Puff Pastry Cinnamon Bites--Fail!

I made chicken turnovers last night for dinner.  Usually I only need one sheet of puff pastry to make them, since it's just the two of us, so there's usually a sheet left over.  I try to find ways to use the extra sheet, since I have found that thawing and re-freezing the extra sheet seems to affect the texture when I do go to use it.  Most of the time, I just make dessert turnovers to go with the chicken turnovers.  Last night, though, I had an idea: why not make them into little cinnamon bites?  How could that go wrong?

I spread a light layer of powdered sugar on the counter, instead of flour, to prevent sticking.  I brushed both sides with a dusting of the powdered sugar, and rubbed some on my rolling pin, too.  I rolled it out just enough to make the fold creases stronger.

Then, I melted 3 TBSP of butter in the microwave.  While it was melting, I mixed together 2 TBSP packed brown sugar, 1 TBSP white sugar, and 1 tsp of cinnamon together in a small bowl.  Then I brush the butter over the entire pastry, leaving about half an inch around the entire perimeter of the pastry sheet untouched, and spread the sugar mixture over the butter.

I rolled up the bottom edge of the pastry.  As you can see, mine got a little loose toward the ends.  I sliced the roll evenly in half, then sliced each half in half, until I had eight equal pieces.  Then, since I'd handled the dough so much and it had become a bit soft, I placed the pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment, covered the entire thing with foil, and refrigerated it overnight, because I thought these would be a great breakfast treat.  They looked so cute sitting on the tray, just expecting to grow up and become the best breakfast pastry in the world, but life is sometimes unfair.

This morning, I got up, eager to bake my pastries.  I heated the oven to 400 degrees, waiting patiently for it to actually heat up all of the way.  I'm not known for my patience.  While I waited, I mixed up a cream cheese glaze to go on top of the little buns.  I mixed one ounce of light cream cheese, at room temperature, with 1/2 C of powdered sugar.  When that was combined, I added 1/2 tsp of vanilla and mixed that in.  Then, I added 1/2 TBSP of milk, mixed it again, and tasted it.  Perfect.

I took off the foil, and stuck my cinnamon pastries in the oven to bake.  I started the timer at 8 minutes, and when that was up, I added another 8 minutes.  All the while, I saw that my delicious sugar-cinnamon filling was leaking out, melting and carmelizing on the parchment paper.  It was at that point that I began to see the flaw in my idea.  Insert sad cartoon horn sound here: waaaa-waaaaaa.

After the 16 minutes were up, and much of the inside stuff had leaked out, I called it.  I pulled them out of the oven, and in my defense, they looked done.  I put four on each plate, and spooned the glaze over top.  They looked and smelled good, again in my defense.

However, when we bit into them, we saw that they were not cooked.  We like gooey, slightly undercooked cinnamon rolls, which was what I was going for, but this was too undercooked, and was just disappointing.  Plus, the sugar-cinnamon mix on the bottom of the pastries was starting to harden into crunchy candy, and was sticking to the plate.  Double disappointing.  So, I guess I learned my lesson, and will use regular bread dough next time.  Sometimes these things just don't work out in real life as well as they go in my head!

Two good things did come out of these: a delicious glaze, and a buttery, caramelly crunchy candy.  Oh well.  Always look on the bright side of life!