The dough is fairly simple. It's a fairly simple quick brioche, and then it's folded over with softened butter in between. Handling the dough is a right PITA, as it's really soft by the end of the process (for stuff like laminated pastry you tend to chill the dough a lot more, so it's firmer), and I was working on a very heavily floured surface, as the dough was pretty sticky....however the end result was delicious.
The recipe was from the ever reliable Mary Berry's Baking Bible. The first time I tried a number of different shapes, and also a creme patisserie filling, however for the second batch I stuck with the apple and raisin filling, and a kite-shape pastry, which was a pleasing one to look at (and looked fancier than it was!)
Apple and Raisin Danish Pastries
Dough Ingredients
- 450g strong white flour
- ½tsp salt
- 350g softened butter
- 7g fast action yeast
- 50g caster sugar
- 150ml warm milk
- 2 eggs (and some beaten egg to glaze)
Filling Ingredients
- 450g cooking apples
- 15g butter
- juice and zest of ½ lemon
- 60g light muscavado sugar
- 75g raisins
Without going into detail, you make the dough normally (with 50g of the butter rubbed into the flour), then after the first prove laminate the dough with the rest of the butter, doing 3 fold in total with 15 minutes in the fridge after each one. Then roll out squares(lots and lots of flour on the surface here) about 10cm wide and 5mm thick, put some filling in (which is pretty quick to make...cook down the apples wit the sugar, and add everything else), and fold them...leave them to rise for 20-30 minutes, then bake them at 200'C for 15 minutes.You can then drizzle a little water icing over them to make them look posh.
You'll probably have cut-offs...I turned these into spiral danishes by rolling out a rectangle, and then layering sugar and raisins over it and rolling/slicing.