Pinwheels

Pinwheels and Patterns seem to be everywhere. Two pictures for you. One from a hike Dean and I took in the Santa Monica Mountains. The other, from Hearst Castle. If you've not been there, I highly recommend it. Two small pinwheel-type recipes for you today. I've only made the savory version - but Dean liked it! Yes, my meat and potatoes guy loved the seaweed! Go figure. I don't use puff pastry often enough. These recipes come from the great food blogger Dorie Greenspan, with a few tiny variations. She also (today!) has a recipe on her blog for Puff Pastry Pizza. Woo, that'll be next.

Cinnamon Pinwheels OR
Seaweed Pinwheels

1 cup sugar
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cinnamon (to taste)
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (about 8 1/2 oz.), thawed but still cold

1. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together; dust work surface with half of it. Don’t unfold the puff pastry. Put it on the sugar and dust the top. Roll the dough, keeping sugar on both sides, into a 13-x-15-inch rectangle.

2. Brush off excess sugar and, starting from a short side, roll up the dough jelly-roll fashion. Cut 1/2-inch-thick slices and place them 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

3. Bake at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes, or until baked through to the center. Lift them off the sheet immediately and turn them over onto a clean sheet of parchment. Cool before serving.

For the Savory Seaweed Version:

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 salt, and then dust it with seaweed flakes. Trader Joe’s sells bags of dried seaweed now, chich practically crumble when you touch them. 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. Bake these longer, in a 375-degree F oven for about 17 minutes. No need to flip these, just put them on a rack to cool.