Apple Roses

The other day an image of an "Apple Rose" popped up in my Facebook feed. Curious, I clicked the link and watched the video instructions of how to construct a very pretty looking dessert using a couple of apples and some puff pastry. I really wanted to give it a go but it required red skinned apples and I only have green or yellow skinned ones.

Then, this week, my friend Clare asked me if I would like to pick some apples off her tree. She was a bit busy to pick them herself as she was getting married at the weekend and then going away for two weeks honeymoon. So off I went to pick the apples and was amazed by how beautiful her tree was, laden as it was, with branch bending quantities of red apples. I gratefully helped myself to a couple of big bagfuls.

Now in the possession of red skinned apples, I purchased some ready-rolled puff pastry.That just left some jam to find... not difficult in this house. In fact, I had made Toffee Apple Jam this week so some of that seemed perfect.

The recipe is fairly straight forward to follow, taking about half an hour to complete before cooking and is very effective. There is something almost magical about seeing a rose form from apples wrapped in pastry and without any particular technical skill or tedious faffing. Indeed, the trickiest part of this recipe is the cooking. It requires about 45-50 minutes in the oven and the oven needs to be hot enough to get the puff pastry to rise but not so hot that the apples burn, and it needs to be slow enough to allow time for the pastry in the middle of the spiral to cook. On this attempt I would say that my apples were a little bit over coloured but it did not affect the flavour.

Indeed, the flavour was lovely. It was like an apple pie but less sweet. And everyone liked it, even my fussy daughter who has already requested that I make them again and said I should feel proud of how well they turned out!

Find the recipe here.