Turn Puff Pastry Into An Italian-Inspired Snack With Just A Few Ingredients

Snacks and appetizers don't have to be boring or hard to make, especially since we have Ina Garten's blessing to keep store-bought puff pastry in our pantries. Puff pastry is a delicious dough made by folding and rolling the dough around cold butter to create dozens of thin, even, alternating layers of each. This process, called lamination, ensures the pastry lives up to its name when baked, puffing up into crisp, flaky layers, making puff pastry perfect for whipping lemon curd tarts, using up canned pie filling, or elevating your favorite Italian charcuterie elements into tasty pinwheels.

Italian puff pastry pinwheels are elegant, delicious, and very easy to put together in a hurry. You essentially assemble them just like cinnamon rolls, but with savory fillings inside — think meats such as prosciutto, spreads like pesto, and a sprinkling of shredded cheese like gorgonzola. Just be sure to defrost any frozen puff pastry ahead of time so you can easily roll it out into a large, even rectangle without it breaking along the seams where it was folded. Don't let it get warm, though, as that can cause the butter to melt and reduce the amount of potential puff.

After that, all you have to do is roll your savory fillings into the pastry, cut into pinwheels, and bake according to package instructions. You can definitely serve these warm straight from the oven (especially accompanied with a glass of white wine), or room temperature on a mezze board nestled among bowls of garlic-stuffed olives, cubes of cheese, and jars of fig jam.

When making these little Italian-inspired spirals of joy, feel free to explore the wide range of classic Italian sauces, cured meats, cheeses, and pickled or cured vegetables. It's perfectly okay to stick with familiar flavors for your first attempt, but there are far too many delicious flavor combinations out there to stop at one or two variations on this sophisticated snack. As mentioned, prosciutto, gorgonzola, and pesto are salty, bright, nutty, and delicious together, making them a great choice for a crowd with varied tastes.

However, there's nothing stopping you from building pizza-inspired pinwheels with a schmear of herby marinara topped minced pepperoni and mozzarella, or crumbled Italian sausage and shredded smoked mozzarella. Feel free to use your favorite pizza toppings as inspo, too, just avoid anything that's super moist like mushrooms or bell peppers, as these could make the puff pastry soggy. It could also be fun to build some cacio e pepe pinwheels with lots of grated pecorino cheese, freshly cracked black pepper, and a swipe of garlic-infused olive oil on the dough as the sauce.

If you're a fan of really big flavor, go for broke with chopped giardiniera (well drained and patted dry) with lots of funky shaved romano, and dollops of strained, dense ricotta cheese. Another bold combination includes drained and dried olive tapenade with sharp provolone and tidy spoons of meaty bolognese. Pair them up with a zesty, refreshing, sun-dried tomato romesco sauce for dipping.