Sweet pinwheels – the ones in the picture are cinnamon – are essentially just puff pastry and sugar. You sprinkle your work surface with sugar (in this case, cinnamon-sugar), lay out the puff pastry, sprinkle the top with sugar and roll out the dough, turning it occasionally and making sure that you roll the sugar into the dough to sweeten it. (I used Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets for these and, as you’ll see in the recipe, I didn’t unfold them; instead I started with the packet and rolled the sheet into a 13-x-15-inch rectangle.) Then you roll the dough up jellyroll-style. All that’s left is to cut the dough into 1/2-inch thick rounds and bake them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (I actually like parchment more than my beloved silicone mats here.) They take about 20 to 25 minutes in a 350-degree F oven.
There are just three important things to keep in mind about these crispy caramel cookies:
1) They need to bake all the way through to their centers. There’s nothing worse than having a cookie that’s crunchy, crunchy and then raw in the middle.
2) As soon as the cookies are baked, immediately, use a metal spatula to lift them off the parchment-lined baking sheet and immediately flip them over onto clean parchment – either find a clean spot on the sheet they baked on or use a new sheet of paper. The flipped-over side (the side that baked against the paper) will be shinier and more caramelized and this is the side you want to serve face-up.
3) Let them cool before you taste or serve them – caramelized sugar is lethally hot.
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Savory Puff Pastry Pinwheels
When I got back to Paris, one of the first things I did was to make these savory pastries. In Paris, where all-butter puff pastry is as near as the closest supermarket, I used a round sheet of pastry, pre-cut to make a tart crust. The dough was already rolled out, so all I did was brush the top of the dough with a little melted butter, sprinkle the surface with fleur de sel, and then dust it with seaweed flakes. Instead of slicing them into 1/2-inch rounds, as I’d done with the sweet pinwheels, I cut these very thin – the rounds were between 1/6- and 1/4-inch thick. And, because the pastry was different, I baked them in a 375-degree F oven for about 17 minutes. You’ll have to experiment a little when you bake these – keep an eye on them, look for the baked-through center and then pull them out of the oven. No need to flip these, just put them on a rack to cool. While you can serve the pinwheels warm, if you’d like, I think the seaweed flavor is more pronounced when the cookies have cooled.
Via doriegreenspan.com.