How to Make Mini Pastry Swirls

 Last Christmas, I made cinnamon and nut pastries, which were covered in a caramel-y, brown sugar and butter spread.  Much nicer than I may have just made them sound.  This year, I'm adding icing, chocolate & sugar - I'm having desserts for breakfast, come, do join me.

It's a busy time of year and as you know, if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, I'm all about buying pre-made, so a Sainsburys offer had me a sheet of puff pastry, ready to go.  Before starting, I unrolled my sheet and trimmed either end, as these have a tendency to dry out a little and can make the rolling stage difficult.  Each swirl was created by marking the sheet in to 5 equal sections, in line with the natural roll of the pastry, widthways, sprinkling the base ingredient in each section, coating the sides with a bit of butter to help them stick and then rolling each section tightly:

By now, the pastry will be fairly hot - so that your swirls keep shape and are easier to cut, pop them in the fridge for 10 minutes to cool:

....before cutting each roll widthways to form small swirls, lined on a baking tray for the oven:

Follow the instructions on your pack, but they will take around 15-20 minutes at 200 degrees C.

My first roll was a white chocolate drops and dried cranberry mix:

I baked only the pastry and white chocolate [to melt] and once taken from the oven, sprinkled with a few extra with the cranberries included:

Next, I created a butter base to hold the pastry together and roll into plain swirls for the bake:

...coating one with stripes of coffee icing once cooled and sprinkled with walnuts and the other with cinnamon icing and brown sugar:


Next, Chocolate Spread:

...with a few chocolate drops for good measure afterwards.

And finally, I did make a savoury option: brie and bacon.  I cut the cheese in to small squares that
could then be sprinkled on the pastry before the bake and cooked small squares of bacon to sprinkle
 on after with another helping of brie:

These are bite-sized, so don't require too much in the way of ingredients, but if one particular takes your fancy, they are just as easily created into larger versions.  The sweet swirls are just as good cooled, but try and serve the bacon and brie as soon as you can.

Perfect for creating some nibbles to share around if you have guests, or for keeping to yourself during a movie marathon afternoon.

see you next time x