Halloween Severed Finger Sausage Rolls

The severed finger sausages were a real hit and disappeared quickly at my Halloween party! These came to me one morning when I woke up and declared, "I don't have enough meat!". I woke Mr NQN up who thought that I had started sleep talking. I mean if I'm going to sleep talk about something, it's highly likely it would be about food.

These severed finger sausage rolls are so easy to make but you do need to go for slender sausages. I liked these organic beef hotdogs that I found at the supermarket. There was no issue with the filling leaking out the end as they were already cooked completely and they were the perfect size for a finger. In this instance I used shortcrust pastry as puff pastry expands and I didn't want to make puffy finger sausage rolls although there is a certain charm to that too.

Severed Finger Sausage Rolls

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Makes 12 sausage rolls

• 275g/9.7ozs or 6 organic beef hotdogs (the slender ones)
• 2 sheets shortcrust pastry, thawed in fridge
• 6 pitted black olives, cut in half
• Egg yolk whisked with 1 teaspoon water for egg wash
• Tomato sauce or ketchup

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F fan forced and line 2 trays with parchment. Cut each sausage in half and trim the pastry to fit the sausage- you should get 6 sausage fingers per sheet of pastry. Wrap well and seal the ends with eggwash. On the rounded end, seal the end to form a finger tip.

Step 2 - Cut knuckles in the roll - three slashes halfway down (don't cut all the way through the pastry) and another three slashes further down are perfect. Brush with eggwash and place an olive half as a nail. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with ends dipped in tomato sauce.