Sausage Roll Scrolls

Justine Schofield's sausage roll filling stuffed with grated carrot and zucchini, rolled into puff pastry scrolls and baked until the pastry turns deep gold and the bottoms crisp. Australian bakery food, with the vegetables hidden inside so they get eaten without negotiation. Tomato sauce alongside.

The Australian sausage roll has lived in every bakery counter and lamington-drive cake stall since the post-war years, the British meat-pastry tradition transposed onto the Anzac convenience-food landscape. The traditional version uses straight sausage mince and puff pastry; the modern home-cook upgrade pulls the sausage out of its casings and adds finely-grated vegetables for both nutrition and moisture, producing a juicier, more vegetable-forward final scroll.

The grated-vegetable trick is the parenting move worth importing into adult cooking. Carrot and zucchini grated fine on a box grater, then squeezed dry in a clean tea towel to remove the water, fold into the seasoned mince without altering the savoury sausage-roll flavour. Kids who refuse vegetables on a plate happily eat them when concealed inside familiar pastry.

The scroll shape (rather than the traditional log-and-slice technique) is the modern Australian café format that has spread from Melbourne brunch spots into home kitchens. The pastry rolled into a single long log with the filling spread evenly inside, then cut into 2cm rounds and laid flat in the baking tray. The scrolls bake faster than logs (around twenty-five minutes at 190 degrees) and the cross-section displays the spiral of filling and pastry on the plate. Tomato sauce on the side; eaten standing at the bench.