I am sure I probably had some pastry images already tucked away in the database...I do like pastry after all, but I felt the fruit mince had had a couple of weeks to settle in and we needed to do some quality assessing before risking it to a wider audience come Christmas. So...little mince tarts it was!
Back in the day my mum made the very best pastries, her shortcrust was mouth-wateringly fabulous, especially wrapped around her Cornish pasties, she made puff pastry more rarely, but it made wonderful cream horns and mille feuilles for special occasions and her choux pastry eclairs and cream puffs even made it successfully past the fortressed gates of the prestigious CWA battlegrounds...
I rarely trouble with these more exotic confections these days...the time of home made afternoon teas and suppers has long past, hereabouts anyway. Anyway, with such a pastry paragon's shoes to fill, I gave up early...I still make passable pastry, but never felt it was my forte... I do love a coffee eclair with a passion though, and other things like proper Danishes and croissants, apple pies, steak and kidney pies...
There are three rather important family birthdays in the couple of weeks to come and some very minute last minute preparations to think about prior to Christmas Day...that's about it.
Bye for now,
Di