Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls

There are certain food combinations that will always, always remain a favourite of mine. Apples and cinnamon are just made to go together. I love cinnamon rolls and so, inspired by The Pioneer Woman, I decided to make a batch of caramel-apple cinnamon rolls. I used her cinnamon roll recipe, which you can find here, however I'll write up the ingredients list and method for those too lazy to go to another link. And I know there are some of you out there.

Just a word of warning to those of you thinking of attempting this... It's actually a very simple recipe. However, it does take a lot of time, so maybe save this for one of those days when you don't feel like going out or don't have much to do because this does require quite a lot of waiting around. So do what I did- save it for a day when there's a DVD/film you want to watch, so that you have something to entertain yourself with in between stages.

                                                These guys are made to go in cinnamon rolls.

Cinnamon roll ingredients (dough):
4 cups Whole Milk
1 cup Vegetable Oil
1 cup Sugar
2 packages Active Dry Yeast, 0.25 Ounce Packets
8 cups (Plus 1 Cup Extra, Separated) All-purpose Flour
1 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder
1 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda
1 Tablespoon (heaping) Salt
Plenty Of Melted Butter
2 cups Sugar
Generous Sprinkling Of Cinnamon

Caramel Apple topping:
1 stick (about 200g) of unsalted butter
1 1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of cream
2 crisp apples (whatever your preference- I used Pink Ladies as they were what I had at hand)


 First, mix your milk, vegetable oil and 1 cup of sugar in a large pan and 'scald' it. Scalding means bringing it up until just before boiling. Once the mixture has reached scalding point, turn off the heat and leave it on the stove to cool- this should take about an hour. When your mixture has cooled down until it is lukewarm or warm (but not hot), sprinkle in your yeast and let it sit for a minute.

Then enlist a willing helper to sift in your 8 cups of flour so that you can take photos (see above), and stir the mixture. Cover the mix and let it rise for at least an hour.

While waiting for your dough to rise, start on your caramel topping. Melt your butter in a pan then add your brown sugar. Stir over a low heat until combined and sticky. Add your cream and let it boil for a minute, then take it off the heat. Peel and core your apples, then dice them up (as fine or chunky as you like).

After an hour, you should see that the dough has risen to almost double it's original size and has lots of lovely little air bubbles in it. Yum.

Then add in another cup of flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir it all together and carefully turn it out onto a well floured surface. Take half the dough and shape it into a rough rectangle. Roll the dough out thin, trying to maintain the rectangle shape as much as you can.

Drizzle about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of melted butter over your rectangle of dough, followed by about a cup of sugar and a generous sprinkle of cinnamon.

 

This is wonderfully non-diet friendly. Which makes it better.

Starting at the end opposite you, carefully roll the dough towards you. Try to keep the roll fairly tight, then pinch the seam of the dough to seal it. 

  

Grease a round foil tin or cake pan with melted butter, then pour in some of your caramel sauce (enough to coat the bottom). Sprinkle on some of your diced apples. Begin cutting the rolls so that they are about an inch thick, then start laying them in your prepared pans. Repeat the process with the remaining half of your dough. Let your rolls rise for about 20-30 minutes and preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Once you've let your rolls rise in the pan, bake them in your oven for 15-18 minutes, until they have cooked and are coloured/golden brown.

Let them sit in the pan for a little bit, before turning them out onto a plate. Try not to drool upon seeing the delicious layer of caramel and apple topping the rolls...

                                                         So bad, they're good for you. Yum.

Now, go feed some grateful relatives/neighbours/friends... The rolls are lovely warm, but if they need to be kept they are really easily warmed up in the oven. Just cover them with foil and pop them in a low oven for a few minutes until they feel warm and the caramel topping has loosened up again- just remember to keep them in the cake tins until you want to eat them. 

Enjoy!

Cranberry Oat Cookies

I'm usually a very organised person. In my group of friends I'm always the one in charge of making Christmas dinner, responsible for organising outings, acting as travel agent for our group holidays, and generally making sure that things happen. However, I've managed to forget to take photos of the baked cookies. This is obviously not because I was too busy stuffing my face with them as soon as they came out of the oven, because I definitely saved all of the triple batch that I made to take into the office the next day. Obviously. Ahem. Anyway, this post is somewhat lacking a picture of the 'final product', so you're just going to have to take my word that they were golden brown and delicious. So there.

                        If you squint a little and tilt your head to the left, these will look like baked cookies. Honest.

Remember, because these biscuits are very oaty and have 'fruit' in them, you can pretty much pretend that they are healthy. Kinda. I did receive a minor complaint from a colleague who found them a little too healthy-tasting, as he'd been hoping for chocolate chip. Oh well...

Cranberry Oat Cookies
175g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
100g porridge oats
150g caster sugar (or golden caster sugar if you can get it)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
140g butter, chopped
100g dried cranberries (unsweetened, if possible)
1 egg, beaten


Sift together your flour and baking powder, then add your oats, sugar and cinnamon to the bowl. Mix well using your hands. 

Add in your butter and rub it into the mixture using your fingertips, until it has been completely incorporated into the mixture. It should be the texture of crumble-topping.

Stir in your cranberries and your egg, then mix well using a wooden spoon until it all comes together into a ball of dough. Lightly flour your work surface then turn the dough out and roll into a sausage-shape, about an inch wide (depending on how large you want your cookies to be).

Once you've rolled the dough into a log, wrap it in cling-film and chill it in the fridge until solid. At this point, you could also freeze your cookie dough for later; it should keep for about a month.

When you want to bake the cookies, pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius (on a fan oven). Unwrap the cookie-log and slice into inch-thick discs. Arrange them on a lined baking tray.

Bake for about 15 minutes (add on a few more minutes if baking from frozen), until the cookies are golden. Leave them on the tray to harden for a minute or so before moving them onto a wire rack to cool.

The recipe is really easy to double/triple, so you could easily make a bigger batch and then pop a log in the freezer, ready for any 'emergency' situations where you might need cookies. Enjoy!

Easiest Dessert Ever.

This dessert is so incredibly easy that I feel as though I'm cheating by making it/blogging it. Of course, now that I'm writing about how easy it is to make, I won't actually be able to impress people with it anymore. Gone are the days of exclamations of amazement while I stand there blushing modestly and graciously saying, "Oh, it was nothing really", while actually thinking it was nothing. I have nothing to gain from this, so it seems. Remind me why I'm doing this? See the sacrifices I make for this blog?

Anyway, this is basically my take on a Roux brothers' tart from their book, 'The Roux Brothers on Patisserie', which is my pastry/dessert bible and I love to pieces. The fact that the pages are covered in scuff and butter grease-marks just shows that it is well loved. Really. In their book, my pastry idols call their dessert 'Tarte Chaude aux Deux Fruits' and serve it with a delicate sabayon. I call mine 'Crispy Apple Tart' and served it with (good quality) shop-bought vanilla ice-cream. Why, yes, I am sophistication incarnate. Hells yeah.

But seriously, this is a ridiculously easy dessert that can be whipped up in no time at all and does genuinely look rather pretty and tastes scrummy. It's a nice, light finish to a dinner party (which is needed after my last post, since that tart is quite the opposite) and seems to go down well. I actually served it at the same dinner party mentioned in my last post, and my dinner guests did enjoy it. This also meant that I was able to rope the lovely Jason into taking photos of the final product, so once again photos are thanks to him.

Crispy Apple Tart
200g of puff pastry. (You could make your own, use trimmings, or use good-quality frozen butter puff pastry. Whatever floats your boat. Roux brothers suggest you could even use pate brisee if you like)
500g of dessert apples, Cox if you can get your hands on them.
70g of unsalted butter
60g of caster sugar
The juice of 1 small lemon, or half a lemon if you don't want it to be too zesty
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 240 degree Celsius. If you're using frozen puff pastry, then use the instructions on the pack. Place your pastry on a baking sheet and prick the surface lightly with a fork.

Peel, halve and core your apples, then cut each half into thin, even slices. You don't want them to be paper thin or they'll be mushy once you sautee them, but you do want them to be thin.

Place your apple slices in a pan and saute them with the butter, lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar for about 2 minutes, until they havejust softened a bit. Remove the apples from the pan and keep them aside to cool. Keep reducing the remaining liquid until it has thickened just a bit to a light syrupy consistency. At this point, you could also flambe the syrup with Calvados (as the Roux brother suggest), or just leave it be.

Arrange your cooled apple slices on your prepared pastry in an overlapped pattern, depending on the shape of your pastry. If you've rolled your own pastry, roll it into a circle and arrange the apples in a rosette. I used frozen pastry, which came in a square, and so just arranged the apples in overlapping rows, which still looked nice.

Using a pastry brush, brush the reserved cooking syrup over the apples before placing into the oven. If you want a slightly crisper top, you could sprinkle a little caster sugar over the top but if you're planning to do so, you should probably reduce the amount of sugar that you cook the apples in.

Place the tart in your preheated oven and allow to cook for 10 minutes. Remove from the tart from the oven after 10 minutes and brush a little more of the syrupy glaze over the apples before returning the tart to the oven for a further 5 minutes. The tart is ready once your pastry has puffed and is crispy.

The tart is fine to be served straight from the oven with a good scoop of ice-cream on the side, or lukewarm. Ice-cream is a must, though.

Enjoy! And please, if you do make this, don't be a fool like me and tell people how easy it is- just let them think you've spent hours slaving away in the kitchen. Ah, sweet regret...