Baked Vol Au Vent Pastry Cases Recipe Video

MAKING:
1)Lightly dust your work surface and rolling pin with a touch of flour. Gently roll out the pastry to about 0.5cm, taking care not to roll over the edges.
2)Using a round pastry cutter, cut out four circles of pastry about 10cm in diameter. Place two of these circles on the baking tray and brush with the egg wash.
3)Take a smaller round pastry cutter about 6cm in diameter and carefully cut out the center of the remaining two pastry circles, which should leave you with two rings plus the little bits from the center.
4)Carefully place the rings on the pastry circles on the oil greased baking tray. Also put the tiny circles on the tray (these will make your lids later, if you so wish). Egg wash all the pastry and allow it to rest for 15–20 minutes, during which time pre-heat your oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.
5)Egg wash the pastry once again and put the baking tray in the pre-heated oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until golden brown and well risen
6)Remove from the oven and cool on a wire cooling rack. When cool, use the point of a small knife to carefully remove as much pastry as possible from the center of each vol-au-vent so you can get as much filling inside as you can, rather than having too much pastry.
7)You can use smaller pastry cutters to make these pastry cases much smaller, which are called bouchée, and can be filled and used as cocktail pieces.

SERVING:
8)Serve with your choice of fruits and fillings inside and enjoy!!

NOTE:
Don’t throw away any pastry scraps. Re roll them and cut out a few fleurons, which make a very good alternative to fried croutons for garnishing soups