Seven Sisters Danish

There is a time and a place for baby steps and let me tell you, friends,  now is not that place and this blog is not that time.  For our very first baking challenge here at Butter and Eggs we waltzed straight into the masters dance class of baking.  That's right, we made Danish.


Specifically we made a Seven Sisters Butter Ring Danish from Olsen's Danish Village Bakery in Solvang, CA.  Solvang, for those of you who have never been, is a small Danish community near Santa Barbara.  It was, according to wikipedia, established in 1911 by a group of Danes who had travelled west to escape the midwestern winters.  In the intervening years it has grown into a sort of Danish Disneyland, with strict building codes that enforce traditional Danish village architectural styles, numerous decorative windmills, a miniature version of Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue and an awesomely low rent Hans Christian Anderson Museum.


It is what some people might refer to as a tourist trap (if you are cynical and hate joy and laughter) but even grinchiest of travellers would have to agree that Solvang boasts some pretty kick-ass bakeries.  I took a trip up there this summer whereupon I procured a glorious buttery almond confection that was probably meant to serve a large family at breakfast which I greedily consumed over the course of three delicious days.   Of course, once I had eaten the whole thing, I immediately wanted more, which brings us to Butter and Eggs most recent project - the faithful recreation of one of the most delicious pastries I have ever tasted.  Did we succeed?  Did we ever!



Before we get started, let me tell you, the most important piece of equipment for this recipe is two 8” round cake pans (trust us on this, 8 inches and round).  In addition, here are all of the ingredients you will need:

For the Dough: 

3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened 


1 package active dry yeast 


1/4 cup warm water 


1/4 cup lukewarm milk 


1/4 cup sugar 


1/2 tsp salt 


1 tsp lemon zest (or all the zest from one small lemon) OR 1/2 tsp lemon extract (but really you should use lemon zest because it tastes so so good) 

1 egg 


2 cups sifted all-purpose flour 



PLUS: 
2 Tbl milk 
and 2 Tbl sugar (to sprinkle on top before baking)

1 cup prepared custard a.k.a. vanilla pudding

For the Almond Butterscotch filling: 
1 cup brown sugar 


1/3 cup butter 

pinch salt 


pinch cinnamon 


1/2 egg white 



1 cup almond paste (almond paste can be bought at specialty baking stores, or you can improvise as we did)

Improvised Almond Paste: 1 cup of almond flour/meal (you can buy this pre-ground or grind your own blanched almonds)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar. 

And now we begin...

The first step is to take your softened butter and spread it into a thin, even layer, 8x8 inch square on wax paper.  It's kind of like frosting the top of a cake.  We used the bottom of a 8x8 pan to help estimate size.  When you're done, lay the sheets flat in the refrigerator to chill.

With the butter chilling, now is a good time to make your custard.   

a.k.a. Pudding!!!

If you are making Improvised Almond Paste, now is also a good time to make the simple syrup since it will have to cool before you can add it to the rest of the filling ingredients.

Simply combine the granulated sugar and water in a small saucepan and stir constantly until the mixture comes to a boil.  All of the sugar should be dissolved and you should have a nice clear liquid.  Boil for a moment or two more and then turn off the heat and let it cool.

Time to start the dough.  First dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Take a deep breath.  That strong yeasty smell should trigger lots of happy, delicious memories (if it doesn't now it will the next time you smell it!); here at Butter and Eggs, it reminds us of family dinners and birthdays at this place.

Add the lukewarm milk (a couple of seconds in the microwave should bring it to the right temp), sugar, salt, lemon extract and egg.  Mix Well.

Gradually add the flour until you have a smooth dough then divide the dough in half.  

Before you roll out your dough, check on your butter in the fridge, is it nice and stiff?  If so proceed to roll out each portion of dough onto a well floured surface into a 8x12 rectangle.  

Peel your butter off the waxed paper and place it on the bottom edge of your dough.  Ideally you will have a 4 inch strip of uncovered dough at the top - as you can see, we didn't quite get these measurements right but it didn't seem to harm our finished product much so don't stress if you cant get the exact dimensions.  


The next step is folding the butter into the dough.  The first part is just like folding a letter into thirds.  Fold the uncovered third of dough over the buttered portion then fold it over again so that you have a packet of layers that alternate between butter and dough.  

Then fold that packet lengthwise into thirds, ending with a square.

Now wrap these square packets in waxed paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

 While the dough is chilling, you can prepare your filling (hey that rhymes!).

If you are using Improvised Almond Paste, mix the almond meal and confectioners' sugar into your simple syrup before adding to the rest of the ingredients.  Mix together almond paste, brown sugar, butter, salt, cinnamon and egg white until smooth.  Set aside.

When 30 minutes is up, remove your dough from the fridge and roll the packets out to about 12x12 inches and approximately a quarter of an inch in thickness.

Next cut out a 10 inch square piece of dough.

Use this to line your cake pans (or whatever dish you're using).

Next measure out 1/2 a cup of the Almond Butterscotch Filling.

And 1/2 a cup of the custard.

Spread first the filling, then the custard in an even layer over your dough.

Next, fold up the remainder of your dough and reroll it into an 8x8 inch square.  Spread a thin layer of the Almond Butterscotch filling over this dough and then roll the whole thing up like a Ding Dong.

Measure the resulting log into 7 equal pieces (about a 1/2" thick) and slice into tiny cinnamon rolls.  You can do this with a knife or use a piece of dental floss.  Just slide the floss under the roll to the point you want to cut, then cross the two ends over the roll and voila, a nice clean cut.

These babies are your sisters from the recipe title.

Arrange the sisters in your filled cake pan.  Repeat assembly steps for your second pan.

Lightly cover both rings with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let them rise on the counter for 45 minutes.  Perhaps you could use this time to play with your kitty-cat, who is wondering what you've been up to all day.  When your dough still has 20 minutes of rising time left, pre-heat your oven to 350°F.  

Before baking, brush the tops of the sisters with milk and sprinkle them with sugar.  Place both pans on the center rack of your oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes until golden brown.

Remove the pans from the oven and allow the rings to cool completely before serving.  Enjoy the delicious fruits of your labor!

If you remember and are feeling so inclined, you can make a simple white frosting from Milk and Confectioners’ Sugar to drizzle on top once the rings are cool.  We’re sure it would make the sisters look lovely but we completely forgot this step and our finished product was still one hundred percent delicious.

You can remove the rings from their pans once they're cool or simply serve them straight from the pan.  They will keep for at least a week, if not more, wrapped in plastic in the fridge.

We hope you enjoy making and eating your Seven Sisters Ring as much as we did.  We have found, in countless cookbooks and recipes scary admonishments about how "Baking is not like cooking!  It is about precision!"  This is true to an extent, the chemical processes that take place in your oven are delicate and do require certain conditions for optimal results.  However, do not be intimidated into thinking that baking is completely inflexible or that a tiny mistake will doom you from the start.  We here at Butter and Eggs are not exactly masters of precision.  Several things, from our lack of ready made Almond Paste to our trouble rolling the dough out to exact specifications, swerved a little bit off the prescribed route.  Nevertheless, while our finished product might not be as pretty as the rings they sell in Solvang, it still tastes as heavenly.  They say practice makes perfect.  Maybe the next time we set aside a day for Danish, we'll end up with something that looks as good as it tastes.

                             

Oh!  One more piece of advice along these lines.  You will notice in these pictures that one of our rings was baked in a springform cake pan.  We strongly urge you to learn from our mistakes and REFRAIN from using a springform pan for your rings.  The Butterscotch Filling and Custard get very liquidy during baking and our springform pan was not up to the task of containing their juices.  Thus, the Butter and Eggs oven ended up with a lovely puddle of gooey sugar water on its floor.  Not too hard to clean and a small price to pay for heavenly pastry but also completely avoidable had we used our noggins.