Damn Good Danish
Following the success of our ‘Mega Massive Mars’, we decided to embark upon another pimping challenge, but this time with a snack that didn’t contain chocolate. After carefully looking through a bread machine cookbook we found a recipe for Danish pastries and this seemed perfect.
The ingredients required were:
1 egg
1 tbsp water
8oz bread flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp caster sugar
6oz butter
1/2 tsp salt
11/2 tsp dried yeast
3oz dried apricots and raisins
2oz pecan nuts
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp orange juice
This recipe said it makes 12 normal danishes, so we reckoned if we just made 1 out of this mixture it would be pimped to the right proportions. Next we shoved the water and egg into the bread machine pan, this was covered in the flour, sugar cinnamon, butter, salt and yeast.
1 and a half hours later the pastry dough was done but it looked a little odd, retracing our steps we discovered that only an ounce of butter should have been added so with the deft use of kitchen roll we attempted to soak up some of the grease. Unexpectedly this didnt really work but we didnt let it bother us and carried on anyway!
We then let the mixture chill in the fridge while we prepared the filling. In a bowl we creamed some butter, sugar and cinnamon, and separately also finely chopped the apricots and pecans.
The still rather slimy dough mixture was rolled out into a long thin strip, coated in the butter sugar concoction, and sprinkled with the friut and nuts.
The sheet of dough was rolled up into a sausage, containing the filling inside, and then coiled into the classic Danish shape.
This was left to rise in the oven for about half an hour, and then it was ready for baking! All it took was a little glazing (just egg yolk and water whisked together)and a sprinkle of nuts and raisins, and the pastry was ready to be baked.
Just twenty minutes later, and my God how it had grown! Our little Danish was now the size of a dinner plate, and after a drizzling of icing, and the customary cherry on top (ours was 4 cherries stuck together), this was surely a pretty Damn Good Danish!
