Happy Valentine’s Day! # 162: Apple Roses

Happy Valentine’s Day, and more importantly, happy belated Galentine’s Day! A coworker asked me if it was a real thing when I mentioned it yesterday and I was almost speechless. Leslie Knope would be appalled.

Do you all have those pinterest boards that you made years ago and haven’t looked at in forever? Well I took a trip down memory lane this week and found a board I’d made in college full of holiday-themed baking ideas. These apple rose gems screamed “make me!” so I got down to business.

This is the perfect impromptu bake – you just need 4 ingredients and a muffin tin! Frozen puff pastry is the star (yet again), whatever sweet jam you have in the fridge, a few apples and cinnamon. The lemon is just to keep the cut apples from oxidizing too quickly, so we can call it the secret 5th ingredient. Undercover lemon, if you will.

The recipe had an awesome sped-up video of the process and I was fascinated by the way she cored her apples. She cut them in half from the top down, and then cut out two small triangles at the top and bottom to get rid of the stem and bottom. She then carefully scooped out the center with the seeds and voila! A perfect cored apple. Clearly she had a lot of practice, as it took me way longer to cut out the seeds in the middle, but I’ll get there!

Slice it as thin as you can – these are your delicate rose petals! For every good slice, I also had two wonky slices. May you be more consistent (or just buy a ton of apples and buckle down).

Roll out your magical, defrosted puff pastry and slice it into 6 strips. Make sure to flour your work space first! It may be magical, but it still sticks to pastry boards.

Swoosh on some jam and start laying in your petals. For some reason I didn’t take a picture of the apple process after slicing them (oops!) but it’s really simple. You float the apple slices in lemon water until you’ve finished with all your apples. You then microwave them for 3 minutes (I know, super long, but it works!) They should be bendy after 3 minutes, but pop them in for longer if they’re not quite there yet. You don’t want them to snap when you roll up your rose!

Sprinkle on the cinnamon and tuck them into bed by folding up the bottom half of the pastry strip.

*Chris Harrison voice* Ladies, this is the final rose.

Pre-sauna. I crossed my fingers to see what would happen during the baking process – mainly: would they hold their shape? Some had more open petals and some were closer to rosebuds, so I thought I had a fighting chance of at least one of them resembling a rose after baking.

Ta-daa! They basically stayed exactly the same post-bake. (Ignore my well-loved pan, please.)

This is definitely my kind of bouquet!

There’s very little added sugar – just jam and the natural sweetness of the apples! So dousing them in powdered sugar (or whip cream, ice cream and caramel – pick your favorite) is a must.

Happy munching!

Recipe from: http://cookingwithmanuela.blogspot.com/2015/03/apple-roses.html