Puff Pastry Fail

Don't be fooled by all the pretty pictures here at To Bake or Not to Bake. Things don't always go smoothly in my kitchen. My kitchen is pretty much Food Experimentation Central. And it's the nature of the beast that experiments fail. 

Sometimes I get these crazy ideas in my head that I MUST try and I believe what I am about to attempt will be the simplest and best recipe ever. Oh, how naive I can be. 

I mentioned the filling above in my Mother's Day post. It's fantastic and since I had some leftover I was itching to create something with it. I decided to try some turnovers using puff pastry sheets. Two ingredients. Bam! "This will be so easy," I thought. (I am laughing at myself. Again.)

I bought some Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets. There are two in a box. Since I thought the dough seemed kind of thick, I thinned the first one out with my rolling pin. I wanted to make symmetrical turnovers but the edges weren't close to even so I just folded the dough over a few times and tried it again. Still crooked. That's ok, I thought. I'll just make cute little purses out of them! They will be adorable! I spooned some of the Strawberry Rhubarb filling onto each one....

...and sealed them up into dainty little bags. I brushed them with egg wash and put them in the oven.

And they turned out like this:

I can't even bring myself to make that picture bigger because it makes me sad. 

They came out of the oven pathetic, flat, lifeless patties with cracks. They oozed the delectable filling that was supposed to stay locked inside. They didn't taste much better. Though I cooked them longer than the box called for, they were doughy and tasteless, but for the filling. 

Then I realized, I cooked them at 350 not 400 like I was supposed to. D'oh! Or should I say, Dough!

Since there was another sheet of the dough, I got back on the horse and made another attempt.

This time I didn't roll the dough with a rolling pin. I just unfolded it, cut it into six squares and spooned in the filling.

I changed it up a bit and made pouches....

...And crimped the edges with a fork.

THIS time I baked them at 400 and they turned out better. I topped them with a simple powdered sugar glaze. (1 Cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon of milk and 1/4 tsp vanilla)

So this was my first time with puff pastry and to be honest, I was not a big fan. I think going into this I had phyllo dough in my head so I was expecting super flaky results. The dough didn't "puff" at all, as it's name suggests. It was ready-made dough, after all. Maybe if I make my own it would turn out better. I plan on researching puff pastry to see what went wrong and find out what makes for great dough.

We can never learn if we don't make mistakes. So let's embrace our cooking disasters! As long as EVERY experiment isn't disastrous, I'll take 'em.