It is official, Christmas is upon us! A glorious time of year – I absolutely adore the festive season! I love spending time with my nearest and dearest. I love making homemade gifts and cooking for a crowd. This year will be no different, and I am super excited that some of my family from Malaysia will be visiting!
My Creamy Dill and Cheese Canapes are the PERFECT dish to add to your Christmas recipe arsenal. Super-quick to make and they look so impressive. Sometimes, canapes can be so disappointing – puff pastry can turn dense and soggy with the wrong filling. Trust me, no one has time for a soggy canape. No, no, no.
I chose to use filo pastry in my recipe. Coupled with the creamy cottage cheese – the result is a light creamy mouthful of Christmas canape goodness. I topped these little bites with freeze-dried dill and slivers of vibrant pink radishes.
I am really obsessed with radishes right now. I have been putting them on everything. My favourite snack at the moment is pumpernickel bread, hummus and radishes. De-lic-ious. Anyway – back to hors d’oeuvres!
Here is some equipment you will need for this recipe!
- Mini muffin tin
- Cookie cutter (preferably with frilly edges)
To be honest, it doesn’t matter if you like dill, radishes or cottage cheese. You can fill these little pastry cups with anything you want. They can be sweet or savoury! This recipe makes 24. The filo pastry is the star of the show. By using a frilly edged cookie cutter, the pastry cups have a beautiful frayed edge. Be sure to layer the pastry haphazardly, I think that this gives the dish an adorable rustic look, as opposed to having identical pastry cups.
Here is how I did it!
Ingredients:
- 2 sheets of pre-made filo pastry
- 1 cup of cottage cheese
- 2 tablespoons of finely chopped cornichons
- 1 tablespoon of freeze-dried dill
- 4 radishes
- salt and pepper to season
- Coconut oil (melted)
Method:
- Preheat your oven to gas mark 5.
- Cut out the two sheets of filo pastry with the cookie cutter. You will have lots of flower shapes, it will look very pretty.
- Layer the flower shapes into each of the mini muffin holes. Brush with coconut oil and blind bake for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on these to ensure that they do not burn.
- Whilst this is baking: mix the cottage cheese, dill, cornichons , salt and pepper. Chill in the fridge until you are ready to fill the pastry cups!
- Once your filo cups are nice and golden brown, remove from the oven and allow to cool!
- Once cooled, add teaspoons of the filling. Top with slithers of beautiful radish and a sprinkle of dill!
Voilà! Beautiful canapes that will compliment any festive buffet!
The Brighton Kitchen 