I love pin-wheels. I cannot describe why I love them so much, but I think it is a humour aspect. They sound funny and they look funny and you can pretty much put whatever you like in them.

These apple and honey ones were an experiment. I can make a basic scone recipe and it is easy to put whatever ingredient you want on the dough once it is rolled out. But the fun part is finding new exciting ingredients to make more tasty pin-wheels.

I usually make chilli and cheese pin-wheels. They are tasty and simple – you just spread some sweet chilli sauce and grate some cheese and you’re good to go. However, having just gotten back from Hawke’s Bay laden down with wonderous amounts of food courtesy of my mother, I now have about 15kgs worth of granny smith apples sitting in my kitchen/dinning room. Needless to say, something needed to be done with them – bring on ideas of baking with apples.

Ingredients

3 cups standard flour

6 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

75g butter

1-1/2 cups of milk

2 apples

1/4 cup of liquid honey

Directions

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Rub butter into dry ingredients with fingers until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add milk, small amounts at a time. Mix together by cutting the ingredients with a knife.

Knead dough on a flat, floured surface until smooth. Roll out until dough is about 5mm thick and you have a large rectangle.

Peel and grate both apples and combine with the honey. Spread filling evenly over the dough. Roll the dough to form a log. Cut the log into prefered size of pin-wheels.

Place pin-wheels on baking tray and place in the oven for about 10 minutes at 220°. Pin-wheels will puff up to about twice the size. Once they are golden brown remove them from the oven.

Best served warm, but still tasty cold.

Tips

This basic recipe for the dough is fool proof, you can use it for any type of scone or pin-wheel. Where I went wrong was in the filling.

By grating the apples I made them too moist and created difficulties when it came to rolling the dough into a log. By draining the moisture that came out of the apples it would have made better pin-wheels. You could also just make them into cubes or slices. By mixing the apple with the honey, it made the liquid come out of the apples also contributing to the wet mess I had to deal with.

You have to be careful with scone dough that you do not add too much milk. One problem I had while making these was I added too much milk. If you add it slowly and not necessarily the whole amount then the dough will be fine.

Other ideas for filling

Sweet chilli sauce and cheese

Marmite and cheese

Spaghetti

Baked beans

Cheese

Bacon

Chicken and cranberries with camembert

Other fruits e.g. dates, crasins.

Really you can add whatever your imagination can think of. The possibilities are endless.