Pasties in Design Technology

5th December 2019

On Thursday 5th December, we were very lucky to have Kate from Chartwells in school to help us make the pasties that we had previously designed. The children had been tasked to create a pasty for one of three target audiences: a manual labourer, a posh restaurant or a Christmas party. As a class, we came up with a design brief for each of these and the children then had to design their pasty to fit with the design brief of their chosen target market.

After thoroughly washing our hands and putting aprons on, we started with making pastry from scratch. We cut the butter up into more manageable chunks and rubbed it into the flour to make a breadcrumb-like mixture. We then added small amounts of water and kneaded the mixture into a dough.

Kate then took the pastry and put it into the fridge until we were ready to go into the hall after lunch to get on with the main event - making our pasties! We started by rolling the pastry thinly before using a template to cut circles (or in some cases triangles depending on the design) out of the dough. We then referred to our pasty designs and went up to put all of the ingredients that we would need for our filling into our bowls. After giving the ingredients a good mix with a fork, we put the filling onto our pastry, folded it over and then had a go at crimping!

To finish our pasties off, we decorated them using cookie cutters to cut out pastry shapes; toothpicks to engrave patterns into the pastry; and even coloured pastry. Kate then put them in the oven and we collected them the next morning once they were cooked and cooled.

Before going home on Friday, we evaluated our pasties and gave them a score out of 10 for each of the criteria on our design brief. We also gave them a score out of 10 for taste. Next week, the children will be thinking and writing about what went well and what didn't go so well as well as the differences between their designed product and their finished product.

The children had a fantastic day making their pasties - a huge thank you to Kate for making it happen.

Next Previous