New Year and a recipe

Happy New Year! Have you recovered from New Year's Eve yet? After a late night and a fair bit of cocktail consumption we had a very quiet start to 2014. Even the day seemed a bit hungover, the sky was a pale grey, the air cooler, everything just that bit quieter.

The tradition with my group of friends is for a fancy dress party each year. The venue has changed over time but fancy dress continues and people make a HUGE effort. This year's theme was Fairytales so S and I went as Hansel and Gretel. We looked pretty awesome if I do say so myself, but there were amazing costumes from the frog prince, to Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, the Beast, Alice and the Mad Hatter, a complete set of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and Hook (Peter was taking being young to the extreme at 8 months) and so many more. As always I'm in awe of the effort my friends put in to such things.

As with many such parties, the invitation asked us to please bring a plate. I was tempted to make a gingerbread house but I doubted it would be eaten. I considered a basket of bread (you know to leave a trail home) but that would have involved leaving the house on NYE. So I went with my go to party snack, savoury pinwheels.

These pinwheels are so easy to make, take next to no time and I usually have all the ingredients on hand in the fridge, freezer and cupboard. Best of all they are really yummy. In fact the plate full of them disappeared within minutes of me setting it down.

All in all it has been a great start to 2014. I hope this year brings you joy, laughter and great happiness.

Savoury Pinwheels
makes about 24
2 sheets of puff pastry
sun-dried tomato pesto
3 rashers bacon - finely chopped
1 small onion - finely diced
Approx. 200g grated mozerella cheese
Approx. 20g grated parmesan cheese
olive oil spray

Heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius (fan forced)

Place the sheets of puff pastry, still on their protective plastic sheets, on the kitchen bench.

Spread all over with the sun-dried tomato pesto, leaving a 1cm border on one side. For two sheets I generally use about half a jar.

Sprinkle all over with the chopped bacon and onion and grated cheeses (you can use spring onion too which looks great with the colour contrast). Make sure you go right to the edges, just leaving the 1cm clear border on just one side. Lightly spray the clear border with olive oil.

Using the protective plastic sheet, roll up the pastry, ending with the clear side. The oil will help the pastry stick together. Try to roll it as tightly as possible and press the clear pastry boarder into the roll to secure it.

Use a sharp non-serrated knife to cut each roll into 1cm slices and place on a baking paper lined oven tray. you should get about 12 from each roll.  Leave a fair bit of space between them as they will puff up and out. They squish a bit when you cut them so just re-form them and put any filling that has fallen out on top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes till golden brown then cool on trays (if you can resist them!).