Is there any use for cooked pastry offcuts? Chances are we’re talking about trimmings from a blind baked tart case, so the first port of call is to stay on theme. “If you’re already baking a tart, add more texture by sprinkling those lovely, crunchy pastry offcuts over the top,” says Ruby Bhogal , author of One Bake Two Ways . Otherwise, break them down (you still want “a nice chunk”, Bhogal says), brush with melted butter, sprinkle with demerara sugar, and return to the oven to crisp up further.
“That’s a really nice snack with a cup of tea,” she says, adding that you could also deploy them in trifles or to top cakes. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Learn more. Offcuts also play well with chocolate, so in theory you could do “a fridge-cake situation”, suggests Nicola Lamb , pastry chef and author of Sift (although you might need to save offcuts in the freezer until you have sufficient quantities). That said, Lamb and Verena Lochmuller , development chef at the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, both agree that the more sensible path would be to blitz those pastry bits into a cheesecake base.
“You could also put the blitzed pastry anywhere you would a crumble, such as the bottom of a posset pot,” Lamb adds. For savoury scraps, Lochmuller envisions a sort of dukkah. “Roughly chop up the pastry, maybe with some flaked sea salt and spices, and you could also add nuts,” she s.
