After making salmon with pesto and puff pastry for dinner last week, we had some leftover puff pastry dough to experiment with. Honestly,  I’ve never met a more versatile ingredient than puff pastry dough. It’s crispy yet soft texture can be used with all sorts of flavors, be them sweet or savory. That’s why we put our leftover dough to good use: we made dessert! It was probably the easiest dessert I have ever made – so easy that the only thing wrong with it is that it can hardly be called cooking!

See the easy recipe after the jump!

But who says easy can’t be impressive? To me, a dessert like this looks fancy and would definitely be served in a restaurant. Simplicity is the key, isn’t it? So I say make these for your Valentine this Saturday! He/she will think you’re a master pastry chef! (If you need ideas for the whole Valentine’s Day menu, check out these 100+ V-day recipes)

First, you’ll thaw and bake your puff pastry sheet (40 minutes of thawing, 10 minutes of baking at 375 degrees). Then you’ll cut your sheet into 6 squares, peel them open and fill them with yummy goodness!

I chose whipped cream and blackberries simply because that’s what we had in the house. But, you can use anything! Try plain non-fat yogurt for a healthier option or use any kind of fruit you want (bananas, strawberries, peaches, I could go on forever).

Finally, the most important step is to drizzle the whole thing with honey. To me, honey and puff pastry are a match made in heaven. It’s like a Greek pastry wanna be without all the complicatedness of phyllo dough. So don’t forget that key final step. But of course, you can always substitute this step with any sort of sauce you like – chocolate, butterscotch, whatever is in the house!

Also, let me just say that a little sheet of puff pastry can go a long way. If there’s two of you, you can make a whole meal out of the stuff! Begin with puff pastry vegetable pizza appetizers,  serve  Salmon with Puff Pastry for the main course, and for dessert, well, you know what to do:

Easy Puff Pastry Desserts

You can use anything you want in this recipe – strawberries, blueberries, blackberries. You can substitute chocolate for the honey, or for a lighter version, try plain yogurt instead of whipped cream!

Ingredients

1 puff pastry sheet, thawed and cooked (i.e. Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets)
whipped cream
honey
your favorite berries

Directions

Thaw 1 puff pastry sheet for 40 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Let cool and cut into 6 squares.

To assemble desserts, slice each puff pastry square in half (you can usually tear it open). Fill with some berries and a few squirts of whipped cream. Fold over top. Top with a dollop of whipped cream and a berry. Drizzle the whole thing liberally with honey.

Tags: puff pastry, puff pastry desserts, puff pastry dough, puff pastry recipes, puff pastry sheets, Valentine's Day desserts, valentine's day recipes

Posted by Hillary, 5:16 PM

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Valentine's Day, dessert, holidays, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.