Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists

The easiest ever cinnamon sugar puff pastry treat! These simple puff pastry cinnamon twists are crisp and quick to whip up - the perfect sweet snack to have around and also great to serve at parties or events.

Jump to:

• Tell Me About These Twists
• Ingredient Notes
• How to Make Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists
• Top Tips
• Variations
• FAQs
• Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists

Tell Me About These Twists

• Cinnamon and brown sugar - the ultimate cinnamon sugar combination will always be cinnamon with light brown sugar. This is the perfect combination of sweet and warming cinnamon spice with the added richness of the molasses flavour building from the brown sugar.
• Pre-made pastry - no need to fuss over making a dough! Just unroll the pastry and go - start to finish, you can have these ready in under 30 minutes.
• 4 ingredients - you can't get easier than this 4 ingredient recipe, made with cupboard staples and store bought puff pastry!

Ingredient Notes

For these cinnamon sugar twists, all you need is:

• Butter - I like to use unsalted butter, but you can use salted here. This should be melted so that you can brush it onto the twists.
• Brown sugar - light brown sugar, firmly packed.
• Ground cinnamon
• Puff pastry sheets - ready made puff pastry sheets. Allow these to sit out at room temperature for about 10-15 minutes before unrolling to help prevent them cracking. You don't want the dough to warm loads (or it will be difficult to work with), but trying to unfurl straight from the fridge will likely result the pastry breaking into pieces especially where its been rolled most tight.

How to Make Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists

These twists are super simple to throw together! Follow these instructions and you'll have a batch ready in no time:

• To start, preheat your oven and remove your puff pastry sheets from the refrigerator. You'll want to let them sit at room temperature for about 10-15 minutes, letting them warm up enough to be flexible, without them becoming too soft.
• Meanwhile, melt your butter - this can be done in the microwave or on the stovetop in a small pan. And, in a separate bowl, mix together your cinnamon and sugar.
• Unroll the first pastry sheet, brush this with melted butter and sprinkle generously with the cinnamon sugar mixture.
• Unroll the second pastry sheet and place over top, sandwiching the cinnamon sugar between the two sheets.
• Now cut using a sharp knife, dough cutter or roller blade (pizza cutter) into 16 thin long strips.
• Working one strip at a time, pinch each end and twist.
• Place the twisted cinnamon sugar pastries on a parchment lined baking sheet, spaced at least an inch apart and brush with more melted butter.
• Bake in the centre of your preheated oven until puffed, golden and crisp, usually about 12 minutes.
• Once removed from the oven, let cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack - this helps them crisp and firm up.

Top Tips

To help you make these confidently and with even more ease, these are a few of my key tips.

For Working with Puff Pastry

• Make sure your puff pastry is set out of the refrigerator for at least 10-15 minutes before unrolling. Rolled puff pastry sheets straight from the refrigerator can be brittle and more likely to crack (especially towards the tighter bit of the roll).
• If the pastry does crack as you're unrolling, don't worry! This is easily fixed. Use your fingers to rub the cracked bits of pastry back together - the warmth of your hands will help this to blend back without any detrimental effect on the finished product.
• If at any point you worry that the pastry is becoming too warm and soft, pop it back in the refrigerator to chill down. You can also prepare your twists and keep these in the refrigerator unbaked overnight if you want to get ahead of an event.

For Handling and Baking the Twists

• This recipe is packed with brown sugar cinnamon. This might make your top layer of pastry seem loose, like it's just floating on a sea of cinnamon sugar. This is normal, because these are loaded with filling!
• What you want to do is cut straight down when making your slices, using a sharp implement (I use a dough cutter). Dragging a knife through the pastry will pull this (especially the top sheet) and cause the layers of pastry to become uneven.
• Once you have your slices, pinch the ends as your twist to help lock the top and bottom layer together. Some of the filling may come out as you twist, but most should stay put.
• During the baking, the sugar will melt and crystallise giving these cinnamon pastry twists loads of flavour and you won't need to worry any more about sugar falling out!

Variations

Want to make these a bit more fancy? Here are a few ideas:

• Brown butter - browning butter is super popular in a lot of foodie circles and gives a bit of a nuttiness to your bake. When you melt your butter for these twists, you can brown it instead and give a bit of extra oomph to the puff pastry straws.
• Additional spices - I'm a firm cinnamon lover and feel it doesn't take a back seat to any spice! But, if you want to add a bit extra pizzazz, you could add a teaspoon of nutmeg, ginger, cardamom or other spices that compliment cinnamon. Mix it up for different seasons. My main advice here is to avoid adding too much spice - the dry cinnamon sugar is a bit messy and adding too much spice will make these even more difficult to handle and twist cleanly. Keep your overall spice (cinnamon included) within about a tablespoon or tablespoon and a half range.
• Sea salt - once you've brushed the top of your pastry twists with melted butter, sprinkle flakes of sea salt over. These will look nice and add little bursts of saltiness, which can compliment and accentuate the sweet.
• Sprinkles - in the same way as adding salt, you can give your twists some colour with sprinkles! A great option for birthdays or seasonal parties.

FAQs

Looking for more simple crowd pleasers? Try:

• Mini Oreo Cheesecakes
• No Bake Mini Biscoff Cheesecakes
• Biscoff Puff Pastry Tree
• No Bake Potato Chip Cookies