I absolutely love working with phyllo – and eating pastries made with phyllo – and this easy peasy recipe turned out to be another fantastic pastry feast.

First of all, I made these using regular cheese, but you can replace that with dairy-free grated cheese. The butter I used was vegan anyway, and you can use that too. Phyllo sheets are vegan themselves, so in the end, you can easily make a vegan version of these pastries. The only thing you might struggle with is the pesto; however, there are many recipes online if you want to make vegan pesto.

Unfortunately, I have never seen a gluten-free phyllo pastry, and I’m too lazy to try to do it by myself, so I can’t give you any clues on making this pastry gluten-free.

I used phyllo sheets that I bought from the Turkish market here in Helsinki, in Itäkeskus. These sheets are not frozen, but they must be kept in the fridge. Before using them, you must leave them at room temperature for a while to get softer and do not break, especially while rolling them.

You can enjoy these rolls at any time of the day, at any meal. I hope you like them!
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Ingredients:

Difficulty: Easy
(makes 6)

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

75 gr butter (plus more if needed)
200 gr grated hard cheese
10 cherry tomatoes, cut in 2 or 3 pieces (I used tomatoes in different colours)
10 pitted green olives, cut in 2 or 3 pieces
2 roasted red peppers in a jar, diced
2 tbsp red pesto
12 phyllo sheets at room temperature

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Melt butter and set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, put cheese, tomatoes, olives, peppers, pesto, and mix well.

4. Take a phyllo sheet, brush with melted butter and put another sheet on top.

5. Using a small spoon, put a thin line of filling close to the sheets’ bottom edge. Roll the sheets, and then make a spiral. Tuck the spiral’s end to keep the shape closed since we will not use any mould around it.

6. Put the spirals on an oven tray with baking paper. My oven is relatively small, so I baked these in 2 batches (of 4 and 2 pastries), but if they fit on one tray in your oven, go ahead and bake them in one session. Before putting it in the oven, brush the pastries’ surface generously with the remaining melted butter. Put in the medium part of the oven and bake for 20-23 minutes until their surface is nicely browned. Once out of the oven, quickly transfer them onto a wire rack, so they keep their crispiness. Enjoy!