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!