Oh and another - danish pastries

Yummy yummy, I'm pleased with these

 
OK, another blog-a-thon seems to be happening (although I'm about to be called for dinner - am multitasking whilst attempting to sell stuff for Peter on ebay!).

I'm feeling very happy as I did more baking yesterday.  I was going to make a pumpkin pie but got sidetracked by the idea of making danish pastries.  I've never made them before and I have to say, the result was good, not perfect but good. And I got another chance to use my Lakeland baking tray which is great!

So, I used a recipe from the Good Housekeeping but I only made half quantities (I'd love to say for health reasons, but mainly because I wanted to try it out and didn't want to waste a lot in this age of austerity!).  I now realise quite how much butter there is in a danish pastry!  Oh, and the first attempt at dough had to be binned as I forgot to add the sugar!

Once I was a bit more organised this is basically what I did:

(a) Take 150g of unsalted butter out of fridge and let it warm up until it's soft.  Meanwhile, put 225g, 1/2 tsp salt in a bow and mix together.  Then rub in 25g lard (I presume you could also use vegetable marg) and add 3/4 tsp dried yeast and 1 tablespoon of caster sugar.

(b) add 75ml of handhot water and one beaten egg and mix together, then kneed for about 5 mins or until you have a smooth, elastic dough

(c) Cover and put in fridge for 10 minutes.  Then, and there is where I tried to guess the details of the recipe as there was a really long description with no pictures to clarify, mould the soft butter into an oblong and roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is 3x as wide.

(d) Fold the sides over the butter until it's covered and then roll it out so it's length is 3x it's width. 

(e) Then fold the top 1/3 down and the bottom 1/3 down.  Cover and rest for 10 minutes.  Then turn the dough round and repeat steps d and e two more times (so I think you end up rolling it out 3 times)

(f) Cover the dough with cinnamon butter which you make by creaming together 25g caster sugar with 25g butter and 1tsp or so of cinnamon (I didn't used enough cinnamon - I love cinnamon and would add more next time).  Sprinkle over some sultanas.

(g) Roll it up like a swiss roll and then cut into rounds about 1inch (2.5cm) thick.  Put on the baking tray and leave for about 30 minutes in a warm place and covered up.  Preheat the oven to 220 deg C.

(h) Brush with beaten egg then bake for about 15 minutes.

(i) Remove from oven and let cool a bit before eating!  You can also cover with thin glace icing apparently (according to les instructions in the book).  Yummy yummy.

I know, I've used this pic before!