Strawberry Turnovers with Homemade Pastry

The strawberry filling

The strawberry filling is very similar to this strawberry cupcake filling. It’s a chunky sauce, like a strawberry compote, full of pieces of frozen or fresh strawberries.

This ensures it’s nice and thick to hold inside the turnovers. Mix the strawberries with a little sugar, lemon juice, and salt to enhance the sweetness and flavor.

Ingredients

Find exact ingredient amounts in the recipe card at the bottom of this post. Here is a rundown of what you will need.

Pastry

• Butter – unsalted butter. The block of butter doesn’t need to be fancy it just needs to have at least 80% butterfat which most supermarket butter does. You can also use salted butter too, though the salt in the main dough may need reducing. The butter content in this pastry is very high which means there are lots of layers of butter in the dough. This will achieve extra flaky pastry.
• All-purpose flour
• Salt – For flavor
• Ice water – To bind the dough. Using icy cold water will keep the butter cold.
• Vinegar – a little acid helps to create a more tender pastry by breaking down the gluten bonds in the dough. Substitute it for lemon juice if you have no vinegar. This vinegar helps keep the dough pliable when rolling without needing to rest in between folds.

Homemade strawberry filling

• Strawberries – Roughly chopped strawberries or sliced strawberries if they’re big but they can be left as a whole strawberry if they’re small.
• Sugar (or another sweetener) – Granulated sugar is used in this recipe but the sweetness can come from other sources too. Maple syrup, honey, stevia, or brown rice syrup can all be used. The amount of sugar can be lessened if your strawberries are very sweet or increased for tart strawberries.
• Vanilla extract or paste
• Lemon juice – Lemon juice enhances the strawberries’ natural flavor.
• Salt – Just a pinch to balance the sweetness.
• Cornstarch or arrowroot – To thicken the strawberry filling. If you’re wanting to freeze the strawberry cake filling, use arrowroot instead of cornstarch.

Strawberry glaze

• Strawberries- A bit of the strawberry filling will be strained into syrup and used in the glaze.
• Powdered sugar
• Milk

You’ll also need an egg for the egg wash to brush the pastries before baking.

Method

The pastry

Begin by chopping the butter into 1inch cubes and placing them in the freezer for 5 minutes to ensure it’s nice and cold.

To a large bowl add the flour, sugar, and salt and mix them together. Add the cold cubes of butter to the flour.

Use a pastry cutter to roughly cut the butter into the flour, but not too small. A few very small cubes are fine but the rest can be left in fairly large chunks. If the butter is melting at any point, place the bowl in the refrigerator.

Pour the lemon juice or vinegar over the dough and add the ice-cold water. Drizzle it in slowly, atablespoon of water at a time. Use a spatula or your hands to combine it into a shaggy dough and add in enough water as needed but not too much. Add any extra water in slowly, a tablespoon at a time.

It should hold together easily when pressed but not be sticky. If the dough is super crumbly, add a bit more water. You don’t want it sticky though. Form the dough into a mound and let it chill in the fridge for 10 minutes. If your room temperature is very cold, you can begin rolling right away.

Laminating

On a floured work surface, roll the dough with a rolling pin into roughly a 5x10inch rectangle. You will see large chunks of butter in the dough. Dust off any excess flour from the top of the dough.

Fold the bottom third of the dough up to the middle, then fold the top third of the dough over top to make a pamphlet shape. That was Fold 1.

Turn the dough a quarter turn and roll it back out into a rectangle and repeat the folding. That was fold 2.

Repeat this process 4 more times so you do 6 folds in total. You can trim the edges of the dough to neaten them when folding to make the lamination more even. This isn’t vital though.

If you are making this on a cold day then there is no need for any fridge rest in between the rolling of the layers unless the butter is melting. In the summertime, the rough puff pastry will likely need a fridge rest in between every second fold to ensure the butter stays chilled.

After the last fold, wrap the dough up tightly in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours or up to 24. 

Note – The pictures below are of a triple batch of pastry dough, so there is a larger amount pictured.

The homemade strawberry filling

While the pastry is chilling, make the filling because this needs to be cooled down completely before being used. After the filling is cooked you’ll be taking 2 tablespoons which will be used for the glaze.

In a small bowl combine water and cornstarch and mix it into a slurry. Add it to a small saucepan along with chopped strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, and salt. Place the saucepan over medium-low heat and stir regularly as the mixture begins to warm up.

You can use a wooden spoon to mash the strawberries up a bit as they heat but not too much. You want a few chunks of strawberries in the sauce. As it gets hotter, start stirring continually to stop the cornstarch from prematurely cooking at the bottom of the saucepan.

As the whole mixture comes to a boil it will thicken quickly and become jelly-like and lose its cloudy appearance. Let it boil, while stirring, for a full minute before taking it off the heat. It’s important the cornstarch is cooked through properly or else the filling can lose its thickness.

Syrup – Once cooked, take 2 tablespoons of the mixture and push this through a sieve to collect all the strawberry syrup. This syrup is what you’ll use for the glaze.

Let the remaining filling cool down to room temperature, then cover it and store it in the fridge until needed.

Assembling the pastries

Remove the dough from the fridge and place it on a lightly floured work surface. Roll it into a 12-inch square. Cut the dough vertically down the middle, then twice horizontally to make six 4×6 inch rectangles. A pizza cutter is very helpful for this.

Add a heaped tablespoon of filling on one half of each rectangle leaving a 1/2 inch border on the side where you’ve placed the filling. Brush a little border of water along the 1/2 inch edge of the pastry, then fold over the other half. Use a fork to crimp down the edges to seal them. They need to be well sealed or they will burst open in the oven.

Once all the turnovers have been assembled, place in them in the fridge to chill while the oven is heated.

Baking

Heat the oven to 400°F/205°C and line a large baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper.

Place the turnovers on the sheet. Whisk together the egg and water for the egg wash and use a pastry brush to brush it evenly over each turnover.

Use a sharp knife to create two little slits on the tops of the turnovers to allow the steam from the filling to escape.

Bake the turnovers for around 22 minutes until deep golden brown. Let them cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before glazing.

Glaze

To make the glaze, in a medium bowl combine the powdered sugar, reserved strawberry sauce, and milk into a thick but pourable glaze. Drizzle it over the top of the turnover.

Storing

Leftover strawberry turnovers can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days, or refrigerated for up to 4 days. They can also be wrapped tightly and frozen for up to three months.

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