Croissant Cheeseburger Ring

This recipe comes from my first cookbook.

I bet you didn't know that I was a published cookbook author, did you?

Well, a lot of food bloggers are doing cookbooks nowadays.  I did things a little out of order, however.

You see, I co-authored my first cook book in the 6th grade--with 29 other eleven-year olds.  It was a class project.  We all contributed our favorite recipes.  There were six chocolate chip recipes.  Somebody wrote a recipe for PB&J tortillas sandwiches.

I typed up this recipe, a childhood favorite.  I drew illustrations for my page; a ketchup and mustard bottle, and little puff pastry triangles in the shape of a circle.

When my teacher distributed the final print copies of the cookbook to our class, my classmates flipped wildly through the book looking for their recipes (self-gratification of seeing one's name in print, guilty).  But when they looked through the rest of the recipes, I was proud when several took notice of mine.  "CHEESEBURGER ring?"  Sixth graders, after all.

Cheeseburgers.  Croissants.  Destruction of French cuisine avec le cheeseburger.  Je suis desolée.  I can only hope my 7 years of dedication to learning French can make amends for the fact that I still love this meal; refrigerated pastry dough, pasteurized cheese, ketchup and all.

Croissant Cheeseburger Ring

Adapted from The Pampered Chef recipe for "All-American Cheeseburger Ring"

Yield: 16 slices (Note: I usually make a half-recipe, but I included the full recipe below).

Ingredients:

1/4 cup onion, chopped

3/4 pound ground turkey (ground beef, or soy crumbles work well too!)

1/4 cup ketchup

2 teaspoons sandwich mustard

5 slices American cheese, folded into eighths

2 packages of refrigerated crescent rolls

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 deg. F.

Cook ground meat in a frying pan until no longer pink.  Drain pan, then add ketchup, mustard and cheese.  Stir mixture until cheese has melted.  Set aside.

On a stoneware baking sheet (or greased cookie sheet, checked throughout baking for over-browning of pastry), arrange crescent triangles in a ring with wide ends touching.  

Scoop meat mixture onto wide end of each crescent roll.  Pull tip of triangles over the top of the filling.  Tuck and pinch the top layer of dough under the wide end of the pastry.  It is OK for the filling to not be completely covered.  

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 375 deg. F., or until pastry is dark golden brown on top.