Eggless Danish Pastry

This is the first time I am posting a recipe made by my husband 🙂 Honestly, I haven’t done anything in this recipe, it was completely made from scratch by my hubby since he wanted to surprise me… Oooooooh I love surprises 🙂 The pastry turned out perfect and it was super delicious. We actually skipped our dinner and had it instead 😀 Do try it out, you will fall in love with it.

Danish pastries can be prepared either for breakfast or for desserts. Here, I am sharing with you a dessert version with a filling of both jam and cream cheese.

Makes: 2 pastries

Preparation time: 3 hours Baking time: 8-10 mins

For pastry sheet (Alternately you may use store-bought pastry sheet)

Unsalted butter – ½ cup (softened)

All purpose flour/maida – 3 tbsp

Milk – ½ cup + 2 tbsp

Powdered Sugar – 2 tbsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Active dry yeast – 1 tsp

All-purpose flour/maida – 2 cups

Filling

Fruit jam or creamcheese – ¼ cup

Pastry sheet- (You may use ready-made puff pastry sheet also):

1.      Mix together the butter and 2 tbsp of all-purpose flour until you get a creamy texture. If you find the dough is very sticky add 1 tbsp           of flour and then combine well. Roll the dough into a 2×3 inch rectangular sheet and refrigerate it for atleast 2 hours.

2.      Warm the milk little bit (if you put your finger in it, you should be able to sustain the heat), add a pinch of sugar and add the yeast.            Leave it to rise for about 5 mins.

3.      Take 1 cup of all-purpose flour in a large mixing bowl, add salt to it. Add the risen yeast and stir well. The dough will be sticky at                 this point.

4.      Adding ¼ cup of all-purpose flour at a time, knead the dough so that you get soft and firm dough. Leave it covered to rise so that it               doubles in size.

5.      Once risen, place it on your work surface and roll it out into 4×6 inch sheet.

6.      Place the cold butter-flour sheet prepared in step1 on one half of the dough and fold the dough like the page of a book.

7.      Roll this to about 8×12 inch sheet, then fold into thirds and then roll again. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes. If while rolling, the                 butter melts and it gets difficult to roll it, then refrigerate for about 10 minutes and then knead.

8.      Repeat step7 for about 3 times by refrigerating the dough 30 minutes in between.

Danish Pastry:

1.      To make the Danish pastry, roll the dough into about 8×12 inch sheet and then cut it into 4×4 square sheets.

2.      Place a dollop of the filling on the centre of each square and then fold one opposite set of corners to the centre and over the filling.                   This will create a diamond-like shape (alternately you can make spiral-like which needs a little more effort, the details of which I                 have mentioned below along with images).

3.      Take an ungreased baking tray, place the folded sheets with little gap in between them and brush them with milk or butter.

4.      Bake in a pre-heated oven at 220°C for about 8-10 minutes till they turn golden brown.

Danish Pastry spiral-like (optional):

1.      From about 1/3rd of the pastry width, starting from the centre make slits along the length of the sheet.

2.      Place the filling in the centre all through the length of it.

3.      Fold the dough on the top and bottom of it towards the centre and over the filling.

4.      Fold the slits on either side of filling such that they form a spiral.

5.      Brush with butter and bake as mentioned above. You may also check the link – Braiding puff pastry

 

 

Related Images: