Spinach and Ricotta Pinwheels

Now that you have a delicious pastry dough at your disposal. It is time to put it to good use!

I jumped right in and made a pinwheel. My kiddo loves them. Currently on the short list of acceptable foods.

I won't waste anymore time, here we go!

Spinach and Ricotta Pinwheels 

What you need:

Rolling Pin
Hard Flat Surface to work on
Hand blender with bowl attachment, or blender
Small Bowl
Non-stick baking sheet

Pastry Dough
Flour to dust surface
2 Handfuls of Spinach
1/2 cup ricotta Ricotta
Spices
Egg for egg wash (optional)

Let's Bake

- Preheat oven to 400
- Dust your surface with some flour
- Place your pre made dough in the flour and use your rolling pin to flatten out the dough

You can see that the dough is thin, but not too thin that it will fall apart if you move it. Remember we are stuffing this dough! 

- Let the dough rest while you blend up your handfuls of spinach 

You want to make sure that the spinach is chopped up fine, but not into a paste

- In a small bowl mix together your 1/2 cup of ricotta (or more to taste) chopped spinach, and spices 

- Take mixture and spoon it on to your rolled out dough 

- Evenly spread mixture all the way to the edge of the dough 

I made these twice before posting - props if you noticed that the dough was different!

- Now this is where I made my mistake. I rolled my dough from top to bottom. I should have rolled it from left to right (referring to the picture) 

- This would have allowed me to have a longer amount of dough to work with and to cut up.

- Once you have your dough and filling all rolled up, let the dough chill for a few minutes in the fridge (another mistake I made, and I had my filling spilling out all over the place. Made this mistake twice, and they still come out fine, but I invasion that the dough will cut better - you will have to let me know!)

- Line your non-stick baking sheet with your cut pinwheels - mine were about 1.5-2 inches wide

- They will not rise so you can put them pretty close together 

- The first time I made these I didn't put and egg wash on them, and they came out fine. If you are looking to make a more eye appealing pinwheel, then I would suggest an egg wash. Looking at the pictures, I know which one I would want to eat - but kids [sometimes] aren't picky.

With egg wash

Without egg wash 

- Pop them in the over for 30-40 min
- Keep out what you need and freeze the rest. They freeze beautifully!


Enjoy!

Fresh Pastry Dough

I've been looking for vessels to put the kiddo's food in. He's ooooover everything that I've posted so far.  Luckily he still loves breakfast - scrambled eggs, french toast, oatmeal, muffins, and frittatas. Needless to say lunch and dinner have become very trying. We've lapsed into eating a lot of small meals though out the day. I think it is him trying to tell me he wants to be a little bit more independent, or maybe he's just too chatty - he keeps making his bits of food talk to each other instead of eating them. Whatever this little eating bump is, there has been some light. He loves these pinwheels! I have even been able to sneak some chicken into them undetected (shhhhhh).

I saw someone make pinwheels for their little kiddo, and I was sold. But I ran into that similar problem - pastry dough, while flaky and delicious, has too many ingredients in it for my kiddo. So what did I do? Put my bread machine back to work. I made a fresh dough, and then filled that dough with all sorts of yumminess.

Fresh Pasty Dough

What You Need:

Bread Machine

1/2 cup water
3/4 cup butter (unsalted)
2 1/2 cups flour

Let's Bake:

- First place your butter in the freezer for about 15-20 mins

- While the butter is chilling measure out a 1/2 cup of water and throw some ice in it

- Get your bread machine ready and measure out your flour
- The reason for the freezer and ice is because you want to preserve the buttery goodness for as long as possible throughout the dough process! This will give you the flakey quality that you are looking for.
- After 15 mins, cube up your butter and put it in the bread machine

- Add your 1/2 cup of ice cold water (leave out the ice)

- Add your 2 1/2 cups of flour

- Set your bread machine to dough and go about your business! This is a great nap time prep!

- Once the dough is done split it into two even balls

- I used one immediately for pinwheels, and froze the other 

This first dough I used came out a bit dense. I will probably let it rest a little more before I use it again. When I used the frozen dough - it was perfect! Light and fluffy and a HUGE hit.

I will be using this again to make pizza, and maybe even cinnamon rolls!

Stay tuned for the pinwheels!

Enjoy!