WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

Last night, I lay awake for hours, thinking of all the possible useful things I could do with the leftover filo pastry sheets from yesterday's experimental samosa bake... then settled on a South African classic, milk tart. 

I would make miniature milk tart flowers!

First, I needed to make the flowers, so I cut each samosa sheet into three blocks and glued two sheets across from each other.

Then I placed them over the bottom of a tot glass and carefully shaped them before putting them in a greased, miniature muffin tray.

Amazingly, the sheets filled two full trays without a sheet to spare. I baked them in a preheated oven at 180 ºC till slightly brown, it took approximately ten minutes.

I cooled the canapés on a rack before placing them back in the muffin trays for later - it's much more convenient to fill in there than standing free. These canapés, as is, are convenient for any kind of filling, both sweet or savoury and also happen to be an attractive low GI alternative.

Next up, I made a basic milk tart filling. It requires few ingredients and just a bit of patience. My version is a low GI one, consisting of a basic custard, with the addition of gelatine and the eggs separated with the whites beaten into stiff peaks before getting folded into the cooled custard last.

After filling all the canapés I still had some filling to spare, so I lined a small pie dish with a wrap, scraped the remaining milk tart filling onto that and sprinkled them all generously with cinnamon before they went into the fridge for three hours. 

They say, "Waste not, want not." 

Nothing was wasted, but somehow, we were all left wanting more.

WORDS: rhodenel©6OCT2024 

PHOTOGRAPHY: rhoderuth©6OCT2024