Apple rosette tarts

Stacy served pretty, apple rosettes at the Whitworth Ranch Retreat, and I was smitten. I'd been wanting to try some myself, but thought they looked too complicated. Seeing hers in person, and tasting how wonderful they were, gave me courage to try some on my own. I think they turned out nice, even though mine are more like full blown roses than rosettes.

I'm hoping to make these for Birdsong too, so I wanted to practice and see how it went. It was fast, and easy. My only problem was being patient while the dough thawed, I didn't plan ahead and was in a rush. I was also in too big of a rush to wait for them to cool, and popped one into my mouth too soon. That was a mistake.

I'm afraid I didn't follow the recipe, I'd looked at it weeks ago, and had an idea on how it was done, but didn't refer back to it. Mine was close enough.

First, thaw puff pastry.

Next, cut apples in half, core, then slice paper thin. Microwave the slices in lemon water to soften them. I used organic Gala apples for mine, they had a nice flavor.

Roll out the pastry, cut each piece down the center lengthwise, and line up apple slices along the pastry so that they peek over the top edge and sprinkle with a cinnamon sugar mix. I used brown sugar.

I also added extra apple slices to the middle of the dough, not just along the top edge. (I wanted mine to be more fruity)

Roll up, and pop into muffin tins.

Bake and wait til they cool to eat, because that cinnamon sugar will burn your mouth when it is hot.

Believe me, I know. I couldn't wait for them to cool! The whole house smelled great and the tarts were looking as tasty as can be. And they really were just wonderful.

You can follow a real recipe and do it right by looking these up on Pinterest, they are all over the place and the recipes there are certainly more precise than the way I wrote this up. Or just wing it, like I did. It is pretty hard to mess these up, they are much easier to make than you'd think.

French Macarons were also attempted, not quite as successful as the tarts. But still delicious, so I went with the crookedness and will call them Kansas Macarons instead.

A week ago, I tried to make some, and those weren't as good as these, some of those turned into explosive pockets of air instead of cookies. They aren't an easy thing to make, especially if you have an aversion to recipes like I do.

I kind of skim a few, get the gist of the idea, then whip something up. It has worked well with me for most things, including fresh baked breads. But I might need to actually follow directions to get these right.

Still, these are getting closer, see the little feet/ruffles on the bottom of some of them? (I was so happy to see those developing, I snapped a photo while they were still in the oven) Of course they look more like biscuits than cookies, but I promise,they taste pretty good. Mine are made with vanilla beans scraped from the pods instead of liquid vanilla because I was worried about adding anything else to the batter. I also declined to add coloring.

The filling was the best part, though. I warmed up cream, melted white chocolate in it, whipped it with butter and some more vanilla beans. I could've just eaten that by the spoonful.

The macarons are frozen and ready to serve for Birdsong. I tried freezing some tarts, but they don't taste as good if not straight from the oven, so I'll be making those the night before our party.