Hi Honeys,
How are you today? All well, happy and enjoying a beautiful spring I hope? It was a grey, overcast day today in Scotland but we have our first peony rose of the year in the garden🌹 The lavender, and the apple blossom on our little apple tree, are both being visited by friendly wee bees🐝 and we have so many feathery guests, including lots of baby birds, visiting the feeders every day. It's such a joy to be at the kitchen window and watch them playing on the grass and flying in and out of the apple tree to the feeders💖
I'm starting to feel better too honeys. I'm finally reaching the end of a "flare" of arthritis and I'm starting to feel (almost) human again. How is it that I always forget how painful it can be? I mean, as fellow spoonies all know, chronic illnesses with their associated baggage of aches, pains and exhaustion are awful but I always manage to forget how bad they can be once the latest episode of more-extreme-than-usual ouchiness has passed. Till the next flare of course.
For anyone currently suffering a "flare" I'm sending you lots of gentle "spoonie" hugs and prayers that it will pass soon so you can feel better dear ones. Stay strong and take care of yourself 💖 Self care is not selfish, it's essential 💖💋
Even as I type that last sentence, I know I'm not living by it properly right now honeys. I do try but I suppose I'm a work in progress and sometimes drained body batteries win the argument💖
Onwards to today's post then, dear ones. I thought I'd share a little hack to making a quicker, maybe even a healthier, version of one of Hubby's favourite treats. Hubby cares for me in so many ways, from practical things (he's been doing our weekly grocery shop for so long now, ever since my mobility became so poor) to making every day so much better just by being there and being as supportive as he always is (thank you sweetheart, love you x)
One of Hubby's favourite treats are cinnamon rolls. Every visit we've made to Ikea has usually included a visit to their food hall to bring home a pack of their ready to bake cinnamon rolls. Another of his favourites is puff pastry, added as a topping or side to dinners, such as with steak in gravy or to a chicken hot pot. So I do try to add it to dinners when I can as a treat for him.
Hubby and I have been having the best time in the kitchen recently trying out lots of recipe hacks and food experiments, but mostly just laughing and having the best time. One of these more recent giggle sessions in the kitchen, resulted in an experiment that combined two of Hubby's favourites - the aforementioned cinnamon rolls and puff pastry 💖
So, giggles and grins aside, although those were the most fun bits 😊 Did it work? Did they taste as good as they ended up looking? What about making them healthy? What do you mean you didn't use any sugar?
OK, I'll tell all honeys but first, why not go grab a cuppa (and maybe a cookie or two too 😊) and I'll meet you after the page break for lots of photos and a super easy way to make the most delicious treat in no time at all. See you in a few minutes...
Welcome back honeys 😊 Do you have your cuppa? Me too ☕🍪 Let's take a look at these wonderfully cinnamon-y, flaky, pastry treats then shall we?
Almost Instant (And A Wee Bit Healthier) Cinnamon Rolls...
Ingredients:
1 pack of ready made puff pastry (rolled in a sheet type)
Olive oil spread (replaced butter in the original recipe)
Stevia (replaced sugar in the original recipe)
Ground cinnamon (use that jar in the spice drawer honeys)
Directions:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180c/350F/gas mark 4
2. Remove the sheet of puff pastry from it's packaging and lay it flat on your work space. The pack we bought was rolled up in it's own baking parchment, so if yours is too, just roll it out, leaving it on it's original parchment which will allow it to be easily moved onto a baking tray. If not, lightly flour your worktop to prevent sticking honeys.
3. Since I was trying to make a healthier version of Hubby's favourite treat, I decided that, instead of melting butter and coating the surface of the pastry sheet (cholesterol! Goodness no!) I would instead use what we had on hand. Some time ago we switched from our then regular spread (we'd already switched away from butter after the Dr raised the subject of Hubby's cholesterol) to an olive oil spread, so we just grabbed a butter knife and (lightly! We don't want it all soggy) spread a layer of this lovely healthy spread over the top of the pastry sheet...
4. This was followed by a good sprinkling of ground cinnamon (we'd made a start in the photo above as you can see 😄) all across the pastry (right up to the edges honeys.) Once this is done, follow by an equally good sprinkling of
not sugar.
Not sugar you say Rosie? Well, yes honeys. I know there should be a layer of sugar. In fact, some recipes for cinnamon rolls ask for the sugar and cinnamon to be combined and the coating done in a single layer. This was our first attempt though so we were finding our way, as well as chuckling our heads off while deciding how much cinnamon to use.
I quite like cinnamon of course, especially with anything that has apples, but Hubby... Hubby has never met a cinnamon he doesn't like and I'm quite sure he'd be eating the sugar sticks from the jar on the spice rail like lollipops if I didn't keep a watch on him lol 😄
As a general rule of thumb (and being diabetic) I stay as far away from sugar as it's possible to be. Instead I use stevia instead. It's a sugar substitute made from the stevia plant, but if you'd like to you could use a thin layer of honey? We used what was on hand though so stevia it was.
5. Onc all of the sprinkling was all done, the roll/sheet of pastry was carefully rolled up to produce a long roll. This roll should be cut in half. Then cut in half again, then again. This will produce 8 equal pieces of the pastry roll.
6. Next we fetched (Hubby did actually, thank you honey x) a large round glass oven-proof dish. The dish was given a light spray of oil and the pastry pieces were placed inside, allowing room for them to rise and grow in the dish...
7. The pastry spirals were placed into the pre-heated oven and allowed to bake for 18-20 minutes and they became these lovely treats...
8. Oh my!! The smell of cinnamon filled the kitchen when the oven door was opened honeys! It was wonderful 💗😍😋
9. Now, we get to the really difficult part of this whole process... waiting for them to cool down before munching happily on these yummy treats 😋
10. While waiting, you could decide on what to do with your yummy cinnamon rolls. Again, what should be done of course is to make up lovely icing sugar and drizzle it all over them but instead, Hubby and I decided to sprinkle a little stevia across the top instead and go right ahead and put the kettle on...
They were sooooo good honeys!! Positively a treat and so easy (and fast) to make too. We've actually made them since and added thin slices of apple as it was rolled up. It made for a very knobbly and uneven roll but the combination of baked apples and all of that cinnamon (there was lots more used the second time around... even more so than this first experiment) was delicious 😋
Looking back on it, next time I make these (and there will definitely be a next time!) I think I'll try adding a layer of apple sauce instead?
The apple sauce might actually be sweet enough on its own so that the stevia isn't needed, nor the butter/spread either? If the apple sauce (or stewed apples) is spread over the pastry, then the cinnamon sprinkled on top, it might actually be prefect 💖💖💖💖
What do you think honeys? Have you tried using puff pastry to make cinnamon rolls? I actually carried out another experiment a while ago where I used puff pastry to make a pizza.
As you can see, I made these cinnamon rolls super quickly by using a ready made sheet of puff pastry, but if you'd rather make your own puff pastry, and I would encourage you to do that (homemade is always better) it's so quick and easy and, as promised, here's how I make ours...
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Super Easy Puff Pastry:
Ingredients
250g of plain white flour
Pinch of salt - optional. I add a pinch of salt when using the pastry in a savoury dish (but not a sweet one) but it's up to you honeys.
250g of butter at room temperature - yes we all try to avoid using full butter for health reasons but for puff pastry it works better.
150ml (approx) of cold water.
Directions
1. Sieve flour (and salt if using) into a large bowl.
2. Add butter which has been roughly cut into chunks. Make sure it's not too warm, you want it to be room temperature but not runny or melting.
4. Make a well in the middle of the flour/butter mixture and pour in around 2/3 of the cold water. Make sure the water is cold so that it doesn't raise the temperature of the butter and cause it to melt.
5. Mix until you have a thick, firm dough, adding a little extra water if needed. Be careful though because it's easier to add than remove it again!
6. When you have a firm dough cover your bowl with cling film or a clean tea towel and place into the fridge to rest for approximately 15-20 minutes (longer is better.)
7. Roll out on a flour coated surface being careful to handle it as little as possible to avoid raising the temperature of the pastry.
8. If you're not going to use the pastry right away, or any leftover pastry, should be wrapped in plastic wrap (or beeswax paper) or placed into an airtight (freezer-proof) container and can be kept in the fridge for up to 3 days or frozen for up to a month.
When you want to use it, remove the frozen pastry from the freezer the night before and place into the fridge to defrost overnight.
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙 There we have it then honeys. Have you tried puff pastry cinnamon rolls? This would be such a great little recipe to have tiny humans help make 😊 Wee ones love to cook, they have such fun and can have a yummy treat to eat that they've made and can share with loved family members? Maybe they could help make a batch and take them with them to visit grandparents?
The more I look at this photo honeys, the more I'm tempted to go into the kitchen and make another batch, and I do have a jar of apple sauce in the fridge....
Have a great weekend dear ones, thank you for spending some time with me and making my little corner of the internet less lonely💖 Till next time dear ones, hugs always x
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