First of all, so sorry the blog is so late readers! My broadband went down on Sunday night! So couldn’t upload this in time. However pure laziness is the reason it’s only actually up on Tuesday night! However, fear not, I’m still counting this entry as week 16, so there will be another bake for week 17, before the end of the week! I had a super busy week last week, so only had a couple of hours on Sunday night to bake, and wanted something straightforward. But I feel like I’m saying that almost every week! But I found something that was really straightforward – Cinnamon and Pecan Twists. However, as I didn’t have pecans, and did have peanuts that I didn’t use to decorate last week’s Candy Bar Pie, I decided to adapt the recipe to Peanut Twists. The blurb at the top of the recipe says any nuts can be used, so I followed their advice!
The Bake
As already noted above, I adapted the recipe by using
peanuts instead of pecans. But that’s
the only amendment I made. And that’s
mainly due to the fact the recipe uses shop-bought puff pastry. That’s right, shop bought pastry! For a lot of bakers buying any element of the
bake is a cardinal baking sin, but if the recipe tells you, it must be
ok!?! And I even had puff pastry in the
freezer already. The first step is to
roll out the pastry until it’s 5mm thick, however this pastry was even pre-rolled! It was flat then rolled on a piece of
parchment paper, so after defrosting it all I needed to do was unravel it. This also meant I didn’t need to make a mess
sprinkling flour on the work surface. 
Possibly the simplest first step so far?! The next step is to chop the nuts. I wasn’t really sure how I’d go about chopping the nuts, knowing that by just using a knife it could be time-consuming, dangerous and messy. However I was using my mother’s kitchen, and thus utensils, and she suggested using her herb chopper-contraption. It was great for the task at hand, as I could just go back and forth along the nuts on a chopping board. Once chopped, the nuts are added to a mixture of soft brown sugar and cinnamon, mixed, then spread evenly across the pastry which has had an egg-wash, pressing the mixture down.
And that’s it for the ingredients and assembling. The final step is to make the twists
themselves. I put baking paper on two
baking trays, and then made 20 strips from the pastry rectangle. I tried to make them equal/straight, but it
wasn’t a complete success, with some thinner than others. I was then to twist the pastry into spirals,
and put them onto the baking trays. With
the first spiral, I discovered it was too long for the baking tray! So I had to fold each one in half. Some I folded with the mixture on the inside,
and the other half with the mix on the outside, which you can sort of tell from
the baking trays on the picture below.
Then leave to bake for 20 minutes.
I was a little worried how they would look once cooked since
I’d folded them over, and thought maybe the ends would look a bit strange, but
they turned out perfectly. Golden brown
and flaky. The blurb suggests drizzling
maple syrup over them, and I didn’t need to be told twice! They taste really good too - again, flaky,
and the brown sugar caramelises the nuts.
The maple syrup is a great addition too.
I recommend a couple with a cup of milk.
Happy baking!
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