Danish Pastries

I was incredibly fearful that these breakfast Danish Pastries would be hideous and not work as the "pastry" appeared to be a gooey mess that would be completely unworkable. Little did I know, that is what it is like! I followed Nigella Lawson's recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess for Processor Danish Pastry (which she assures us, is how Danish pastry is made in Denmark nowadays).

She did mention the words "gooey mess" but I thought that after being refrigerated overnight that it would "toughen" up as her next instructions are to roll it. I tried rolling it with a rolling pin where chaos ensued and the sticky gooey dough completely stuck to the rolling pin. Luckily, the high butter content meant that I could just spread and shape it with my hands and I made some Chocolate ones (using Nutella) and some Custard ones as I didn't have the almonds or ricotta cheese in her recipes.

I'll try those next, and this ended up being one of the biggest baking successes notwithstanding how badly I thought that I'd thought they'd turn out! They are freakishly light and melt in the mouth, much more so than the croissant-y ones that you tend to find a bakeries. My husband thought that I had somehow stumbled upon the Krispy Kreme secret of sweet melt in the mouthness. I'm just glad they didn't turn out as badly as I thought they would lol

Oh and I ran out of icing sugar after my mega cupcake making incident so I didn't get to put the lovely white stripes over them-sorry!

Food Processor Danish Pastry from How To Be a Domestic Goddess

(makes 2 lots of pastry with 6-8 pastries in each lot. You can freeze 1 lot or keep it in the fridge for up to 4 days)

• 60ml warm water

• 125ml milk, at room temperature

• 1 large egg, at room temperature

• 250g white bread flour

• 7g (1 sachet) dried yeast

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 25g caster sugar

• 250g unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks

Pour the water and milk into a measuring jug and add the egg, beating with a fork to mix. Put aside. Put flour, yeast, salt and sugar in a food processor and give a quick whizz, just to mix. Add the cold slices of butter and process briefly so that the butter is cut up a little, though you still want visible chunks of at least 1cm. Empty the contents of the food processor into a large bowl and quickly add the contents of the jug. Fold the ingredients together, but don't overdo it; expect to have a gooey mess with some butter lumps pebbled through it (she's absolutely serious, this is a gooey mess!) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, put in the fridge and leave overnight or a few days.

To turn it into pastry, take it out of the fridge, let it get to room temperature and roll it out to a 50x50cm square (I couldn't roll mine at all). Fold the dough square into thirds, like a business letter, turning it afterwards so that the closed fold is on your left, like the spine of a book. Roll out again to a 50cm square, repeating the steps above 3 times. Cut in half, wrap both pieces and store in the fridge for 30 minutes before using, or the freezer to store.

Add fillings like vanilla custard, nutella, chocolate or fruit

From How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

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