More often than not, viral food trends and hacks surmount to nothing more than overblown hype. The effort is not worth it.

Recently, I saw another of these hacks: the upside-down pastry. Usually, the videos showcase the most simple recipe: balsamic vinegar and onions; few people stray from this recipe. But I thought to myself almost immediately this will be a winner because it uses key cooking techniques that contrast tastes and textures. Something surely winner written all over it, so I just had to make some.

We bought a sheet of pastry (because making your own puff pastry would have been even more work), and various ingredients we wanted to try out. Burnt broccoli and lemon (again), pickled pepper and feta cheese with cured meat, camembert cheese with apricot and nut jam, and the classic apple and sugar.

According to @urban.scout, it is some of the best food she has ever tasted. It blew her mind away, and mine as well. The simplicity behind it for the flavor you get is what blows my mind.

So please follow along as I show you how I make these pastries. And please do try to make it! The little effort is surely worth it.

Ingredients/Recipe

One can be very fancy and make puff pastry from scratch, but life is too short for that. I just bought some puff pastry rolls and the following ingredients for the filling:

• pickled peppers,
• parmesan cheese,
• feta cheese,
• camembert cheese,
• broccoli,
• garlic,
• peach and fig and nut jam, and
• biltong.

Method

I begin by unrolling the puff pastry roll.

I then cut the rectangle shapes of the final pastries.

When this is done, I prepare all the ingredients. I always make burnt broccoli and lemon juice. See the video below of how I do this.

I deglaze the pan with lemon juice and "steam" the broccoli a bit:

The Different Flavors

I played with many different flavors. The nice thing about this pastry snack is that it is open to any flavor combination you can dream of. For the first one, I made burnt broccoli and lemon with garlic and parmesan.

The second one, the winner by far, and @urban.scout's favorite was feta cheese, pickled pepper, and biltong (cured meat). I have to admit, this is a winner.

The third one, just as good, but which turned out a bit dark, was camembert, fig and peach and nut. The combination works so well.

And lastly, I just had to try caramelized apple. This one was just as good and competed with the top place.

Put the Pastry Over the Filling

Now, I just laid the pastry rectangle over the filling. I halfheartedly pressed the pastry corners down with a fork. I could have added some butter to the bottom of each filling, but it was not too bad - that is, nothing sticked.

To not forget which one was which, we placed some clues on top.

Eggwash

A simple eggwash takes these pastries to the next level, especially presentation-wise.

Take an egg, add a little milk, and mix it well. Then you just "paint" it over all of the pastries.

Baking Time

Then you just need to bake them. We baked them a little too long, especially the sugar ones. But if you like dark caramel, it is fine. But set the oven a little hotter than recommended and bake for a little shorter. I baked them for about 10 minutes at 200C.

Scrape Them

Then it is time to scrape them. The sugar ones should be scraped first as the sugar will harden and you will struggle to get them loose. Here is a short video of how I did it:

Enjoy!

Then all there is to do is to enjoy them. They are seriously good, I cannot emphasize this enough. It entails a crispy bite, a caramelized filling of either sweet or savory, and it is bite-size perfect.

It does not matter what filling you use, it will get slightly burnt (in the very best way) and the top will remain crispy.

Experiment with Flavors

And now you can do this as well. The world is really one's oyster and you should experiment with any flavor combination you can dream of. In the future, I will make this again and try even more different flavors. The (1) apple and sugar and (2) feta and pepper ones will always remain on the menu as they are by far the best.

Postscriptum, a Perfect Date Night

This serves as the perfect date night snack; @urban.scout and I had so much fun making these. I would recommend this again 10 out of 10.

For now, happy cooking and stay well.

Have you ever tried to make this? Please let me know in the comments or what other flavors you could think of!

All of the photographs used in this post are my own taken with my iPhone. The recipes of the ingredients are my own, but the upside-down pastry idea is something that went viral on Instagram recently.