Sausage Encased in Cookie Dough (Full Moon Pastries)

This is another appetizer based on a  recipe from “Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”.  In the cookbook it is called “Full Moon Pastries” because of its round shape. But it is nothing similar to Chinese “Moon cake”. This is essentially a piece of sausage and cheese encased in a savory short bread cookie. This combo can’t possibly be bad. Although we did not have “Italian sausage” which is called for in the original recipe, we did have left-over “chicken and apple sausage” which we got from near-by gourmet market. My wife used that. Although this involved a bit of work it turned out to be a nice appetizer/finger food. Besides having it with wine in the evening, we had some for lunch served with green salad and cheese curd my wife made a few days ago (Picture #1).

You can see the sausage and cheese on the cut surface (#2).

Ingredients
For the pastry
3 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt

For the filling
sausage or any other hard spicy sausage, cut into ½-inch-thick slices (We used chicken apple sausage)
Dijon mustard (or hot sauce) to go on the sausage
slices of cheese to go on top of the sausage

Directions:
Mix the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until well blended. Add the flour and salt and mix thoroughly. Knead lightly and shape into a ball. Cut the ball into quarters. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours or overnight (#A). 

The original recipe says to roll each ball into a circle 1/8 inch thick then cut into 2 inch circles used to wrap the sausage top and bottom. This dough is extremely soft and is extremely difficult (i.e. impossible) to roll out into a large circle and then cut out into round pieces on which to place the sausage. We ended up shaping the quarters into ropes slightly larger in diameter than the sausage. Using those ropes we cut off a slice. Using our fingers (because it is way too soft to use a rolling pin) formed it into a flat round piece slightly larger in diameter than the sausage. We placed the sausage on top. Topped the sausage with some mustard (or hot sauce), and a piece of cheese (#B). Using the same finger shaping technique we formed a second piece of the dough to top the sausage, crimping the top and bottom edges together to encase the sausage (#C).

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes (#D). 

As mentioned earlier this dough is extremely soft. We tried cooking the assembled pieces in the oven fryer but the crust was too soft. It disintegrated and melted into the grate before it cooked. So we put the next batch in the refrigerator for a while to firm up the crust then baked it flat on a cookie sheet in the regular toaster oven. That worked. We also recommend using a cheese like smoked gouda that doesn’t melt entirely. The cheddar cheese we used on one of the batches melted entirely into the dough. 

These are very nice appetizers. The crust is like a soft savory butter cookie. The sausage provides nice texture and flavor. They were best using a hot sauce rather than just mustard. They are a fair amount of work but they are worth it.