With money being tight I find myself looking at ways to curb the budget and try to look at recipes that are nutritious but cost effective. I tried this sausage roll recipe at the weekend and it worked really well. I actually got my 4 year old grandaughter to help and she thought it was great fun

Sausage Rolls are a great snack or picnic food  or add vegetables and you can make a meal.I am not a great lover of "shop" bought sausage rolls but these I made had a great taste.

The first thing I did was go to my local freezer store and purchased frozen puff pastry, I know you can by fresh ready made pastry but it is more expensive than frozen puff pastry. I also bought a large bag of the cheap frozen sausages.

I always have fruit in the house so my final ingredients were 2 eating apples (not cooking apples) I defrosted about ten sausages, and allowed my pastry to defrost. This was the fun  part for my grandaughter, she got to squeeze all the sausage meat out of their skins. I then got my two apples ,peeled and cored them and then chopped them into small pieces

While I rolled out the pastry my grandaughter (who by the way had washed her hands) took great delight in "squishing" (her words not mine).the chopped apple into the sausage meat mixture. The pastry neede to be rolled in an oblong shape and not too thick as it expands.

The next thing to do is take some of the mixture in your hands and roll it like a sausage and place it along the longer edge of the pastry. Do this until all of the mixture is used up or until you come to the end of the pastry. Now all you have to do is  roll this up as you near the end of the pastry brush it with a little beaten egg so that it seals and then cut the roll into the size you would like your sausage rolls to be. Pop them into an oven I used about gas mark 5 to start with to ensure the meat cooked before the pastry browned then when the meat was almost cooked turn them up to gas mark 6 till the pastry is browned and the meat is thoroughly cooked.

Even though we had used cheap ingredients with the addition of the apples the flavour was excellent..

The beauty of this sausage roll recipe is that it can be adapted to individual tastes,for example you could add various herbs,or spices. Pork and leek go together well. If you wanted something different you could add bacon and hard boiled egg making it into a breakfast sausage roll. Even if you are vegetarian you could use soya meat, I hope this recipe has given you some good ideas.

If you like this recipe pop over to my other hub for pea and ham soup recipe