Perfect pastry pies

Using week-old gluten-free pastry from the fridge:

mini butternut squash pie

A while ago I posted about making mince pies.  I had meant to make a large batch and freeze half of the composed but not baked pies, so I could pull a few out whenever I wanted.  Two large patties of pastry sat in the fridge for a week...

Today I wondered if it was still good to use.  I have frozen pastry and used it before but never just kept made-up pastry in the fridge for more than a couple of days before. I took a little bit and baked it - it was still light and crisp and hadn't any strange flavour.

I had some chilli beef in the freezer, and a portion of the steak in gravy I use for steak pies, a good dollop of the butternut squash and chilli mix I used as a ravioli filling yesterday, and some apple sauce left over from breakfast, and blackberries in the freezer.  I didn't mix them all together, for any of you who have started feeling panicky.

By slicing the pastry I could roll it without having to wait for it to warm up.  I made one steak pie, mini chilli beef pies, butternut squash pies, apple and blackberry pies and a strawberry jam tart with the last bits of leftover pastry.  I hate to throw pastry away, and often use the last trimmings for a single mis-shapen jam tart - I love the way the jam goes chewy.  The jam is some made by with the grandchildren - a trip to the fruit farm is one of our standard summer holiday activities.

The pastry is a mixture of urid lentil flour, tapioca and polenta.  The full recipe was posted a few days ago: http://blissglutenfree.blogspot.com/2010/12/finally-gluten-free-mincepies.html

mini chilli-beef pie

Some of the pies were eaten for lunch, the rest are in the freezer for easy meals some other day.

 I couldn't resist adding this picture - the sunlight shining through the pastry is so warm and inviting.  The weather here has been freezing for a couple of weeks and the last two days have been freezing fog.  This shaft of sunlight was the first I'd seen this week.