They’re supposed to be fall leaves, but let’s just say they’ve been crunched underfoot a bit already. 469: Mushroom Gruyère Hand Pies

Hindsight is 20/20, and no I shouldn’t have used puff pastry for an attempt at a detailed folding design. Oh well! The flaky layers are so good with the mushroom and cheese that I can’t be too grumpy.

I had a rare urge to bake something savory instead of sweet this week and decided to roll with it. There was a delightful video on Instagram (that I sadly haven’t been able to find again) showing a way of folding pastry like origami to give the effect of a segmented leaf. Savory leaves, let’s go!

My maple leaf cookie cutter gets one, maybe two appearances each year so it was overjoyed. I ended up using it for the base of the leaf and cutting a slightly larger version out for the top so it could accommodate the filling.

No mise en place for this impromptu bake, but lots of butter.

✨ Glowy ✨ mushrooms to make up for the fact that I used frozen puff pastry. Focus on the shiny shrooms.

The bottom of the folded leaves was a simple oval with point edges, or a squished football.

Then you cut out a large circle and chop it into fourths to make triangles. The triangles are then folded in half and stacked on top of each other (points all facing the same way.)

Plop the stack of folded triangles on its side and use a butter knife or chopstick to gently indent the center.

Leaving the utensil in the center to hold the shape, curl each corner up to get an intricate leaf shape. If only it would stay this beautiful after baking!

Alas, it did not. At least there’s color variation from the egg wash! I know my pâte sucrée recipe would hold its shape… I’ll have to try this again with a sweet filling next year.

These used a shockingly small amount of filling so I had to go make a giant mushroom quiche with the rest of it. I used Smitten Kitchen’s cornmeal tart crust recipe and the slight crunch contrasted with the velvety mushrooms so well.

Happy munching!