#2: Arlettes (French Swirlies)

 

Hi! This is a great story. I’m in the Cleve this weekend, visiting my homeboy. He has hinted a few times about getting some cookies, so I was all “ok!”. This is the beginning of an excellent story. Keep reading.

I think my mistake was I chose arlettes (or French Swirlies). I saw these on the Great British Bake Off and they looked amazing. If you are a dirty cheater, you can use store bought puff pastry. But if you are an upstanding citizen/idiot, you make it from scratch. I am an idiot, so these cookies took forever. Here’s what’s what….

PUFF PASTRY DOUGH LAYER:

1 cup AP flour

2-2/3 tbsp butter (melted, unsalted)

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp cold water plus splashes more as needed

Go ahead and mix this jazz up in a bowl and then knead it for 5 minutes. Shape into a square, wrap in Saran Wrap and chill for an hour.

PUFF PASTRY BUTTER LAYER:

8-1/3 tbsp butter (room temp, unsalted)

1/2 cup AP flour

While the dough is chilling, cream these guys together and roll into a long rectangle about twice the length of your dough square and chill for 25 minutes. This will be messy and annoying. Put down some flour for the rolling – it’ll help!

Once you have your chilled shit chilled, wrap the butter layer around the dough layer. Then do a book fold. Just google this bit. It’s too hard to explain. For a cheat, just fold as much as you can. When the folding is folded, chill for another 25 min. Fold and chill, fold and chill. THIS TAKES FOREVER!

Then roll out and fold again and chill again for another 25.  Do you see why just buying the pastry dough is smart now????

SUGAR BUSINESS

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix this jazz and spread a bit out on a counter. Put your pastry dough on the sugar and roll out into a big ol rectangle.  Put more of the sugar jazz on top of the rolled out rectangle. Then roll the dough up into a log situation. Slice the log up into like 12-15 thinnish slices.  Then smash up each slice super thin and dust with more sugar. I can’t stress the thinness enough – THIN, Y’ALL!!!!

Pop these thin flat slices into the oven (400F) for like 13 minutes. That’s it. They should be crisp and flat and are pretty great with coffee or a mimosa or whatever you drink on a Sunday morning.

Here’s the best part -I spend all morning making these shits and they come out pretty darn perfect and Holmes is like “nah, I had a big breakfast. Hard pass.”  So, I will be murdering him very soon…..

Anyway! That’s my story for Week 2! Get excited for more pumpkin shit for Week 3 and a special guest – Staci! You know…. STACI!!!!

Note 1: Holmes did in fact eat one after I made him feel bad. And he said they were “ok”.

Note 2: Holmes has requested the Parker Posey play him if this blog ever gets made into a movie. He also thinks Aziz Ansari should play me.