Cinnamon Apricot Swirls

Submitted by Charmie777

"------Decadent combination of cinnamon rolls and puff pastry!! This makes the house smell wonderful and the taste is even better!! You can easily halve the recipe, but why would you??!!------"

 

• Ready In: 35mins
• Ingredients: 8
• Yields: 16 swirls

ingredients

• 17 1⁄3 ounces puff pastry sheets (1 box)
• 1⁄2 cup dried apricot
• 1 cup butter, slightly softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1⁄2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon shortening
• 1⁄4 cup toasted sliced almonds (optional)

directions

1. Defrost puff pastry according to package directions. Preheat oven to 400º.
2. Place apricots in a bowl and pour enough boiling water over to cover. Let sit for 10 minutes; drain well and chop into very small pieces.
3. In another bowl combine butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.
4. On lightly floured surface, roll out one sheet of puff pastry to seal creases.
5. Spread half of the butter mixture over pastry almost to the edges. Sprinkle half of the chopped apricots on top.
6. From one edge, tightly roll up the pastry into a long log. Seal the edge using a little water.
7. Slice the log into 8 spirals and place cut side up on foil or parchment-lined baking sheet.
8. Chill in refrigerator for about 15 minutes to firm up the butter. Repeat with remaining ingredients (except white chocolate and shortening).
9. Bake at 400º for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
10. Place white chocolate chips and shortening in small zip-lock baggie. Microwave on HIGH for 30 seconds. Knead bag to combine.
11. Cut a small slit in corner of bag and drizzle white chocolate over the swirls.
12. Sprinkle with toasted almond slices, if desired.

Reviews

[PanNan]

The concept is very appealing. The house did smell wonderful, and the taste of the apricots and cinnamon was real nice. However, this recipe needs more tweaking. There was way too much butter mixture for this to work for me. While baking, the pastry on the bottom fried in all the extra butter fat that drained out, which made the rolls real greasy and the bottom crust fried crispy/hard. There was a pool of melted butter left in the pan when I removed the swirls after baking. I would recommend cutting the butter mixture at least in half.

 

[kiwidutch]

Reviewed for RSC#9. Lovely taste! I would need to change a few things if I made these again however. Dutch ready-made pastry comes in boxes with 10 small sheets, and my first attempt was the join two sheets together to make one long rectangle so that I could get a proper “swirl� .. unfortunately the pressure of the filling meant that the swirl split repeatedly at the join and the results, while tasty, weren’t too photogenic to say the least… so I made it again.. This time I used one sheet each and yes they were tiny… and this time the filling was also hard to keep inside due to lack of pastry. NONE of this is the fault of the recipe, just due to stupidly small pieces of Dutch pastry! I would make these aagain and I would use the one sheet of pastry but puree the apricot mixture so that it was smoother and so that I could spread it better and more thinly over the pastry and get a tighter roll up next time. I cut this recipe down to just a few serves and the first time saw that there seemed to be too much butter, so when I made it made it a second time (also for 2 serves) I used half the amount of butter and it seemed to produce a far better result. Taste? we liked it. DO DO DO add the toasted almonds, and that white chocolate dripped on top… that combo was wonderful. Please see my rating system: a lovely 3 stars for a recipe that could be fabulous with some small aulturations to the butter quantity. Thanks!

 

[Trisha W]

I made these for a snack tonight. They were very tasty right out of the oven. The problem I had was the filling melted while cooking and ran everywhere. Unfortunately, I had them cooking on a flat cookie pan so it dripped down into my overn and made lots of smoke. I put the next group on a cookie sheet with short sides and tried to tighten the pastry up some. These were good esp. while still warm. However, since the butter mixture basically melted out of them, and the pastry opened up I would be hesitant to make them again. My husband did continue to eat them cold for a couple of days.