Unqualified chefs make apple rose puff pastries

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love. A love of food.

As unqualified chefs — scrambled eggs is the most difficult thing we have ever made — we embarked on quite the adventure when we decided to bake a Valentine’s Day dessert.

Looking through a Hello! Magazine article suggested by the Lifestyle editors, we decided on the most visually appealing but also one of the most difficult recipes: apple rose puff pastries.

One of the most challenging steps was slicing apples into nearly transparent thin slices. Trying not to chop off our fingers, we ended up with apple slices of decent thickness but a wasted about a quarter of the apple.

The next few steps were straightforward, as we rolled out one sheet of puff pastry dough, brushed it with butter and sprinkled it with some cinnamon and sugar. We laid down the apple slices along the dough, extending past the dough and delicately overlapping the following slices.

Rolling up the rose was the next great challenge, as we had to make sure not to break the apple slices that represented the petals. As a result, we rolled the rose loosely, but as soon as we set it down, it unrolled itself. Frustrated, we rolled the rose tighter and squashed it a little to make sure it kept its shape.

Finally, it was time to bake it in the oven. Every few minutes, we eagerly checked our pastries, only to be disappointed that they looked the same, still white and flat instead of golden-brown and puffed up. Half an hour later, the tops of the apple started changing color. Scared of burning the desserts, we quickly pulled the roses out of the oven but accidentally burnt our fingers on the side of the metal containers.

However, the puff pastry inside the rolls was not cooked at all; annoyed, we put them back in the oven. We repeated this cycle of checking and increasing cooking times, too eager to not burn the pastries and disappoint our editors.

Eventually, the pastries came fresh out of the oven — after being reheated three or four times —  closely resembling roses. They also tasted as sweet as a rose would smell; the apple flavor mingled with the cinnamon and complemented the texture of the puff pastry.

All in all, making the apple roses was a great experience for us inexperienced yet aspiring pastry chefs. The recipe was not as daunting as it had initially seemed, and the pastry ended up receiving compliments from the editors. Most importantly, we ended up satisfying the theme of Valentine’s Day, the love for food.