Easy Cornish Pasties — The Senior-Class-Fundraiser Bake

The senior class senior trip fund was short by twelve hundred dollars at the end of February. The class had been holding car washes and selling candy bars all year, and the trip-cost-per-student had come in higher than the original budget because the bus charter had raised its price, and twelve hundred was the gap between “everybody goes” and “some kids stay home.” Mr. Briggs caught me in the hall after fourth period on a Thursday and asked if I’d be willing to organize a bake sale to close the gap. He framed it carefully — he didn’t make it a big deal, didn’t make it a leadership opportunity, didn’t use any of the words you’d expect a teacher to use about a student leadership role. He just said, “Turner. We’re short twelve hundred. You’re the one who knows how to make food sell. Want to fix it?”

I said yes if it could be a Saturday at the Sapulpa winter farmers market parking lot, which would give us foot traffic we couldn’t generate at the school, and Mr. Briggs said he could arrange that with the principal and with the market manager. We had three weeks until the trip-payment deadline. I had a budget of three hundred from the senior-class treasury for ingredients, which I knew I could stretch into about four times that in retail value if we worked smart.

I picked Cornish pasties as the centerpiece of the sale because they hit five criteria at once: they’re portable (no plate or fork required), hand-held (eaters can walk and shop), savory (everybody at a winter market wants something salty after walking around), hold for hours at room temperature without sogging (a baked-good failure mode at outdoor sales), and feel substantial enough that people are willing to pay six dollars for one without flinching. The classic British miner’s pasty was designed to be a portable hot lunch a man could eat one-handed underground — the design is functional. I’d been making variations of pasties since the previous winter when I’d found a Cornish cookbook at the library, and I knew the dough and the filling cold.

The filling: ground beef (eighty-twenty, browned and drained); diced russet potato in quarter-inch dice; diced yellow onion; diced carrot; diced parsnip; salt, pepper, fresh thyme. The vegetables go in raw, not pre-cooked — they cook inside the pasty during the bake, and pre-cooked vegetables turn to mush in the second cook. The pastry is cold-butter shortcrust: three cups of all-purpose flour, one cup of cold cubed butter cut in with a pastry blender or fingertips until pea-sized, a half-teaspoon of salt, and four to six tablespoons of ice water added a tablespoon at a time until the dough just comes together. Dough rests in the fridge thirty minutes minimum. Roll, cut six-inch rounds with a small bowl, fill each round with two heaping tablespoons of filling, fold over into a half-moon, crimp the edges with fingertips into the classic rope-twist seal, brush with egg wash, slit a small steam vent, bake at three-seventy-five for thirty-five minutes until golden.

I taught five other AP English classmates how to make them in our home kitchen on a Friday night three weeks out — Olivia, Megan, Tomas, Lacey, and Brandon. The kitchen had every flat surface covered in flour. We made eighty pasties that first night just as the practice run, ate two each, and froze the rest for the actual sale. Over the next two Saturdays of shared kitchen time, the six of us made four hundred pasties total. We rotated stations — one person on filling, one on dough, two on assembly, two on the oven and the cooling racks. The kitchen ran like a small commercial bakery for two consecutive weekends.

Saturday-of-the-sale we set up at the Sapulpa winter farmers market parking lot with two folding tables, a hand-lettered sign reading “SAPULPA HIGH CLASS OF 2019 — HELP US GO,” a cash box with starter change, and four hundred pasties on cooling racks under a tarp tent. We priced them at six dollars each, two for eleven, three for fifteen, and we sold cookies and brownies and cinnamon rolls alongside at lower price points to capture the “I just want a snack” customer.

We sold out by one PM. Sold out completely by one PM — an hour earlier than I’d planned for, with people still coming up to the table at one-fifteen who we had to turn away. Total raised across the day, including pasties and the cookies and the donations: nineteen hundred and forty dollars. The senior class trip is now funded with a buffer of seven hundred for emergencies. Mr. Briggs sent a long email to the principal Monday morning naming each of the five students who’d worked the bake sale with me. He named me last in the email, which Mr. Briggs does on purpose when he’s respecting somebody’s leadership; he wants the team named first and the leader named last because the leader is the role that doesn’t need the email to know what they did. I read the email at lunch and didn’t say anything about it to anyone.

Vegetables go in raw — that’s the rule. Crimp the rope-twist seal. Here’s the build.

Easy Cornish Pasties

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup cold butter, cubed
• 5–6 tablespoons ice water
• 3/4 lb beef sirloin or skirt steak, finely diced
• 1 cup Yukon Gold potato, peeled and finely diced (about 1 medium)
• 1/2 cup turnip or rutabaga, peeled and finely diced
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)

Instructions

1. Make the pastry. Combine flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Cut in cold butter with a pastry cutter or your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add ice water one tablespoon at a time, mixing just until the dough comes together. Divide into 6 equal balls, flatten into discs, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
2. Prepare the filling. In a bowl, combine the diced beef, potato, turnip, and onion. Season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Toss until evenly mixed. Do not pre-cook — the filling cooks inside the pastry.
3. Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
4. Assemble the pasties. On a lightly floured surface, roll each pastry disc into a circle about 7 inches in diameter. Spoon roughly 1/2 cup of filling onto one half of each circle, leaving a 3/4-inch border at the edge. Fold the empty half of dough over the filling to form a half-moon shape. Press the edges firmly together, then crimp with a fork or fold and pinch by hand to seal.
5. Vent and wash. Place pasties on the prepared baking sheet. Cut two small slits in the top of each pastry to allow steam to escape. Brush generously with beaten egg.
6. Bake. Bake at 400°F for 40–45 minutes, until the crust is deep golden brown and the filling is cooked through. Let rest 5 minutes before serving — the inside will be very hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 490mg