Gluten Free Christmas Sausage Rolls

Recipe Video

These Gluten Free Christmas Sausage Rolls feature a crisp, flaky pastry wrapped around a juicy, salty and sweet filling that will have your guests mouths watering this festive season! If you love sausage rolls and you love Christmas stuffing you'll love these.

I've always loved the salty, sweet, herby flavours found in Christmas stuffing. There's just something about it that I find irresistible, so when I had the thought of trying to put stuffing flavours inside a sausage rolls I wasn't going to stop until I had it! I've landed on a mixture of pork sausage meat, cranberries, pistachios and some herbs and aromatics, and it's just the most flavourful combination.

How to Make Gluten Free Christmas Sausage Rolls

1. Make the Filling: The filling for these sausage rolls is super simple to make. It's simply a matter or cooking the onions and garlic separately (so no one gets a chunk of raw onion), then making sure they're cool before mixing them with the remaining filling ingredients. If you want to check the seasoning of your mix before using it simply cook a small piece of it in a pan so you can have a taste!

2. Prepare the Pastry: the salty, sweet This recipe uses my Epic Rough Puff Pastry. Of course you can use store bought gluten free pastry, but you'll never quite as tasty a result. Plus you'll pay through the nose for a sheet or two from the supermarket! Working with half the Epic Rough Puff Pastry at a time, roll it out just bigger than a 30cm square and trim the edges to neaten to a 30cm square. Then simply cut it into two 15 x 30cm rectangles and it's ready to go! Depending on how warm your kitchen is you might find it gets a bit soft while you're working with it. Don't panic if this happens, just slide your pastry onto a tray and chill it for 20 minutes before continuing.

3. Assemble the Sausage Rolls: To assemble the sausage rolls we just need to paint a strip of egg wash down one long edge of each pastry rectangle. We then take one quarter of the filling and place handfuls of it down the middle of one pastry rectangle, forming it into an even log down the pastry. Then it's jsut a matter of folding the edge without egg up and over the sausage mix, then following with the remaining edge, pressing gently so the egg sticks the two sides together. I like to move the sausage rolls onto a tray for a chill in the fridge for a little while before cutting.

4. Cutting the Sausage Rolls: Once the big sausage rolls are nice and firm, they're ready to be cut. I never trim the off cuts of my bakes (I paid for those ingredients, so I'm gonna use them!), so I just measure 3cm intervals along each long sausage roll and use a sharp knife to cut them into little 3cm sausage rolls. The sausage meat will give you a little bit of trouble, so use a gentle pressure on the knife and take your time sawing it back and forth to cut through without smooshing it all down too much.

5. Decorating and Baking: com/post/e I like to use my pastry offcuts (again, I don't want to waste anything!) to make little stars to decorate the tops of my Christmas Sausage Rolls. It adds an extra festive touch, but if you don't have any small cutters to use (or if you can't be bothered) they'll be just as delicious without it! Either way, it's good to give the sausage rolls a double egg wash; one before decorating and chilling, then a second right before baking. This helps the pastry to get even more golden and shiny! Once that's all done they go into the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Done!

Tips for Perfect Gluten Free Christmas Sausage Rolls

1. Keeping the pastry cold: There's quite a lot of chilling involved in this recipe, especially if you're using my Epic Rough Puff Pastry. It might seem like a bit of a faff, but the chilling is what makes these sausage rolls incredible. Keeping the pastry cold will make it easier to work with, and if the butter in the pastry is cold when it goes in the oven you'll get more flakiness than if it's a bit warm.

2. Taste you filling before assembly: the amount of salt and pepper you'll need in your filling will be determined by your personal taste. To taste your filling before you assemble the sausage rolls just reheat the frying pan you used to cook the onions and garlic and pop in a little blob of filling. Once it's cooked through you're safe to give it a taste! Adjust the seasoning as necessary and repeat until you're happy. (Added bonus - little snacks for the chef never hurt!)

3. Double egg wash: these Christmas Sausage Rolls get a double coat of egg wash. This is partly to stick on any decorations you're using, but it has the added benefit of giving the sausage rolls a fantastic golden colour and shine when they come out of the oven.

Storage and Make Ahead Options

1. Storing the cooked Sausage Rolls: These Gluten Free Christmas Sausage Rolls store really well in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week. Refresh the sausage rolls in a 180ºC oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until hot (though I'm not going to lie - they taste pretty incredible straight out of the fridge too...)

2. Storing the raw Sausage Rolls: The uncooked sausage rolls will keep for a couple of days in the fridge, either in a container or covered tightly on a tray. Cook the sausage rolls the same as in the recipe. You could also freeze the raw sausage rolls, just make sure you freeze them in a single layer on a baking tray. Once they're frozen you can then put them in a bag or container. Cook as in the recipe straight from the freezer.