Recipe: Ham & Cheese Roll Ups / Pinwheels

Perfect for lunch boxes, picnics or even snack-time, these puff pastry ham and cheese roll ups are quick to make, easy to transport and delicious! Ideal for babies, toddlers, children and even adults (shhhh!), with just three ingredients you can have these baby led weaning friendly pastry pinwheels ready in 20 minutes. What else could you want?

Puff pastry pinwheels or roll ups, depending on what you know them as, are a real staple of our baby led weaning recipes, and they’ve carried on into our toddler’s meals and those of our children. Serve them warm or cold, as part of a picnic style lunch or with some mixed veg for a hot lunchtime. Whatever your plans are, we’re sure you’ll fall in love with them.

Ham & Cheese Roll Ups / Pinwheels

You can use any type of ham that you have in the fridge, even cold meats like salami or proscuitto. We like to switch between regular sliced ham and salami depending on what we have available. Why not try different types and find what your little ones love? Whichever meat you go for you’ll need to chop it into small pieces around the size of an adult fingernail. If you’re using wafer thin ham, try doubling up the slices so that you have a slightly thicker ‘chunk’ of ham as this will also help prevent it from over-crisping in the oven. If you’re looking to give these pinwheels to a weaning baby, you’ll want to make sure that the ham is cut slightly smaller and we’d recommend using less and scattering it more spread out across the pastry sheet. this is purely because ham can have a high salt content and this will help minimise the amount of ham in the recipe.

When it comes to cheese, you can’t beat a bit of cheddar for these ham and cheese pinwheels. All for an easy life, we use pre-grated medium or mature cheddar. It means your pinwheels will be ready even faster, and the clean-up time is non-existent… win, win, win.

Finally, we recommend using pre-rolled puff pastry. You can find this in the refrigerated section of any major supermarket. Sure you could make your own but again, this recipe is all about simplicity!

Ready? Let’s roll (pun absolutely intended!)…

Recipe: Ham & Cheese Pinwheels

Ingredients:

Pre-rolled puff pastry sheet

3 slices of ham – chopped

Handful of grated cheddar cheese

Milk to brush on top – optional!

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees (fan) and prepare a flat baking sheet and non-stick sheet.
2. Unroll your pre-rolled puff pastry sheet keeping the non stick paper on it, use this so that your pastry doesn’t stick to your work surface. We used half a sheet of pastry at a time, storing the other half in the fridge until needed.
3. Scatter your chopped ham evenly over the pastry sheet. Leave a 2cm clear space at the top and bottom of the sheet (the shorter sides of the rectangle) in order to make rolling it easier.
4. Cover with grated cheese – you don’t need too much as otherwise it will leak out once rolled.
5. With the short side of the pastry nearest you, peel the closest part off of the non-stick backing paper and roll it away from you and up on itself, giving you a thin sausage at the end. You want to keep it quite tightly rolled otherwise fillings will fall out.
6. Using a sharp knife, cut your rolled pastry into discs every 2-3cm.
7. Lay the pastry discs on your flat baking sheet. Don’t put them too closely together as they will puff out as you cook! Brush with milk if using – this helps them brown on top.
8. Cook for 20 minutes or until crisp and golden. Remove from heat, allow to cool and enjoy!

Looking for more roll up inspiration? Find all of our favourite pinwheel recipes in one place here, including our popular pizza pastry pinwheels – delicious!