and some cherry tomatoes. I never make puff pastry as it’s so time consuming.

The pastry sheet was ready rolled and in a perfect rectangle for me to bake some pesto pizza bites. In Eat Well For Less there is a recipe for some mini puff pastry pizza bites using two sheets of pastry. There are two types of topping in the recipe, the other being one using prosciutto. I definitely didn’t have any prosciutto in, so I just stuck to the pesto topping suggested.

Instead of cutting the pastry sheet into 36 squares, I used a pizza cutter to make 12 slices. This would be better to go with some wedges, salad or veg to make a complete meal.

When I had cut the pastry into 12 pieces, I spooned some pesto sauce on top of it. I used two tablespoonfuls for the whole base but eked it out and made sure the pesto was spread evenly. Cherry tomato quarters were put on each piece, along with little chunks of mozzarella.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any more photos as my phone ran out of charge. I was very impressed with how quickly the puff pastry pesto pizzas cooked. They were baked for about 20 minutes at 200oC but half way through the cooking time I turned the baking tray around so that it baked more evenly.

I made salt and pepper wedges and cooked peas and sweet corn to accompany them and everything disappeared quickly, along with the remains of the coleslaw from Monday night.

I will definitely make this recipe again as it is so versatile. Two different toppings and could be adapted to be buffet style canapés or bigger pieces for a main meal.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx