Meet your favorite new appetizer guaranteed to impress and delight any crowd. Our Spinach and Caramelized Onion Farmer Cheese Pinwheels take everything you love about a classic savory pastry and give it a creamy, protein-packed upgrade that tastes downright decadent.
The magic of this recipe starts with onions that are cooked low and slow with Lifeway Kefir Butter until they turn sweet and tender with a light caramel color. Combine them with sautéed spinach, a pinch of garlic, some other spices, and Lifeway Farmer Cheese before rolling them up and baking until golden brown. Once they come out of the oven, each bite of these pinwheels delivers a satisfying crispy, flaky texture on the outside with a warm, flavorful filling on the inside.
Elevate Your Appetizers with Lifeway:
Our European-style butter is the perfect way to upgrade any appetizer with richness and add gut-friendly probiotic cultures. Made without any preservatives, Lifeway Kefir Butter gives any dish you make with butter an elevated flavor and texture you won’t find in processed alternatives. These pinwheels are an excellent way to taste the difference of using better butter in your recipes with some help from Lifeway!
Lifeway Farmer Cheese’s smooth texture and mild flavor work beautifully in appetizer recipes like this to allow the other ingredients to shine. It’s also packed with gut-friendly probiotics, easy to digest, and an excellent source of protein. Unlike cottage cheese, our farmer cheese is thick and holds up well in recipes since its texture is easy to work with right out of the container — no blending or premixing required!
Give your next party or gathering a gut-healthy upgrade with Lifeway, and shop for all our probiotic foods in a store near you or shop online here.
The Benefits of Cultured Dairy for Better Health:
Research continues to show the importance of eating healthy foods, including cultured dairy such as kefir, for better gut health, a strong immune system, and to support the microbiome. Fermented foods like kefir hold important value in this line of research due to the link between the gut-brain axis and overall health.
Specifically, kefir has been shown to help diversify the microbiome, support the digestive system, reduce inflammation, support healthier blood sugar levels, and improve satiety since the bioavailable protein it contains triggers the release of GLP-1. Lifeway Kefir also contains a variety of nutrients that are vital for healthy bones and overall health, including vitamins D3, K, and B12 along with calcium and potassium. Along with our kefir, we also offer our creamy, cultured Lifeway Farmer Cheese, a high protein cheese made with live and active cultures to support a healthy microbiome that’s easy to spread and contains no added salt or sugar.
Prep Time: 1 hour 25 mins Servings: 12Ingredients
- 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced
- 2 1/2 tbsp. Salted Kefir Butter
- 1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup Farmer Cheese
- 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
- 2 oz. frozen spinach, thawed and patted dry
- 1 sheet of puff pastry (9.5" x 9.5")
Directions
Caramelize the Onions:
Add 1/2 tbsp. Lifeway Salted Kefir Butter and the extra-virgin olive oil to a skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onions and a pinch of kosher salt, then stir to coat with the butter and oil about 30 seconds until the butter starts to melt. Spread the onions out in an even layer in the pan, and reduce the heat to medium low. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally on medium low heat about 30 minutes, or until soft and tender and when they start to turn a caramel color. They should smell fragrant and be fork tender. Turn off the heat, and transfer to a separate dish and set aside for 10 minutes to cool a bit.Prepare the Pinwheels:
Add the Lifeway Farmer Cheese, onions from step 1, spinach, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and mix together in a bowl until well-combined. Set aside.- Unfold the thawed puff pastry onto a lightly floured surface. Use a rolling pin or your hands to smooth out the seams. Spoon the filling from step 2 on top of the puff pastry sheet, reserving 1/2" edge on one end to allow room to roll them up.
- Starting at the opposite end of the reserved 1/2" edge, tightly roll up the pastry sheet in the direction that has the reserved 1/2 inch edge. Pinch the seams together on the ends once it's all rolled up to properly seal it.
- Wrap the pastry roll in parchment paper to help keep it together, and place in the freezer for 20 minutes on a large plate or a baking sheet. Meanwhile, let the oven heat to 400° F and line a large baking pan in parchment paper. Set aside.
- After 20 minutes, remove the pastry roll from the freezer, remove the parchment from the outside, and place it on the counter to slice. Use a serrated knife to slice the pastry roll in 12 pieces about 3/4" in size each.
- Place each piece of the cut pastry on the baking sheet covered in parchment paper from step 5 and leave 2" between each piece to allow room for expansion during baking.
Bake the Pinwheels:
Bake for 10 minutes, then rotate them (flip them) so they bake evenly for 8-10 more minutes (18-20 minutes total) until golden brown. Serve with your favorite dipping sauce or alone, and enjoy!
- Keep leftovers in the fridge and consume within a week for the best flavor and texture.
