This Christmas cinnamon and apple roses, are a great festive recipe. The roses look really impressive and they are quite simple and quick to prepare. You will be surprised that you can create something so pretty with such a little effort. If you like to spend some time in the kitchen to prepare a special gift for your loved ones, you can make this roses. I’m sure they will appreciate such a beautiful bunch of edible flowers 🙂

And you need only couple cheap and basic ingredients: some flour, butter, couple apples, some sugar and cinnamon plus a lot of love and some creativity.

They might seem to be quite complicated to prepare, but actually when you give it a try, you’ll see it’s very easy. When you get into practice, you will be able to make several dozen, for all the family and friends 🙂 Just take some time to slice the apples quite thin, also do the same with the dough. If you make the dough quite thin – roses will be more crunchy. Or if you like shortcrust as much as I do, roll it slightly thicker – roses will be more substantial. For even quicker and easier option, or simply when you have no baking skills, you can use ready-made shortcrust pastry dough.

Christmas cinnamon & apple roses

NOTE: my measuring cup is 250ml regular glass

INGREDIENTS (for 12 roses):

• 1 cup of plain flour (plus some for dusting)
• about 80 g butter or coconut oil
• couple tablespoons of very cold water
• 2 large apples or 3 smaller ones
• cinnamon
• Demerara sugar/regular sugar or sugar alternative
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• powdered sugar or sugar substitute for decoration

Chop the flour and butter, add cold water and knead quickly, until the ingredients are combined. Form a disc and put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Wash the apples, do not peel them. In a pot, boil a little water with lemon juice (lemon will prevent the apples from darkening). Cut the apples in half, hollow the seeds. Cut them into very thin slices and put in a pot of water. Cook over very low heat for a couple minutes – until the apples are soft and more plastic. You have to make sure that they do not overcook. We just want them to be able to roll.

When the apples are soft, strain them on a sieve and set aside to cool.

Roll the cooled dough quite thinly into a rectangle – the longer side should be about 25 cm/10 inch. Cut the dough into stripes of about 5 cm/2 inch high.

Place the apple slices along the top edge of the dough stripe so that they extend 2/3 beyond the edge and overlap a bit. Exactly like in the photo. It is advisable to even lay out a bit more apple slices, I had the last two apples so I had to be less generous so that there would be enough for 12 muffins.

Sprinkle each stripe with cinnamon and sugar, then fold the lower part of the dough on the apple slices – the dough will hold the apples and it will be easier for you to roll up. The only thing left to do is roll the dough into a rose and put it in the muffin tray. Do exactly the same with each dough stripe until the muffin pan is full.

Preheat the oven to 190°C, put the form on the lower shelf of the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Lower shelf will be better, because we need to bake the dough until golden, to much heat over the apple part will make them dry.

Remove roses from the oven and set aside to cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and arrange on a tray or large plate.

Enjoy!