1. Really Quick ‘Danish Pastries’

Home Cooking Made Easy p54

Welcome to my first recipe of 2012 – enter with me into “an aromatic realm of flavours, zests, glazes and textures,” sometimes called “my kitchen.”

These danish pastries are a great thing to cook in a hurry (took me 42 minutes from start to finish) and use only ingredients you might have in your cupboard. (I have no idea what you keep in yours, that’s a private matter between you and your cupboards).

Only 5 ingredients!

I used already rolled puff pastry by mistake but that’s not a problem – you just have to reassemble the offcuts to make more squares. I also used “breakfast apricots” which, it turns out, are dried and then soaked in apple juice (you mean the name didn’t make that clear?), but they worked fine.

It’s pretty much an assembly operation. Lorraine says roll out the pastry to a 30x30cm square and then cut into 12 squares measuring 7.5×7.5cm. I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I am qualified to do Big Sums, so I can confidentially tell you this gives 16 squares, not 12. Then you stick down some custard and an apricot on each:

Then the origami starts.

If you watched, Lorraine’s Last Minute Christmas, then these are very similar to the mince pie stars.

I have a fan oven, which I know is a heinous crime in the cooking world. But I also have an electric hob, a microwave and a bread machine, so sue me. Anyway, I found they took about 12 minutes at 180′ in my oven.

I experimented with 2 ways of folding:

The second one looks a bit more “danish-y” and holds the custard marginally better. They are very small – but you could make them bigger and I think some toasted flaked almonds would be a good addition to larger ones.