Red Hot Rose Apples

These apples roses are fabulous!  Every time I serve them, folks are wowed.  And they have no idea how easy they are – until they ask for the recipe and try them.  You’ll want to too!

They take some prep work, but the finished product is well worth it.  They taste fabulous and they look even better.  They are perfect for a Wedding Reception, Wedding Dinner, Valentines Day Party, Fabulous Christmas Feast, Mother’s Day Brunch or any kind of celebration.

Here’s how they came about.

Recently I agreed to coordinate the food for a small church Christmas party of approximately 100 folks.   (In case you had any lingering doubts as to my sanity, you can now dispense of them.)   I wanted to create a Christmas-present of a dinner with abundance and decadence and I wanted to include a classic (retro) dish mom made at the holidays – candied rose apples.  So in case you need to host a Fabulous Feast for a Crowd for any occasion, you can find the entire menu here!   (I’m in the process of adding all the recipes.)

Mom would cook whole cored apples in a red hot cinnamon candy bath and then stuff them with a cream cheese walnut filling.  (Recipe coming eventually over in the ‘Cooking with Betty – Rockin’ Retro’ section. They are WONDERFUL for Thanksgiving.)   They are a great side dish for a casual, retro-inspired meal by the way!   They taste marvelous, but they have a very retro Betty Crocker look about them.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t what I was going for as part of the Fabulous Feast.   So I googled apple roses and I saw a lot of very fancy looking mini apple rose tartlets.  I loved the look and their bite-size aspect would be perfect for the dinner.   I figured maybe I go with them instead of mom’s recipe.  But when I whipped up a batch of the mini apple rose tartlets to try, guess what?

We’ve all seen it.  Food that looks amazingly delicious but tastes only okay.   Those mini apple rose tartlets are a perfect example.  They look fantastic but their taste is down right ‘meh’.   The plain apples were tasteless and the sugar cinnamon sprinkle lacked punch. Worst of all, they had an annoying tendency to burn, imparting a bitter acrid taste.  Not good.

First rule of the day: we don’t serve anything that tastes ‘meh.’  I don’t care how great they look.  They have to taste fabulous too.  If we’re going to do it, we might as well WOW them, don’t you think?   (We have a reputation to maintain after all.)

So I thought about it and something came to mind.   I could combine the wonderful taste of mom’s apple roses with the fancy preparation of the mini tartlets.  So I cooked the apple ‘petals’ for the mini tartlets in mom’s cinnamon candy bath and then, to send them over the top, I drizzled on the cinnamon candy cooking syrup over them once the apples were baked.  Score!   It resulted in treats that guests were taking seconds and often thirds of with multiple requests for the recipe.   A clear winner.
While it’s not necessary, this is a great recipe to make with one or two helpers.  It goes very quickly if it’s made assembly line style.  A suggestion:  DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PREPARE THESE THE DAY OF SERVING.  (Was that strong enough? I hope so, because if you do make them the ‘day of’, you’ll be pooped and feel very pressured.  Ask me how I know…)  Instead, just make them up to 2 months in advance and freeze them.  Then bake them just before serving.   They’ll be perfect.

Here’s how you do it.

Along with several packages of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry (2 sheets per package), these are all the ingredients you need.   Very simple.

Prep your apples by cutting them in half, coring them and cutting them into paper-thin slices, using a mandolin set to 1/16 inch slices.  You’ll want to put the cut slices in water with a little lemon to prevent discoloration while you’re cutting the remainder of the slices.

In a large sauce pan, over medium heat, bring water, red hot candies and sugar to a boil. Stir until red hots are dissolved.  There may be a few unresolved ones, but that’s just fine.

Drain and add apple slices to the pot with the red hots.

Reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered, for 5 – 10 minutes until apples are tender.  They should be cooked enough to bend without breaking.  If they break you need to cook them a bit more.  They should be a pretty red-pink in color.  Like this.

On a floured board, roll out 1 sheet of dough until it measures 10 inches by 14 inches.   Like this.

Then cut your dough in half length wise with a knife or pizza cutter and cut it in 8 strips from side to side.  Like this.

Then cut each of the strips in half the LONG way, so you have 16 long skinny pieces of dough.  Brush each piece of dough with the apricot jam. and lay on about 5 to 7 apple slices, overlapping the slices.  Like this.

Next, fold up the bottom of the dough, so the roses are laying in a ‘dough pocket’ (see example below.)  Then, starting at one end, carefully roll the dough up, so the apple slices form a rose.  If the apple slices start to slip out from between the dough, just poke them back in.  Here is what the dough looks like folded up to form the ‘dough pocket’ and here is what a finished rose will look like.  Isn’t that pretty?  You can do it too!

These tartlets take 50 – 60 minutes to fully cook. Without the proper precautions, that’s plenty of time for the bottoms and sides to burn to an almost inedible state (almost). To solve that problem, I employed the following system. You’ll need 2 baking half sheet pans, a rack, parchment paper and water:

• Place one half-sheet pan on the lower rack of the oven.
• Fill it ½ way full with water.
• Set a rack in the second half-sheet pan. Lay a sheet of parchment paper on the rack.
• Place the tartlets on the parchment paper and lay aluminum foil loosely over the tartlets.
• Set the pan with the tartlets on the top rack directly over the pan with the water.
• Bake at 375 for 50 minutes. Then start checking every few minutes until the tartlets are done.

They are somewhat labor intensive. It will take you about 4 -5 hours to make 100. But best of all, you can (and should) make them in advance and freeze them if you are cooking for a large group. When ready, you can just bake and serve. They are delicious either hot out of the oven or at room temperature. They will earn you many happy raving fans!