Bacon and Onion Crescent Roll Pinwheels Recipe

With New Year's Eve only tomorrow, here is another recipe for a classic appetizer or party snack that can be varied as you desire to add more ingredients or flavour.

This recipe can be made with pre-bought crescent roll dough, but here I provide a recipe for you to make your own crescent roll dough from scratch at home.

So you can either go the easy route, or prepare the whole recipe for yourself from scratch.

Bacon and Onion Crescent Roll Pinwheels

Serves: 20

I have given a scratch version for this recipe here, but the yeasted dough is a home-made equivalent of canned, refrigerated crescent roll dough and you can substitute the commercial product for my dough recipe to make this a very quick and easy to make appetizer.

Ingredients:

For the Dough:

2 sachets active, dried, yeast (about 1 tbsp)
180ml (3/4 cup) warm water
100g (1/2 cup) sugar
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs
100g (1/2 cup) shortening (or a 50:50 mix of lard and butter)
550g (4 1/2 cups) unbleached plain (all-purpose) flour

For the Pinwheels:

65g (1/3 cup) butter or margarine, softened
100g (3/4 cup) onion, finely chopped
8 rashers (slices) of rindless bacon, cooked until crisp and crumbled
3 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Method:

Add the yeast and water to a large bowl then stir the yeast to dissolve. Add the sugar, salt, eggs, shortening and half the flour and beat to combine. Now add all the remaining flour and blend until smooth. Using a spatula scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl towards the centre then cove with a damp cloth and set aside in a warm place to rise for about 90 minutes, or until doubled in volume.

Mix together the butter, onion, bacon and parsley in a bowl.

Once risen, knock the dough back then divide into eight equal-sized portions. Roll each portion out into a rectangle about 6mm thick.

Spread 1/8 of the butter mixture evenly over each dough rectangle. Fold the dough up into a roll along the long edge.

Cut each roll into 4 or 8 pinwheels, then arrange each pinwheel on a baking tray. Flatten the tops slightly then cover loosely with a cloth and set aside to raise for 20 minutes.

After this time, transfer to an oven pre-heated to 180ºC (375ºF) and bake for about 15 minutes, or until cooked through and lightly golden.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Server warm or at room temperature.