These look desperately impressive and taste fantastic but are actually very easy to do if you are buying your own pastry. I’d always used an all butter puff pastry but if you are cooking for vegans most of the cheaper supermarket brands of ready rolled/ready to roll puff pastries are vegan.

Serves: 24 canapé

Time: 1/2 hour

Ingredients

• 12 shallots (not bananna)
• 320g puff pastry
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs fruit vinegar (cider or raspberry)
• Salt and pepper
• Couple of sprigs of thyme/oregano

Method

If serving immediately preheat an oven to 200C

Peel the shallots, top and tail them. Slice through the middle half way between the top and the bottom.

In a large frying pan add some good quality olive oil. Add the thyme bring to a medium heat. Place the shallots cut side down and cook until the edges are starting to brown (5 – 10 minutes).

Meanwhile, roll (if needed) the pastry and cut circles a centimetre or so bigger than the shallots.

Add the sugar and vinegar to the shallots and cook for a further few minutes.

Remove the shallots and place them individually in to a mini tart dish. Top with a few drops of the caramel.

If making in advance you will need to refrigerate this until cool and then top with the pastry before covering well and refrigerating until needed.

Cover each shallot with a round of pasty, tucking the edges around the shallots,

15 minutes before serving, pop the tarts in to the oven and cook until golden. Pop the tarts out of the tin with a knife and turn over. Serve immediately.