Cooking On The Range: Cinnamon Swirl Catherine Wheels

Buttered Pastry swirls filled with chocolate, raisins, sugar and of course, the key ingredient, Cinnamon! What could be better on a cold November evening?

Last night, I was feeling slightly down thinking about how my half term holiday was coming to an end after watching the fabulous firworks light up the night sky and couln't help but want to eat something that would make me fell all warm and fuzzy inside, so I raided my cupboard for Sugar, Spice and all things nice and threw together this recipe. After cooking them, definatly my favourate part was just to smell the warm scent of cinnamon wafting through the kitchen, and the don't taste too bad either. They definatly cheered me up, and hopefully they'll do the same for you.

Also, I've decided to try and modeify the layout of these posts. I know you people probably don't need to see all these stages, and really only need photos when things get confusing, however, as the posts take up a whole ton of space, I'll try to make the photos smaller, and remove the captions which are probably space and time wasting when you try to print. So from now on, I'll number the recipe stages and just put the corrisponding number to the correct photo. Hope this makes things easier! x

Ingredients (Makes about 10 swirls);

1 x 320g Pre-Rolled Puff Pastry Sheet (or as close to 320g as you can get)
50g Butter, Melted
60g Demorara Sugar
30g Raisins or Sultanas
20g Chocolate, Grated
1 & 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
3/4 tsp Ground Nutmeg

Method;
1. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 7 / Roll out the pastry sheet, try to get one that is already on a sheet as this will make things easier. After it is flat melt the butter in a small dish and use a pastry brush to lather the pastry with the butter. Make sure that you spread it to the very edges, this is important. You should have some left over butter, you will need this later.
2. Next sprinkle the sugar over the pastry, once again making sure completely even coverage of the pastry
3. Do the same with the rasins or sultanas followed by the chocolate. If possible use a very fine grater as this allows the chocolate to melt easier, but if you don't have one, then a larger grater will be fine.
4. Finish the pastry off with the Cinnamon and the Nutmeg. This is probably the hardest part as it can be difficult trying to get the spices to be evenly distributed over the pastry so I would put the spices on a spoon and gently tap it, covering the pastry until it looks relitivly even.
5. Now cut lengthways down the pastry with a sharp knife. Make the ribbons about 3cm wide and only cut one at a time.
6. Start at one end and begin to roll up the pastry so that it looks like a snail. You may find that the pastry sticks to your fingers, if so then use a little flour and try to touch it as little as possible. I found the speed was the skill here and I worked the pastry into a curl by 'walking' my fingers over the curl quickly so that it didn't stick. It may take a few tries to get it right, but you'll get the hang of it.
7. At the end of each curl dab a little butter so that the curl sticks and place it onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment
8. After you've done all the curls and they are on the tray, use any extra butter to brish over the curls. Also if any of the fillings fell off during the curling process, then pick this up and scatter of them.
9. Cook in the oven for 10 minutes and don't let them burn. They are best eaten when warm but will keep for a few days.