Danish Braid: Part 2 I Cheat!

I love the convenience of being able to take shortcuts when baking.  In this instance I'm using store bought puff pastry instead of attempting to make my own, which I just have no desire to do.  You can find really good puff pastry dough made with real butter at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods.  I stocked up on Trader Joe's brand over the holidays, so that is what I used today.

Here is what you will need:

Cookie Sheet

Rolling Pin

Parchment Paper

Wire Cooling Rack (Optional)

Pastry Brush

Ingredients:

Puff Pastry

Flour

Pastry Cream

Egg Whites (Hope you saved yours from yesterday!)

Optional Ingredients:

Frozen Fruit

Sugar

Powdered Sugar

To get started, sprinkle your work surface with some flour and roll out your puff pastry into whatever sized rectangle you'd like your braid to be.  Try to keep it even as possible.  Once you get it where you'd like, place the dough on a piece of parchment paper.  I suppose you can start on a piece of parchment paper, but I just don't like to deal with the flour on my parchment paper.  So whatever you want to do is fine.  At this point you're going to want to preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Once you've got your puff pastry rolled out and on the parchment paper, cut equal amounts of strips on both sides of your rectangle leaving the center section uncut.  I used a pizza roller to make quick,easy, and safe cuts to the dough. Brush your egg wash on the strips you just cut, then fill the middle with your pastry cream. If you'd like to add your fruit here is the place to do it.  All I did was take a bag of frozen mixed berries, dumped them into a bowl and microwaved for 2 minutes with 2 tsp. of sugar sprinkled over the top, smooshed it all up and strained the juice out (which I mixed with powdered sugar to make a berry flavored icing for the top).

Start with one side and layer one over the other, like you are lacing up a shoe.  You may need to cut off any extra strips when you get to the end.  I take those piece and use them to seal the top and bottom of the braid.  Egg wash over the entire top of the braid.  

Lift the parchment paper on and place on your cookie sheet then pop it in the oven for 15 minutes.  Because ovens vary so much check to see if it is browning evenly.  I like to rotate mine at this point.  Also with my oven, my pastry is not yet brown and needs an additional 5 minutes.  It really is a watch and wait game.  

Once it's nice and brown, pull it out and shift it to the wire cooling rack if you have one, otherwise just let it cool on the cookie sheet.  If you are going to top it with an icing, wait until it is cool otherwise your icing will just melt off.  It is traditionally topped with pearl sugar, but also with sliced almonds as well.  

I made 2; a big one and a smaller one. As you can see half of the big one is already gone, YUM!

Danish Braid: Part 1 Pastry Cream!

I decided I am going to make a Danish Braid tomorrow so I needed to get started today making the pastry cream.  I like to let my pastry cream sit overnight to really absorb the delicious vanilla flavor and to cut the egg flavor of fresh made pastry cream. All the eggy-ness seams to disappear by letting it settle in the refrigerator overnight and since I don't like eggy-ness this is a necessary step in my process.

I also thought it would be nice to share how I make a Danish Braid in case any of you wanted to make your own.  Today I'm sharing the first step of my process, making the pastry cream.

What you will need;
Medium sized sauce pan
Whisk
Spoon
Measuring Spoons
2 bowls
Fine mesh strainer
Thermometer (optional)

Ingredients:

5 large egg yolks (save those egg whites for tomorrow)
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt (or 1/16th teaspoon if you want to get technical)
3 tablespoons of cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups (16 oz.) half and half
half stick (4 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter divided in to 4 sections

What I like to do is get all my ingredients measured out and ready so I don't have to worry while cooking and I don't have to take extra time to measure stuff out while stirring and whisking which is just impossible.

First in your medium sauce pan mix 6 tablespoons of the 1/2 cup sugar with the salt and half and half.  Heat over medium heat stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.  Bring to a full simmer.  You really want to make sure it gets to a full simmer, this heat will be used to essentially cook the egg yolks.

While your half and half mixture is warming up take your medium bowl and whisk your egg yolks together until well blended, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar and whisk until smooth, about 15 seconds should do.  Then add your cornstarch and slowly start whisking it into the eggs.  If you whisk too fast the cornstarch will explode everywhere, you want to get it blended in before going for a good whisk.  This shouldn't take too long, about 20 seconds or so.  Once it is well blended you are going to take your simmering half and half mixture and slowly add a little at a time to your egg mixture, whisking the entire time. This is called tempering the eggs.

You don't want to just throw all of the hot half and half mix into the egg mix because you may end up with your eggs looking all scrambled and that would be bad.  You want to slowly bring the egg yolks up to the temperature of the half and half gradually so they remain smooth and your mixture stays creamy.  Once you've mixed it all together return the mixture to the saucepan and heat over medium again.

Whisk constantly until your mixture becomes glossy and thick.  I know mine is ready when it starts to look a little lumpy too.  Once it gets to this point remove from heat and whisk in your butter and vanilla.

You can see how the cream is a lot glossier looking and a slightly richer color. At this point if you're paranoid about salmonella throw in your thermometer it should read at least 160 degrees.

Now comes the arm work.  Pour a little of the cream into your strainer and whisk over your other clean bowl.  This smooths out the cream making it silky and removing any lumps.

Continue to strain through the entire batch.  Afterwards you're going to want to take some plastic wrap and cover the cream making sure to get the plastic right down onto the cream.  You don't want any air to touch the cream otherwise an undesirable skin will form.

Let cool in the refrigerator for as little as two hours or as long as two days.  You'll want to use within 2 - 3 days though.

And that's it.  Delicious pastry cream that can be used in a Danish Braid, Cream Puffs, Eclairs.. all sorts of delicious pastries really!

Domino!

This is just a post full of cute pictures of Domino being Domino.

Amanda's Visit

From November eighth through the thirteenth, Amanda, one of my best friends came to visit me. We did a lot of stuff in the short amount of time she was here and took plenty of pictures to document it. So without further adieu here are a few pictures of some of the fun stuff we had.

 Tiny drinks upon Amanda's arrival

 Dinner at the Wisconsin Cheese Mart (Cheese plates w/ 4 flights of beer samplings)

 Shooting at Shooter's Sports Center (Amanda got a bullseye!)

 On Friday we kicked off our day of Brewery Tours at Miller 

Next up was the Millwaukee Brewery Co. where we got the secret recipe for damn fine tacos.

 The last stop was Lakefront Brewery

Saturday morning we hit up the Milwaukee Public Museum 

Amanda sitting with a 'local' in the Streets of Old Milwaukee section of the museum

Sitting on a beetle

Thumbs up!

Head hunters!

 We also enjoyed a beer inside the Whole Foods store on Saturday
Sunday we headed to Chicago for 2 days  

We hit up the Willis Tower

 And checked out the Museum of Science and Industry

 There was a peanuts exhibit that was pretty awesome!

We had a glass of Billy Goat beer at the Billy Goat Tavern as we explored the underworld

We walked all over, hit up Jimmy Greens to catch the 49er Game and popped into Uno's for some pizza.  

We checked out the Bean and ate at Tavern at the Park before going off on an adventure to the Navy Pier.  

We then hopped on the Amtrak back to Milwaukee for one last relaxing night before Amanda had to head back to Sacramento and I had to head back to work.