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T<\/span>he Danes get a lot of credit for populating the world with pastry, but the whole idea for the fruity, sweet, and sometimes cheesy treats made with laminated dough was first brought to Denmark from Austria circa 1850, when foreign bakers were hired to replace striking local ones. Pastries made in the Viennese style caught on in Copenhagen, then developed into a national specialty, and finally headed west early in the 20th century to become a ubiquitous breakfast offering in diners and on breakfast tables across America.<\/p>\n Portable pastry expert, canning connoisseur and cheese lover Cathy Barrow, author of, among several other cookbooks, When Pies Fly: Handmade Pastries from Strudels to Stromboli, Empanadas to Knishes<\/em><\/a>, has strong opinions about which fruits are suitable for the American danish set. \u201cPeach is the wrong color, as is apricot, and those jams are often more pureed, anyway,\u201d says Barrow, and a bit runny for a danish. \u201cI think sour cherry is the best choice. After that, blueberry (wild, not big fat blueberries). Not raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry because their little, tiny seeds are not a nice combo with the smooth cheese filling.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahh, the cheese filling! It\u2019s typically cream cheese-based, sweetened with sugar, flavored with vanilla, and sometimes elevated with an egg yolk. Barrow says she could be convinced to use an alternative spreadable cheese\u2014like sheep\u2019s milk Brebis Blanche<\/a>, fresh ch\u00e8vre, fromage blanc, ricotta, or quark<\/a> in her homemade danish pastries. But only if the texture in the resulting cooked filling remains the same.<\/p>\n To maintain that consistency, Barrow recommends keeping at least a bit of cream cheese in the mix. \u201cIt\u2019s the secret glue for everything,\u201d she says. How much is a bit? Well, as the recipe tester on three of Barrow\u2019s books, I managed to get to the bottom of that question. With drier fresh cheeses like Brebis Blanche and supermarket logs of ch\u00e8vre, you need to have 1 tablespoon of cream cheese to every 2 tablespoons of alternate cheese. For wetter fresh cheeses like fromage blanc, ricotta, and quark, you need to maintain a 1:1 ratio.<\/p>\n A couple of bonus danish-making deductions arose out of this testing. The first is that drier cheeses had a much more prominent tang than the wetter, fresh ones, which makes a nice counterpoint to the sweetness in the cooked fruit in the finished product. But if the fruit in play packs a sour note, you might want to run with more neutral tasting alternate cheese for a more perfect pairing. The second bonus danish revelation was that having powdery confectionary sugar instead of granulated sugar in any cheese base kept it from busting out of the rising pastry walls during baking. A neat and tidy danish is indeed a great way to start the day.<\/p>\n Velbekomme<\/em>. (That\u2019s Danish for \u201cBon app\u00e9tit!\u201d<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\nCh\u00e8vre and Cherry Danish Flowers<\/h2>\n
<\/div>\nChristine Burns Rudalevige<\/span>\n<\/div>\nDanish pastry dough is a yeasted, sweet dough that has butter rolled into it over a period of hours. I recommend using frozen puff pastry as a short cut to having these danishes on the table in time for breakfast.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n