Make these animal-themed pastry pies and surprise your children with something a little fun for lunch or dinner.
I decided to surprise my three daughters by adding animal pastry cut-outs on top of the chicken, spinach and fetta pies I made for lunch this week (recipe below).
The only thing I wanted them to get out of this activity was the joy of guessing their animals on top!
Animal themed pastry pies
Chicken, spinach and ricotta cheese recipe
Ingredients
- 3 Puff pastry sheets
- 1 tub of ricotta cheese
- 200g – 300g chicken cut into small pieces (we use free range chickens)
- Grated cheese
- 4-6 leaves of spinach
- Mushrooms finely chopped
- egg white (free range)
Animal themed pastry Pie Recipe
- Preheat the oven to 200 Degrees Celsius
- Mix the ricotta cheese, chicken pieces, grated
cheese and finely chopped spinach together in a bowl until combined - Use a large mug to measure and cut out some puff pastry circles. You’ll need two circles per pie.
- Add the mixture in the middle of one of the pastry circles and add the other pastry circle on top. Use a fork to seal the pastry together. Do this until the mixture is used up.
- Now it’s time to use the left over pastry to cut out the animal shapes and add them to the top of the pasty. Use small animal shape cutters and cut out the animals using the remaining puff pastry. I used egg white to stick the animals on to the pie and lightly painted over the top of the pie with egg white. You can also see that I got a little creative by making one of the pastry pies into a lion. The fork prints looked just like a mane.
- It goes in the oven for around 15-20 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown.
They looked good going in but they looked even better coming out! The animals look incredible!
My daughters really loved the animal themed pastry pies and guessed their animals correctly.
They even made the animal noises with out any prompting from me.
I suspect the animals on top made them more interested in their food too, because they’ve never wolfed down a puff pastry pie like that before!
It was so nice to do something simple that brought joy to the girl’s faces. The best part was that it was so easy to add a little wildlife fun to our food.
How have you added fun to your food lately?
These are gorgeous and look incredibly appetising.
My animal loving family would indeed drool over these!
Thank you! It’s was just a simple animal activity but worth it for the smiles on my girls faces!
Lovely! Unfortunately, we still can’t have any egg in the house due to K-Bear’s allergies. But I did just buy some animal sandwich cutters at a cute Japanese store today, so I look forward to using them with the boys 🙂
You can just skip the egg. It will still brown up nicely without it. Seriously! 🙂
These look so yummy! I hadn’t thought of using ricotta in a pie..this might be just the right texture for Ruby…got to give them a try…and the animals are such a cute idea…where did you get your cutters from? Off to pin now!!
Yep Squeak has texture issues and she is good with this one – thank goodness. Thank you for pinning Jode!
Oh yum!! They look adorable….what a great idea!
Thanks Honey. Just an easy activity this time 🙂
Great way to get them to eat spinach and mushrooms! I love the little elephants ears 🙂
He he, I have to sneak the good stuff in there. The cheese and chicken disguise the taste too!
Cute AND delicious! Pinned it x
Thanks Kylie
Such a great idea and so cute!
My kids would love this addition to their food!
There wouldn’t last very long at our house. Look DELISH!
Love this idea! Dino Boy saw them and said ‘they look great, do we have the right ingredients to make them now?’ 🙂 We don’t but we will be getting it!!