It looked easy enough…
Others had replicated the recipe successfully…
I wanted to give it a try.
Ideally it would have looked like this:
However, despite my valiant efforts… this was far from reality.
Not even Juliette would have called my creation a rose… but it did, indeed, taste just as sweet.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have tried the original recipe first, but let’s face it… apples just aren’t as tasty as pears. And I am definitely not the type of baker that follows recipes to the T; hence previous disasters with cakes that failed to rise due to haphazardly combined and unmeasured ingredients.
I remember the time when my mum… my own flesh and blood… sympathetically lied about the mysterious disappearance of two brick-like cakes. The conversation proceeded as such:
Me: Where are the cakes I made?
Mum (with shifty eyes): I ate it.
Me (incredulously): A whole two cakes?
Mum (still shifty eyed and fighting a telltale smile): Yes…
Me (still incredulous): Really, Mum? Where did they go?
Mum (with a sheepish, but self-satisfied grin): In the bin.
Though in my defense, I have improved! My recent baking experiments are no longer solely consumed by bins, though tend to lack the finesse of an experienced baker.
I’m a work in progress…
Back to my most recent attempt at pear roses… they look… like a congealed chocolatey mess. Or more colourfully described as a rectangular mass of chocolate and puff pastry from which slices of zombie pears struggle to emerge.
Perfect for Halloween, no?
Silence from the crowd.
Regardless, they tasted good and barely lasted two days. My alternative chocolate spread concoction, used to stick everything together, was a particularly successful and shall be used in future recipes requiring a chocolatey glue.
Hooray for trying new things and looking on the upside!
Pear and Chocolate “Rose” Rolls
Ingredients
- 4 small pears (sliced)
- ½ a lemon
- 1 store-bought roll of puff pastry
Ingredients for chocolate “glue”
- 3 heaping teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons of caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon (or as much as you like)
- 2 teaspoons of milk
Makes 8 rolls, Preparation time: 30 minutes, Cooking time: 30 minutes
- Put the sliced pears into a pot and fill with water until the pears are covered. Squeeze half the lemon and heat the pot until pears are soft and flexible.
- In the meanwhile, put all the dry ingredients for the chocolate glue into a cup and add the milk. Stir into a paste.
- Roll out the puff pastry and use a knife or pizza cutter to cut into eight rectangular pieces.
- Spread a layer of chocolate glue onto each piece of puff pastry and line up the sliced pears along the long side of the pastry starting from about the midline up. Then fold the bottom half of the pastry up and pinch the ends. Carefully roll into, well, a roll.
- Place the “rose” rolls into a cupcake/muffin tin (or in my case a loaf tin due to lack of equipment… hence the end product’s rectangular shape) and bake for about 30 minutes at 180° (or until pastry is golden brown).
Buon appetito!
food coma 