Add some pizzazz with pastry

Handy hack one: Spraying the jaffle maker with non-stick cooking spray makes it so much easier to get the jaffles out.

Handy hack two: The meat filling for the jaffles can be made ahead of time and refrigerated until ready to use.

Handy hack three: You can also make puff pastry dessert jaffles using puréed fruit such as apples, pears or stone fruit. Great served with a drizzle of honey or a dollop of yoghurt.

PUFF PASTRY JAFFLES

Ingredients

500g meat cubes

2-3 tbsp canola oil

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 red capsicum, deseeded and chopped into small cubes

2 sticks celery (leaves included), finely sliced

1 bay leaf

2 cups either beef or chicken stock

Step 1: Now set up your pressure cooker or, alternatively, a heavy-based saucepan with a lid. Add the browned meat cubes to the pressure cooker, or simply return them to the saucepan. Add the onion, capsicum, celery, bay leaf and stock to the pot. Stir gently to combine.

Put the lid on the pressure cooker and cook under pressure for about half an hour. If you are using a pan, add all the ingredients to the pan and set over a medium-low heat for about an hour and a half. When cooked, check the consistency of the sauce/gravy and thicken with a cornflour slurry if necessary.

Step 2: Spray the jaffle maker with non-stick cooking spray.

Step 3: Cut the puff pastry to the approximate size of the jaffle maker and lay the pastry into the cup of the jaffle maker, pushing down gently with your fingers to form a cup. Now lay another piece of pastry on the other side of the jaffle iron.

Step 4: Place a tablespoon or so of the meat mixture into the pastry cup.

Step 5: A close-up of the filling mixture in the pastry ‘cup’.

Step 6: Close the jaffle maker.

Step 7: Now take the overhanging pastry around the edges and gently pinch the top and bottom pieces of pastry together.

Step 8: With the short-handled alloy-head jaffle irons, I like to place them on a grid that I’ve dropped on to the top of the hot ashes/fire. This keeps the wooden ends of the short handles out of the fire (with the longer-handled cast-iron toaster irons, you can stick the cast iron heads straight on to/in to the fire/ashes).

Step 9: This close up shows the toaster head sitting over the ashes rather than the flame. Note that these pastry pies take a long time to cook — sometime 20 minutes or more over medium heat is my recommendation — but do check them say every five-minute as you don't want to burn them.

Step 10: Break away the burnt edges as shown in the photo. This is golden brown perfect, I guess you could add mushy peas about now.

Step 11: Add a dollop of tomato sauce and you have a ‘poacher’s pastry pie’ in Aussie campfire style.