Cheese Danishes From Scratch

Good day to all of you! I would like to share with you how to make cheese danishes from scratch. It is not the easiest recipe, but it is not that hard and I think with a little patience anyone could do it. That being said, don't do it too well or you might me make jealous. *wink wink* Ah, here we go. Oh and also, a little shameless promotion! I have a blog! It is this: sconeandkettle.wordpress.com Please visit and leave lots of pretty comments for me to admire! 

Danish Dough

3/4 cup warm water (105 degrees F – 115)

1/2 cup milk (105 degrees F – 115)

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 oz dry active yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

4 cups flour

1/2 tsp cardamom (I used nutmeg, it was great)

1 egg yolk

flour for dusting

8 oz cold unsalted butter

1 egg beaten with 1 Tbsp water (this is for the egg wash)

Now, in your electric mixer (or just a regular bowl if you are superhuman) combine the warm water, milk, yeast and vanilla. Mix to dissolve yeast. In a separate bowl, sift together the sugar, salt, flour and cardamom. Along with the egg yolk, add this mixture to the yeast/milk mixture using a dough hook if you have one for your mixer. Mix on low to medium until it is all combined and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Now put that in the fridge for 15 minutes. This dough doesn’t need a lot of kneading. (haha…ok)

Grab your chilled butter and this is the fun part. Dust your counter with a little flour, place the butter on top, dust the top of the butter with a little flour. Now get out your rolling pin and pound that butter into an 8 inch square. I don’t care how you do it, just get it done. It’s fine if your butter becomes softer, in fact you want it to because you’re going to be folding this into your dough in a minute.

Alright, do you have your butter? Great! Now get the dough out of the fridge and roll that out into a 16 inch square. Place your 8 inch square of butter dead center on top of the dough. Now fold the sides in towards the center forming a tidy package. I also folded up the ends and pinched the dough to make a fully sealed parcel. Now using your rolling pin again, roll the dough out into a 24 inch long rectangle. It doesn’t matter much how wide it is at this point. Fold one end down into the center and the other end up into the center so you have a square. Place on a cookie sheet and put in the fridge for 25 minutes. That was the first turn. Do this two more times, letting the dough rest in the fridge for 25 minutes between each turn. So roll into a 24 inch rectangle then fold, put in fridge. Repeat. Etc. And on and on. Only three times though, don’t get carried away, loveys.

Once you have done this three times, you are ready to shape the dough! Now I lied before, because this is really the fun part! I myself prefer what they call a “snail” shape. So roll out your dough to a 1/4″ thickness and trim yourself a 16 inch long rectangle. Width matters not, it will just give you more or less danishes. Spread half the dough with an amalgamation of 4 oz soft butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. Fold the unsmeared half of dough on top and gently roll it out a bit with your rolling pin to press the halves together. Using a pizza cutter, cut 1 inch wide strips from this. Take a strip and twist it so you have something like a DNA molecule. Now spiral this around itself (I highly recommend watching the video I linked above because it will show you this) and tuck the end under. To make a pocket in the center for filling, just make an indentation with your fingers.

To Make the Pinwheel Danish: Take a square of dough rolled to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut in towards the center from each corner, but not quite all the way. Fold in every other corner towards the center dabbing a little water on the dough to help it stick. Place a spoonful of your filling right in the center.

Don’t be shy. Fill with something tasty, like this!

Cheese Danish Filling

8 oz cream cheese

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 large egg yolk (whoops, just realized I left that out.)

1 tsp lemon zest (don’t forget to wash your lemon first!)

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Mix it all in a bowl and fill your danishes with it!

Once you have your danishes all shaped and filled and placed on parchment-lined baking sheets, they need to proof. Proofing is a fancy word for ‘rise’. The yeast needs time to come to room temperature and activate and grow! So you can put them in a warm place (sometimes I put doughs near our pellet stove, but not too close) for a while. I think I proofed mine for 30-40 minutes. They should increase in size a bit, although they’ll grow even more in the oven. Brush with the egg wash (1 egg plus 1 Tbsp water), which will make them all golden and shiny. Bake on 400 F for the first ten minutes, lower temp to 350 F and bake another 10 minutes.

When they have come out of the oven and cooled down a bit (although who can wait that long, right?) you may want to drizzle them with a simple icing. Mix 2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar with 1 tsp corn syrup (optional) and about 2 Tbsp water and 1/2 tsp vanilla. You can add more water or more sugar to adjust the consistency.

Great! You did it! Now invite over some friends and put the kettle on because you won’t want to keep this one to yourself!