Savory Pinwheel Rolls

Moose and veggie filled pinwheels.

Where do I start.....

Many people in the working world might refer to their work wife or work husband, I am lucky enough to have a work son who just happens to be a foodie. I have started asking Andrew to taste-test my experimental recipes and last week's French Onion Soup muffins was one of them.

My instructions: "Please taste these and don't be afraid to critique them honestly."

For context here, a few weeks before the muffins I brought some stuffed bread and shared a slice with Andrew. When he reviewed the muffins, he did like them but also suggested I make, as he put it, "Something like a cinnamon roll but filled with savory stuff like the stuffed bread from a couple of weeks ago; and then frosted with the cheese frosting." We talked about ground sausage along with other fillings that would typically go into a stuffed bread, but rolled into a raised dough like the butter, and brown sugar etc. that goes into cinnamon rolls. Needless to say, that got my wheels turning.

Around the same time that I had the conversation with Andrew, another friend, Tristan who is a bartender at my favorite watering hole, Black Moon Public House, gave me a bunch of ground moose meat (to me a decadency here in Maine, where I can cook 'em, & eat 'em, but could likely never bring myself to shoot 'em). When I was chatting with her and asking what I could cook for her as a thank you, she said she liked savory over sweet.

Hmmm..... I have a request for savory pinwheels with cooked ground meet and I have ground moose in my freezer. Yep, you know where this is going!

I decided to build the pinwheels around the moose meat with plans to add some caramelized onion, garlic, and other savories. When I was shopping for ingredients, I noticed Five Star peeled shallots on the shelf at Hannaford. Five Star peeled pearl onions and shallots come from Dan Graiff Farms in southern NJ, and is owned by the family of another one of my favorite people at Black Moon, DJ. Keeping with the theme building in my head, it seemed fitting that I use Five Star shallots in place of onions.

I employed my bread machine to make the pinwheel dough so I could concentrate on gathering and prepping the fillings. I made enough dough for 24 pinwheels and decided to do half with meat and keep half vegetarian.

While the dough machine was working and the moose, shallots, and minced garlic were browning, I decided that a pesto-ish sauce would make a nice base to brush on the dough in place of the butter that would usually coat cinnamon rolls.

In my Ninja is combined fresh spinach, some shopped fresh mushrooms, a chopped garlic clove, some basil paste, some olive oil and a bit of lemon juice and processed until it was pureed.

I decided that sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil should go into both the meaty and vegetarian rolls and set the contents of a jar in a strainer over a bowl to drain. Also common to both would be shredded Parmesan.

The vegetarian rolls needed a bit more pizzazz to make up for the lack of meat. I decided upon fire-roasted red peppers, peperoncini and capers along with a larger allotment of cheese.

I made sure to drain all of the wet and marinated ingredients very thoroughly so the pinwheels didn't end up soggy or seep their filling onto the pan during baking. Don't skip this step, you'll be sorry if you do. (I learned that the hard way on a pizza dough stuffed bread.)

When it came time for the frosting, I added some Parmesan to the mix since my ingredients began to lean Italian.

The first few steps were identical as I made the pesto and prepped the dough. After that, I went meat heavy on one dough and veggie on the other.

I emphasize again, drain your marinated fillings really well. For the moose pinwheels, I drained the meat and the sundries tomatoes and assembled with the meat first followed by the tomatoes and some shredded Parmesan. For the vegetarian ones, after I drained and chopped the peppers I patted (really wrung them out) with some paper towel before spreading on top of the pesto base. As you can see, the vegetable version has a good deal more cheese too.

What I forgot to do is grab photos of the actual rolling of the pinwheel logs, but it's not much different than rolling the pizza dough for stuffed bread. The part of this endeavor that takes some finesse and patience is slicing the pinwheels once the logs are rolled. Use a sharp serrated knife and gently saw back and forth without bearing down on the log until you've cut through. When I handle each pinwheel to place it on the baking sheet, I gently do any reshaping or repairing to prepare it for the second rise. I cut the slices about 1" thick, BTW.

Once the pinwheels are all cut, they need to rise again. I used the proofing option on my oven and once it was warm, I covered the pinwheels with a damp towel and set them in the warmed (but turned off) oven.

The pinwheels rose nicely in under an hour. While they were in the oven, I softened the cream cheese and butter in prep to beat the frosting.

Knowing that I needed to find a way to differentiate the veggie ones from the meat filling, I decided to add some of the leftover pest to half of the the frosting to give it a greenish tint. With that I did add some of the powdered cheddar to the mix to offset the liquid that the pesto spread added. I also sprinkled some dried basil on the veggie ones for good measure.

THE RECIPE:

For the Dough (24 pinwheels)

2 -2/3 C of warm water

1C butter cut into small chinks and softened

1/4 C maple syrup (sugar helps to activate the yeast)

2 eggs beaten

2t salt

2T quick rise yeast

My bread machine likes all the wet ingredients on the bottom, followed by the flour and other dry ingredients with a depression in the top to put the yeast. If you're using a machine and it wants a different order, by all means, follow those instructions.

What I did for this recipe was to put the water and butter into a Pyrex measuring cup and microwave it to warm the water and help soften the butter at the same time. I whisked the flour and salt together and did the same with the eggs and maple syrup. Then I layered the ingredients starting with the water and butter and followed with the eggs and then the flour. Using the back of a spoon, I created a depression in the flour (ensuring that I didn't go near the wet ingredients) and added the yeast. Then it was all the machine for the kneading and first rise giving me that hour or so to cook the meat and gather the other fillings.

For the Pesto Spread

1C wilted spinach

1 large garlic clove minced

1C mushrooms chopped

1/4 C olive oil

1/4 C lemon juice

Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until pureed. You can substitute any kind of aioli or even Alfredo or marinara sauce here depending on your tastes and oh0hand ingredients.

I like to use a pastry brush to spread the pesto on the dough; it helps me to not put too much which helps to keep the pinwheels from being soggy leaky messes.

For the Filling

1-2 C cooked ground meat. I used moose because I had it, but beef, pork, turkey, will all work.

I used about a cup of chopped shallots and 3 cloves of minced garlic to add to the meat saute. (Note this package of meat cooked up to a lot more than than what I needed for the pinwheels; what I didn't use became taco the next day).

1-2 C shredded cheese

1C grated cheese

2 -3 C in total and combination of drained sun dried tomatoes, roasted peppers, peperoncini, capers. (Chopped artichoke hearts, caponata, spinach, olives could all work)

For the Frosting

8 oz. softened cream cheese

4T (1/2 stick) softened butter

1-1/2 C grated Parmesan at room temperature

I put the butter and the cream cheese in a glass cowl and microwaved on super low for a few minutes to speed up the softening. Once everything is softened and at room temp, beat with a hand mixer until it's smooth and fluffy. Once it was the right consistency, I divided the frosting in half; I frosted the moose pinwheels with the original batch and added 2 tablespoons of pesto and about 1/4 C of the cheese to the other half to top the veggie pinwheels.